The transition from the 1st school of Pergamon existential realism to the melodramatic spectacles of the Laocoon and Athena Frieze on the Altar of Zeus reflects a profound rush to literary sources and allegory utilizing morbidly expressive allegory and baroque motion to detail archetypal scenes of cosmic import.
This transition also communicates a deepening pessimistic view among the Pergamene about their human agency and their increased reliance on deux ex machina in controlling an increasingly bleak reality.
Michelangelo remarkable fresco series in the Vatican’s Sistine chapel are completely literary and therefore allegorical exercises.
The ceiling retells the story of Genesis seen through the ebb and flow of human agency and a revival of neoclassical Pergamene types reflective of the Pergamene 1st school. The altar wall depicts Revelation’s Last Judgement utilizing 2nd school of Pergamene types painted in what will later be recognized as a manneristic confusion of baroque motion and morbid expression, thus reflecting deep pessimism about human agency and an utter dependency on deux ex machina.