Art in an Early Global World at WAM: A WAM/College of the Holy Cross Collaboration

Who made The Last Judgment?

This painting was created by an unknown artist, probably in the early 1300s in or near Venice. A well-known artist working in this time and place was Paolo Veneziano. Veneziano is known for introducing the “composite altarpiece” of many small scenes within an elaborate gilded frame. He also combined Byzantine iconography, like the setting of this scene before the walls of Jerusalem, with Gothic emotional expression, like the swooning Virgin at left here, in blue. It is quite possible that the artist responsible for The Last Judgment knew Veneziano. It may be possible to discover who painted the Worcester Art Museum's Last Judgment by examining its gold leaf. Through the use of x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, art historians were able to determine that the amount of thickness or overlap in gold leaf panels differed depending on the artist, and that the degree of overlap was consistent within artists. This means that by looking at the gold leaf panel in The Last Judgment and comparing it to other Italian paintings with gold leaf, it may be possible to determine its artist.

Tommy Leimkuhler, College of the Holy Cross, Class of 2025

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