Last Judgement in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello

One of the last things I saw in Italy in October

- and up there amongst the best - was the enormous gold and other colours (blues, reds) mosaic of the Last Judgement in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello. I probably spent close to 90 minutes - mostly alone, in the quiet- trying to absorb all the detail and meaning in the panels. Some tourists just walked in and then walked out. I don’t think they recognised what it was and it’s all too much to glance it quickly. I remember the first time I looked at it years ago I thought it was kind of crude, now I’ve got a completely different sort of impression of its complexity and artistic excellence. I think that comes from looking at so many examples of Byzantine art and Italian variations of it in 11-13th centuries.

The mosaic - that is close to being a micromosaic ) dates from the later level of early 12th centuries and I believe it was designed to basically offer a moral impression upon the congregation and send a very strong message about obedience and if you don’t you go to hell. Goodness knows how many millions if pieces it is made from There are six panels the one at the top being much larger than the others and the get smaller to eye level, but they’re all full of fantastic level of detail some of it quite humorous such as the skulls and serpents and the devil who represented in various places There is also a river of fire that leads down from the devil to people burning in hell. It’s very active story-telling.

I actually took a break to try and absorb it all and I ascended the tower in the church and then I came back for a second round. It was also because I couldn’t get any Internet access inside the church but I managed to find a website that I’ve got a link to that explains the six panels. It’s really worth reading the article and and looking at a big screen Image of the entire thing and then the details Unfortunately, you can’t take photos inside the church which means that I had to access photos which aren’t always great from other sources . It’s also clear that some of the restoration has been overdone such as the big angels at the top which are just too good to be true. However, you can really see that at least one of them. At least one mosaicist had extraordinary artistic skills in rendering faces and even some of the feet are cleverly outlined with sandals. In one of the panels there is actually rendering of souls in the dark deep and that part of the panel actually curves into an angled corner, and it’s all rendered in a dark blue black with very light grey white tesserae of different hues outlining the floating bodies. It’s really amazing, but I haven’t been able to find a good photograph of it.