Michelangelo, Moorish Dancing, and Early Modern Slavery

In 1564, Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” was criticized for resembling “Moorish dances” (moresche). This criticism is substantiated, but also complicated by a letter dateable to 1533, in which a close collaborator of Michelangelo proposed the moresca as a model for a religious composition. Coordinating these texts with visual and archival evidence, this article draws connections between Michelangelo and “two Moors, dancers of moresche” who were sought out by his patrons in the early 1530s. Together, these sources indicate a deep entanglement between canonical Renaissance conceptions of modern art and the cultural ramifications of modern, racialized slavery.