Part 2
It made me a bit sad that people glaze over hundreds of years worth of priceless art just to get to the Sistine Chapel. But, I did it too. Traveling sometimes means a tight schedule, and the Sistine Chapel was on the top of my list as well as everyone else's, so we pressed on. Thankfully, it didn't disappoint.
Michael-Angelo's Sistine Chapel is the most well known part of the Vatican Museums. It's probably as famous as the Mona Lisa and hundreds of times the size. Plus, Di Vinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa upside down, did he? I've heard that when crowds aren't as terrifying as they were Easter weekend there are actually spaces around the room to lie down and take in the view from a proper angle. It would have been nice to lie down and stare up at the heavenly art above, but the sore neck at the end of the visit was still worth the trip.
Not only was there no space to lie down, there was no space to think or move or breathe, either. The chapel, a quiet place of worship and contemplation, turned into a zoo with savage tourists blatently ignoring guards shouting "NO PHOTOS!" at the top of their lungs. Some of them didn't even have the decency (or common sense!) to turn off their flash. So, sadly, I cannot share pictures of this venture with you. All I can do is strongly recommend that you go check it out for yourself.
The difference between the ceiling of this chapel and any of the other hundreds of painted ceilings I've seen isn't necessarily apparent at first. The flashy gold, bright colors, and massive images of other painted ceilings throughout Europe sometimes elicit the "woah" that the Sistine Chapel didn't provoke right away. The other ceilings are like cheap wine that taste good going down and don't cost a fortune to buy. It's only when you take a sip of that $350 bottle that you really realize what the difference tastes like. Michael-Angelo's work stands on its own with no flashy punches. The longer I stared at the work--filled with deeper meaning than I'll ever know--the more it came to life. Yes, the Renaissance painters mastered perspective and therefore the illusion of depth, but what I'm talking about is of a higher level. Each figure on the ceiling stood out without any help of vanishing points or tricks of scale; they just came alive and stood apart from the background. It really as magnificent as everyone says.
It made me a bit sad that people glaze over hundreds of years worth of priceless art just to get to the Sistine Chapel. But, I did it too. Traveling sometimes means a tight schedule, and the Sistine Chapel was on the top of my list as well as everyone else's, so we pressed on. Thankfully, it didn't disappoint.
Michael-Angelo's Sistine Chapel is the most well known part of the Vatican Museums. It's probably as famous as the Mona Lisa and hundreds of times the size. Plus, Di Vinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa upside down, did he? I've heard that when crowds aren't as terrifying as they were Easter weekend there are actually spaces around the room to lie down and take in the view from a proper angle. It would have been nice to lie down and stare up at the heavenly art above, but the sore neck at the end of the visit was still worth the trip.
Not only was there no space to lie down, there was no space to think or move or breathe, either. The chapel, a quiet place of worship and contemplation, turned into a zoo with savage tourists blatently ignoring guards shouting "NO PHOTOS!" at the top of their lungs. Some of them didn't even have the decency (or common sense!) to turn off their flash. So, sadly, I cannot share pictures of this venture with you. All I can do is strongly recommend that you go check it out for yourself.
The difference between the ceiling of this chapel and any of the other hundreds of painted ceilings I've seen isn't necessarily apparent at first. The flashy gold, bright colors, and massive images of other painted ceilings throughout Europe sometimes elicit the "woah" that the Sistine Chapel didn't provoke right away. The other ceilings are like cheap wine that taste good going down and don't cost a fortune to buy. It's only when you take a sip of that $350 bottle that you really realize what the difference tastes like. Michael-Angelo's work stands on its own with no flashy punches. The longer I stared at the work--filled with deeper meaning than I'll ever know--the more it came to life. Yes, the Renaissance painters mastered perspective and therefore the illusion of depth, but what I'm talking about is of a higher level. Each figure on the ceiling stood out without any help of vanishing points or tricks of scale; they just came alive and stood apart from the background. It really as magnificent as everyone says.