The Last Judgment in the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence, Italy is a fresco painting which was begun by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgio Vasari in 1572 and completed after his death by Federico Zuccari, in 1579.

As the dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence approached completion there were number of suggestions as to how to decorate its ceiling.

[1] Cosimo tasked his court painter Giorgio Vasari and his literary and theological adviser the learned Benedictine cleric Vincenzo Borghini to compose a suitable decoration.

[1] Borghini's eventual iconographic design which took inspiration from the Book of Revelation along with Dante's Divine Comedy called for the walls of the vault to be painted in concentric circles, with the upper areas featuring Christ, the Madonna and the angels, which would symbolize the redemption of man's spirit as it strove toward heaven.

[3] Despite the assistance of the Bolognese painter Lorenzo Sabatini, Vasari had completed only the uppermost level representing The 24 Elders of the Apocalypse and three sections of the one immediately below it prior to his death in June 1574.

His successor Francesco I de’ Medici decided to continue with the project and he commissioned Federico Zuccari to complete the work, with instructions to adhere to the use of fresco as well as both Vasari's drawings for the upper four segments of the cupola and his sketches for the scenes of Hell as well as his painting style.

Zuccari's formal agreement to undertake the project was signed with the l’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore in November 1575, and he commenced work on 30 August 1576.

[5] The work that had been completed to date reflected Vasari's "conservative" traditional Tuscan style- which had a harmonic delicacy with subtle colour changes and impeccably depicted figures.

When the finished work was unveiled in August 1579[8] the Florentines were unhappy with the result and there were such scathing attacks that they deeply impacted on Zuccari's reputation and future commissions.

As the principal impact on the artwork had been from dust and grime (which been deposited by smoke rising upwards from church activities) the frescoes are mostly cleaned with deionized water, which was applied in a wood-flour compress through a sheet of Japanese paper.