‘The Last Judgement’ was painted in 1853 by John Martin. It is oil on canvas and has the measurements, including the frame, of 240 x 368.5 x 17.5cm. The painting is part of a triptych, including ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven’. It is held at the Tate Britain in the Display Room of The Art of Ray Harryhausen, with the theme of Spotlights. The paintings were produced at the end of Martin’s career and before his death in 1854. He had the intention of touring them as popular spectacles. The paintings travelled from America to Australia, being shown in a wide range of countries. They were also reproduced as engravings, which extended their reach even further. Their influence, created by their fame, helped break ground for modern forms of popular entertainment – including blockbuster cinema. ‘The Last Judgement’ and the two other paintings of the triptych are considered to be Martin’s most influential achievements and his masterpiece. Martin was above all ambitious, he is widely quoted declaring “I will bring before the eye the vast and magnificent edifices of the ancient world”, and that is what he did.
The subjects of the paintings are taken from ‘The Book of Revelation’, the painting represents the centred event of the Book and is a composition of various passages from the narrative. ‘The Book of Revelation’ is a book of the New Testament that dominates a place in Christian eschatology. The initial sketches of The Last Judgement were of specific sections, that featured in the painting. The most famous sketch is of the lower half of the painting. This sketch illustrates the centred event of the Book of Revelation and shows the striking detail of the painting. This included a railway train plunging into the bottomless pit. The painting displays God, in Heaven, sat on a throne in judgement. Before him sits the four and twenty elders. The trumpets of the four angels sounded after the Seventh Seal was opened. As the last bridge over the Valley of Jehoshaphat is collapsing, many race across it to Jerusalem and its safety. Beneath to the right, Satan’s forces of evil are conquered and the armies of Gog and Magog, God’s people’s enemy nations, fall into the bottomless pit. On Mount Zion, to the left, are the good who are already in the ‘plains of heaven’, waiting to be called upon to appear before the throne. The main figures were later identified in 1855 when an engraved key to accompany the picture was published by Leggatt, Haward and Leggatt. The richly dressed woman, primarily Herodias’s daughter and the whore of Babylon, churchmen and lawyers who only strived for wealth were amongst the damned to the left of God. On the other side, are the saved. These are anonymous figures consisting of innocent children, honourable women and people of worthy morals. Together with the good, Martin incorporated numerous artists and poets, in addition to philosophers and statesmen. Included was, Dante, Newton, Shakespeare, Michelangelo and many others. These notable men are varied in a montage of a timeless fashion. The pictorial language used by Martin to render visible this new paradise was the wholly conventional and familiar one of classical landscape painting on the model of the seventeenth-century French artist Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), pursued in the modern age most influentially by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) (Myrone (2012) provided this statement).
Your eyes are directly drawn to the focus point. This is God on the throne, just off the centre of the painting. This is because it is the brightest part and is emphasised due to the contrast of being surrounded by dark colours. But as you begin to study the painting, you then come across other details, such as the good in the ‘plains of heaven’ and Satan’s forces of evil, in the bottom corners. Below God in the throne, at the centre of the painting, the features of the painting begins to merge into the bottomless pit, as if falling into the darkness. This factor shows symmetrical balance. As you start at the focal point you then begin to go clockwise as one of the angels is facing to the right of the painting. You are then drawn to a figure in the bottom right corner, part of the forces of evil, to which you follow to the abyss and the see the good, on the ‘plains of heaven’, in the bottom left corner. The throne and its surroundings are placed on a horizontal ‘ledge’ as if raised above the goings-on below. This also links to the colour palette of the painting, there is a clear divide between light and dark colours as if signifying ‘heaven and hell’. A dark foreground with dense foliage rising to the left and to the right in a balanced formation gives way to an expansive landscape view with rivers, lakes and waterfalls, characterised by bands of warm and cool colour and dissolving into a blinding golden light which consumes the towering mountain scenery in the far distance (Myrone (2012) provided this statement). The triptych was the pivotal attraction of the first of many exhibitions of Martin’s work, which was held at the Tate Britain in 2011-12. The exhibition was accompanied by a theatrical son et lumière show which dramatized the approach of the exhibition.