Giotto’s fresco of the Last Judgment in the Arena Chapel in Padua has long occupied a central position in Italian art history for its powerful illusionistic images of the blessed, the damned, and its patron. Yet for all of Giotto (and his assistants’) achievements in creating commanding narrative scenes and expressive fleshy bodies, there is an element of his Last Judgment that has yet to receive systematic attention: at the center of the composition and embedded within Christ’s gilded halo are three convex glass on lead leaf mirrors. The mirrors’ presence disrupts the continuous frescoed surface and presents real objects in what has otherwise been called the chapel’s “illusionistic regime” (Jacobus). What is more, this is the earliest known example of actual mirrors used in a narrative, figural fresco, and the only medieval example of a Last Judgment with mirrors. Taking the Arena Chapel’s mirrors as a starting point, this paper examines the precedents for inserting diverse materials into monumental eschatological frescoes in medieval Italy. The focus will be the missing panel, possibly of wood or stucco, of Christ’s face in the image of Revelation 12 at San Pietro al Monte in Civate (11th c.); the missing wooden panel of Christ’s face in the Last Judgment of San Giovanni a Porta Latina in Rome (late 12th c.); and the three mirrors in Christ’s halo in the Arena Chapel Last Judgment (1303-1305). While these embedded objects appear in images of the Aldilà, the objects themselves are emphatically in the viewer’s present time and space. Considering the different types of materials and media used in these three Last Judgment images enables new insights beyond questions of iconography and style that address how the materiality of an image could inform eschatological meaning.

Rather than centering the nude human form and its anatomical display, as in many later approaches to the subject, late Trecento and Quattrocento Last Judgment frescoes teem with fully clothed, charismatic figures. The Saved are painted in modest attire – veils, plain gonnelle, but also crowns and circlets – and the Damned are their equally fashionable counterparts. Instead of beastly, grotesque creatures, these sinners are finely dressed characters, marked by the most extravagant accessories, audacious hairstyles, and opulent fabrics calibrated to track the latest fashion trends. In some cases, as in the cycle in Campione d’Italia, entire scenes are dedicated, separately from the main composition, to the theme of vanity. This emphasis on dress signals more than a simple taste for naturalistic details.

This paper revisits dress in the Last Judgment frescoes in light of recent methodologies in the history of dress, construing it as a system of signs grounded in real materials. Considering clothing in its everyday use, dress provided an easily recognizable marker of salvation and damnation, addressing viewers of all classes. Second, clothing is read as a coherent part of contemporary discourses on luxury and vanity, in which civic and ecclesiastical authorities mobilized anti-luxury rhetoric and sumptuary regulations to police consumption and stabilize social hierarchies. Because the Last Judgments dramatized punishment and consequence, these frescoes became a prime arena for staging anxieties about excess in a rapidly changing society. Finally, in the interplay of iconographies, dress should be considered in its presence, its absence (nudity/stripping), and its constituent parts: not all accessories carry equal weight, and each can operate as an autonomous bearer of meaning. Through case studies ranging from Campione d’Italia to cycles in Pisa and Palermo, the Last Judgments are reimagined as a visual code where theology, fashion, and governance intersect.

Of the various representations of the Last Judgment, one uncommon type incorporates the image of the Madonna della Misericordia in an otherwise conventional Last Judgement composition. In these works, the Madonna della Misericordia occupies the space below or left of the main composition, a place usually set aside for the Elect in paradise. Images of this type include the fresco from S. Maria inter Angelos, Spoleto (now Glencairn Museum, Bryn Athyn); an illumination in MS. Bodl. 691, Fol. 1v, Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the highly unusual Divine Misericordia fresco in the residence of the Misericordia (aka Bigallo), Florence.

An analysis of these works shows how the addition of the Madonna della Misericordia to the Last Judgment focuses their respective iconographies while creating a meaningful hybrid. Adding the Madonna della Misericordia singles out her devotees among the Elect; while fundamentally shifting the focus of the Madonna della Misericordia from divine protection to salvation.

Apart from these works, which show a simple insertion of one image type into another, the fresco of Divine Misericordia in Florence presents a much more complex scenario. On the surface, the fresco appears to represent the Madonna della Misericordia (and is frequently misidentified as such). However, as this paper demonstrates, the inscription at the top of the fresco (Matt: 25:34) and another below leaves no doubt that the viewer is to read the image within the context of the Last Judgment, with the Florentines portrayed as the Elect and Florence as the City of God.