AbstractConsidered here will be the question of how the hostility of the clerical elite in sixteenth-century Italy to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ‘Last Judgment’ may be explained. The problem arose from the many nude figures that the fresco contained. Why was nudity in Church so unpopular with the clerical elite in 1541 and for sixty years afterwards, bearing in mind that it had not raised an outcry in roughly similar circumstances earlier in the century? No real answers to these questions are to be found either in the Trent Decree on sacred images, or in the work of such sixteenth-century critics as Gilio da Fabriano. This study aims to shed more light on the matter. Some help is forthcoming from modern writers like Romeo de Maio and Bernardine Barnes. They emphasize the leading role of the ‘Theatine’ prelates, but without exposing the basic assumptions on which the ‘Theatine’ attitude depends. These basic assumptions can be probed to assess whether the objection was only to nudity in sacred spaces or ...