(Click twice on picture to enlarge)
This is one of the few portraits Michelangelo ever painted. Who is it? Biagio da Cesena, the papal master of ceremonies. He is the devil Minos here in the Last Judgment picture on the Sistine Chapel wall.
Minos stood at the Gates of Hell just as St. Peter stood at the other ones. He examined the curriculum of the damned and decided where to send them—to which department.
Why did Michelangelo piant Biagio as a devil?
Biagio told Pope Julius within Michelangelo’s hearing that the big painting, with all its nudes, would be more fitting for a tavern wall than a chapel. In revenge Michelangelo put Biagio’s face on Minos.
Notice how the snake is also biting his crotch!
His crotch–no! His entire genital package…. Now that I look closer I see that the snake does not have it all. Since Volterra painted a loin-cloth on the figure, there must have been something to cover.
Condivi, Mike’s biographer, says: “The sinners are dragged down by evil spirits, the proud by the hair, the lascivious by their pudenda, and each sinner correspondingly by the part of his body with which he sinned”. The note in my good edition (Helmut Wohl) says: “According to a law prevalent in the late Middle Ages, punishment was inflicted on that part of the convicted criminal’s body with which he had committed the crime”.
This is the first time I see this detail of Michelangelo’s painting! (I am amazed because I paint something pretty much similar but it was more a Adam & the serpent… I’ll send you the reproduction…
…and I didn’t cover a thing!