In the famous XVI century Sermones de Ludo  the card that follows the Judgment in the triumphal order, the Angel, is “Justice”.  In fact it is through Justice, the correct evaluation of the actions of men, that the archangel Michael will separate the chosen from the damned.
In the Five hundred documents this triumph is indifferently called Angel, Angiolo, Agnolo, terms to which the Aretino, in the 1543 Le Carte Parlanti  (Speaking Cards), adds the Trumpets.
In fact, as described in the evangelical passage by Matthew (24, 30-31), it is with such an instrument that the arrival of the Child of the man who will preannounce the final Judgment is announced: “Then the sign of the Child of the man will appear in the sky and all the tribes of the earth will strike their breasts and will see the Child of the man coming on the clouds in the sky with great power and glory. He will send his angels which, with a powerful trumpet sound, will assemble his chosen from the four winds, from one extremity to the other of the skies”.
In the Minchiate of Florence (figure 1 - Minchiata Poverone, Florence, XVIII century) the Latin locution that we find in Virgil (Aeneid, III, 121) Fama Volat (Fame has wings) and that connotes  the card, expresses that the fame (news) of this event will suddenly be heard and lived by all the people.
In almost all civilizations the sound of the trumpet, strong and powerful, was used on the occasion of sacred ceremonies, but also in profane and military ones, since it was thought to join together the sky and the earth in a common celebration.
The angel of Judgment is Michael, the chief Archangel, considered the most famous and inscrutable. His name Michael – which is Jewish - means “Who is like God?”, almost a challenge launched at Lucifer. The Christian Catholic tradition reserved him a famous prayer in which short version was written: “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; ut non pereamus in tremendo iudicio” (St. Michael Archangel, defend us in battle; so that we don’t perish in the awful judgment).
Michael weighs the actions of men on the occasion of the Universal Judgment with scales, which nevertheless do not  appear in the tarot cards, since it is the attribute of Justice that immediately follows the Judgement.
The idea that the good and evil actions of a dead person are verified in scales, existed in Egypt from the III-II century  B. C. On the occasion of a judgment regarding a dead person, the dead god Anubis, jackal headed, weighs the heart of the dead with Maat (Justice) symbolised by a pen.
In the Old Testament weighing with scales appears in different situations including the most famous regarding the prophet Daniel: during a night time banquet of Balthazar (Deuteronomy 5) the frightful word Tekel appeared on a wall, which according to the prophet means: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting”.
The concept of weighing souls after death appears in Christianity for the first time in a Jewish-Christian II century writing, in the so-called Testament of Abram. During his trip in the world of death, he sees an angel that holds up scales, with which good and bad works are weighed by divine justice.
From that moment the weighing of the souls will become a constant in the descriptive repertoire  to the figurative representations of the XII century, and it is Michael the angel who is called to develop such a function, occupying the central position, sometimes under the Judge of the world, wearing armour and with the scales and sword in his hands (figure 2 - Hans Memlinc, The Final Judgment, Pomorskie Museum, Danzig).     
The usual iconography of the Judgment in  religious art shows, in addition to what has been described above, the dead leaving the tombs naked. Nudity means that their actions will be weighed without other elements intervening to favour or to disadvantage the evaluation: for sovereigns, popes, nobles, cardinals, rich or poor, it won't be clothing and  social class that will make the balance of Divine Justice lean to one side or  the other, but only committed actions.
Usually the representations of Judgment are more complex than those in tarots, obviously because of the scarce available space.
Other composing elements are in fact represented by the ascent to the sky of the blessed ones and by the descent into hell of the damned, and it is possible sometimes to find the scene of the final Judgment combined with that of the vision of hell, as represented by Orcagna in the Cemetery in Pisa (figure 3 - Carlo Lasinio, The Universal Judgment and Hell, sec. XVIII, etching from the fresco of the Cemetery in Pisa).
In the Visconti Sforza Tarots of Modrone, the upper part of the card has two angels with trumpets while in the underlying part the corpses get up from graves (figure 4). The writing “surgite to iudicium” (rise again for judgment), set immediately on the point of the wings of the angels, indicates  what it is going to happen. The presence of two angels also is usual in  pictorial art, for instance in the fresco The Resurrection of the flesh by Luca Signorelli (figure 5 - Chapel of St. Brizio, Cathedral of Orvieto) realized in 1499.
In the card a tower with a bell-tower set inside expresses the power-fortitude of the Mystical Church to which man must turn so as to not to fall into sin, since the day of Judgment will happen to everybody and  the divine power will evaluate everybody’s actions. The picture of the structure, with the upper part of the bell tower set in the top part of the card in the sky and the fortress part well rooted on earth, denotes the function of the Church to mediate or being like a bridge between God and men.
Sometimes it is possible to find the presence of the ecclesia or of the synagogue or of both as complementary themes in the Judgment visions since IX century.
Centrally, in the inferior part of the card, a man half - length incoming into the earth or outgoing from it, represents the article of faith regarding the concept of "Christ Descending to the Limbo", a recurrent image in particular way in the oriental iconographic representations (Byzantium) of the Judgment together with the Etimasia, that is the empty throne of Jesus prepared from the day of the Ascension on which are set the cross and the book.
The character can be identified in fact at the same time with Christ in the action of going down to the Limbo or with one some characters rising up from the Limbo.
Even if not expressly mentioned in the Sacred Writings, Christ’s descent to the Limbo after death had a notable charm on primitive Church becoming an article of faith in the IV century (figure 6 - Andrea Mantegna, Descent to the Limbo, table, 1492).  Really, it was supposed that the just who resided down there waiting for the redemption, having lived and being dead before the revelation, they had also to rise in the day of the Judgment.
The episode appears for the first time narrated in the Apocryphal Gospel by Nycodeme (V century) where it is written: “the bronze doors were broken…and all the corpses that were tied up were freed from their chains…and the king of the glory entered”. The theological dissertations undertaken around such matter were different and of great importance concerning about the nature of Christ during his descent, that means in the form of spirit (before the resurrection) or in physical form (after the resurrection) as represented in the card which is object of this examination if we identify the half - length man painted with the Christ.
The diffusion of the descent to the Limbo in Occident happened through the Speculum Humanae Salvationis by Vincenzo of Beauvais and the Legenda Aurea by Jacopo from Varagine. Dante places the Limbo in the first circle of Hell. The Limbo in fact had been identified by the first Fathers of the Church in a region set at the borders of hell, which is its edge, word that in Latin is expressed with the term Limbus.
The concomitant representation of the Judgment in its classical representation and of the descent to the Limbo is not unusual in the medieval Christian art:  we can find it for instance in a mosaic (figure 7) on the counter façade of the Cathedral in Torcello (XII century) where a gigantic Anastasi (Descent to the Limbo) (figure 8 / figure 9 - Details) is placed above the Universal Judgment.
In the New York Visconti Tarots deck  there are often two musician angels and the corpses called to awaken are set inside a sarcophagus - tub (figure 10). The whole scene is overhung by God the Father who is holding a sword in his hand: it is connected to the story of the apocalypse (19,17), in which the sovereign Christ is represented with a sword that comes out of his right ear (a lily comes out from his left one) according to the words  “a sharp sword comes out of his mouth to strike people”. (See the iconological essay The World). In the hands of God the sword becomes the realisation of the message of Christ “Whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 56,62) meaning that divine anger will be awful, because “With the same measure you use to measure, you will be measured" (Matthew 7,12).
The representation of the Judgment that we find in the Charles VI Tarots, with two angels playing the trumpet and with the corpses that are coming out of their graves (figure 11) will become a constant, with the presence of just one Angel, in all the following reproductions of this triumph (figure 12 - Vieville Tarot, XVII century / figure 13 - Parisian Tarot by anonymous, beginning XVII century). In the Vieville Tarot, as in the angels of the fresco by Signorelli and as it will also appear in other decks of this triumph, the banner of the risen Christ is suspended from the trumpet meaning that “it is the day of the Lord” (figure 14 - Luca Signorelli, Lamentation on the Dead Christ, Oil on board, detail. Diocesan Museum, Cortona).
It should be said that in the Bolognese Tarocchino the Judgment card, called L’Angelo (The Angel), is the highest in the order of triumphs (figure 15 - Tarocchino Al Leone, 1770).