Michelangelo’s Revenge: The Vatican Official Painted into Hell
A complaint about nudity turned into eternal damnation on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
(…) Michelangelo had already completed more than three quarters of the work when Pope Paul went to see it. Messer Biagio da Cesena, master of ceremonies and a scrupulous man, who was present in the chapel with the Pope, was asked what he thought of it. He replied that it was most improper to have so many nudes in such a revered place, all so shamelessly displaying their private parts, and that it was more fitting for baths and taverns than for a papal chapel.
This displeased Michelangelo, who wanted revenge. As soon as Biagio had left, he painted him from memory, without needing him to pose, placing him in Hell as Minos, with a large serpent wrapped around his legs amidst a throng of devils.
And neither Messer Biagio's pleas to the Pope nor to Michelangelo were enough to have him removed, the figure was left there as a reminder, and can still be seen today.
(Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori ed. 1568)
Few anecdotes in art history offer such perfect symmetry between crime and punishment. A papal functionary criticizes the nudity in Michelangelo's Last Judgment; the artist responds by painting him naked for eternity, his genitals gnawed by a serpent in hell.
Giorgio Vasari tells the story with evident relish, and it has been repeated ever since with the same satisfaction.
What gets lost in the retelling is that Biagio da Cesena was no prudish amateur offering uninformed aesthetic opinions.
Biagio's harsh criticism…
He was, in fact, hardly a minor functionary. Since 1518, Biagio had served as Master of Ceremonies to four popes, organizing the conclaves that elected Adriano VI (1522), Clement VII (1523), and Paul III (1534).
His family belonged to Cesena's Guelf nobility. He held degrees in civil and canon law, had worked for decades as a lawyer and notary in the papal Curia before his ceremonial appointment. His diaries chronicle the Sack of Rome (1527), diplomatic meetings with Charles V and Francis I, the debates on Henry VIII’s divorce and the daily ceremonial life of the papal court.
The role of Master of Ceremonies was far more significant than the title suggests. Biagio was responsible for orchestrating every aspect of papal liturgy, including the precise sequence of vestments, the timing of processions, the protocols for receiving foreign ambassadors, and the choreography of papal masses.
He was the Vatican's institutional guardian, the man who ensured that the majesty of the papacy was expressed through flawless ceremonial performance.
When Pope Paul III brought Biagio to see Michelangelo's nearly finished Last Judgment [N.B. the Last Judgment was officially unveiled on October 31, 1541], the fresco covered the entire altar wall: over 300 muscular figures across 1,800 square feet.
According to Vasari, Paul asked his Master of Ceremonies what he thought. Biagio's response was direct: the abundance of nude flesh was "disonestissima" in such a place, shamelessly showing "le lor vergogne". This was work fit for "stufe e osterie," not a papal chapel.
His criticism carried weight because of his position: Biagio spoke as the Vatican's guardian of liturgical propriety, the man responsible for ensuring papal ceremonies maintained appropriate dignity.
Michelangelo's muscular saints, rendered with anatomical precision that left nothing hidden, violated the sacred decorum that Biagio spent his career protecting.
… and Michelangelo's even harsher response
Michelangelo's response was sharp and permanent.
In the lower right corner of the fresco, among the damned being ferried to hell, he painted Minos, the underworld judge from Dante's Inferno. This figure has donkey ears and writhes as a serpent coils around his body, fangs sunk into his genitals.
The face was that of Biagio da Cesena.
Biagio, furious, appealed to Paul III to force Michelangelo to remove the likeness. The Pope's response, it is said, may be legend: had Michelangelo placed Biagio in purgatory, the Pope might have intervened, but his jurisdiction did not extend to hell!
Whether Paul made this remark is uncertain, but the portrait remained. Biagio's protests came to nothing. Giorgio Vasari, writing in 1550, notes simply that Michelangelo left it there for memory, where it can still be seen.
Counter-Reformation concerns
But time would prove Biagio's instincts correct.
His reaction to the fresco's nudity anticipated broader Church concerns that would reshape Catholic art. The Council of Trent opened in 1545, about a year after Biagio died, and ended up establishing stricter guidelines for religious imagery.
By 1565, the Church commissioned Daniele da Volterra to cover the offending anatomy with drapery. The artist earned the nickname "Il Braghettone" (the breeches-maker).
When Michelangelo began work in 1536, Rome was still recovering from the 1527 Sack. German mercenaries, together with famine and disease, had killed much of the city's population. Many interpreted the catastrophe as divine punishment for Church corruption.
Paul III's "Last Judgment" commission served multiple functions: artistic patronage, theological statement, and institutional response to Protestant attacks on Catholic excess.
Michelangelo delivered a vision of unprecedented physicality. His Christ, muscular as a classical Apollo, raises his hand in judgment while the dead rise in actual bodies, not as spirits. The work affirmed Catholic doctrine about bodily resurrection while displaying Michelangelo's belief that the nude human form represented God's finest creation.
Michelangelo lived until 1564, luckily not long enough to watch Daniele da Volterra add modest draperies to his triumphant saints.
The face that might not be Biagio
But there is an alternative version of this story.
In 1544, three years after the unveiling of the Last Judgment, a satirical sonnet circulated in Rome and was later preserved in the Vatican Library. It makes no mention of Biagio da Cesena.
Instead, it identifies Minos as Pierluigi Farnese, the pope’s own son, whose reputation was already darkened by the violent death of Bishop of Fano, a killing described in the sonnet with unflinching crudity.
The verse belonged to the tradition of the pasquinate, anonymous lampoons posted in public spaces, where Rome’s grievances and scandals were aired without restraint.
Whether Michelangelo truly intended such an allusion remains uncertain; contemporary readers of the sonnet, however, were quick to connect it with the figure on the altar wall, giving Minos a political face the Farnese would have preferred to erase.
Vasari, writing in 1550, repeats the Biagio story, which by then was already the accepted version.
The truth is likely to remain unsettled, and the figure still carries more than one possible identity.
Bibliography
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (ed. 1568)
Quel che si nasconde nella figura di Minosse by Antonio Forcellino
Very interesting take, I did not know about Pierliugi Farnese being a potential culprit, you have the advantage of being fluent in Italian. And Vasari did, at times, stretch the truth.
In the past, I wrote a story compiling the many ways in which Michelangelo dealt with fools, have a look:
https://artjourneycurator.substack.com/p/insulting-michelangelo-sistine-chapel-eternity