Christ is portrayed as described in the Bible, giving judgment on who enters Heaven and Hell. The tympanum depicts Christ in the middle with his hands outstretched and people all around him. Even though it is not clear what exactly will take place, there are many depictions and interpretations as to what happens after death and before the Last Judgment. According to the Bible and Christian belief, the Last Judgment will take place after the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Christ as stated in the Book of Revelation. The Last Judgment in Christian theology is the final and eternal judgment by God of all people. The image of the Last Judgment is depicted in a tympanum which is a space, between an arch and the lintel, often decorated with sculpture.
The strong vision of the artwork would have scared the weak in faith and also persuaded them to break away from evil and enter into God’s house, or the Church.
One big question is what would have been the effect of the Last Judgment tympanum on the people who gazed at its image? In medieval times, “devotional practices were becoming increasingly focused on the visual perception of the sacred” meaning that seeing images of Biblical passages had a significant impact on the person observing the artwork (Biernoff 3). Now that images of sin and humanity’s doom are thrown in front of the faces of the people entering St-Lazare’s church, it only reinforces the fact that people need to enter the church in order to secure a spot for them in heaven. By bringing the text out of its two dimensional form in a book, Gislebertus made a relationship between sin and the physical world. The Last Judgment tympanum was not only an image that Gislebertus created by himself the images he carved into the stone are substantiated by passages from the Bible.
In the church of St-Lazare in Autun, France, the artist Gislebertus clearly displayed a vision of Heaven and Hell by depicting Christ’s Apostles, the saints, and angels as well as demons and monsters. What would be the best way to prepare people for their death? For the Catholic Church in the middle of the twelfth century one way could be to read passages from the Bible, preach about the importance of living a righteous life, or to show people what exactly they will have in store once they die.
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