Michelangelo completed his fresco cycle in the Sistine Chapel for another pope—Paul III—with this terrifying vision of the fate awaiting sinners at the Last Judgment. It includes his self-portrait. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was the first artist in history whose prodigious talent and brooding personality matched today’s image of the temperamental artistic genius. His self-imposed isolation, creative furies, proud independence, and daring innovations led Italians of his era to speak of the charismatic personality of the man and the expressive character of his works in one word—terribilitเ, the sublime shadowed by the awesome and the fearful. Yet, unlike most modern artists, who create works in their studios and offer them for sale later, Michelangelo and his contemporaries produced most of their paintings and sculptures under contract for wealthy patrons who dictated the content—and sometimes the form—of their artworks.