Contrary to much published opinion, this fresco cannot be taken merely as expressing a single artist's vision, but instead should be viewed as the culminating statement of papal propaganda in the Sistine Chapel, which continues the message of papal primacy begun by Pope Sixtus IV in the early 1480s. As the film follows the queen’s transformation from youthful sensuality to physically detached wisdom, Kapur employs ideas proposed by Elizabeth’s contemporaries to frame religion and corruption through bodily characterization.Ī discussion of the theme of papal primacy in Michelangelo's fresco Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel in Rome and how the artist worked to convey this message. By contrast, both contemporaries and director Shekhar Kapur establish upper body activities, like reading and intellectual work, as wholesome and virtuous. This was especially true during the sixteenth century as the English Protestant Reformation’s dialogic battle against Catholic clergy progressed and conspiracies against the queen mounted. This article investigates how lower body activities and functions, like dancing, sex, and defecation, were linked in both the film and early modern minds to immorality, corruption, and heresy. 1558-1603), compressing the late 1550s to the early 1570s into a comprehensive statement on the relationship between the body, heresy, and corruption. Elizabeth examines the period of religious and political unrest immediately before and after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I (r. Kapur, 1998) as a portal for understanding the interstices between modern and early modern conceptions of religion as it is read on the body. This article uses the film Elizabeth (dir.

Juilius michelangelo agony and ecstasy