Resurrection of the Dead

This is a fragment from a drawing I am working on. I really, really hate pasting several scans together into a large piece, but for now there's no way around it. Anyway, it will get some colour and all later on. Some of the dead appear as pretty ladies, others are skeletons who still have to wait for God to give them a warm coat of flesh before their ascent.

The inspiration came from this fresco by Luca Signorelli (1445-1523). The way the squeaky-clean dead appear from the ground almost has a pop art quality. The first time I spotted it was on the cover of one of Piero Camporesi's books, La carne impassibile (in a Dutch translation). It may not be available in English, but it is a wonderful book about everything from the perfume industry to self-immolation to (pseudo-)cannibalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.