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Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
-Henry Miller
I sit on the balcony of our junior suite here in Rome with a glass of wine in one hand and my journal open on my lap to refer to as I have started the familiar and now comforting click clacking on my laptop to blog to you all. Do you know what I've done in the last two days (yes, for the first time, I'm going to combine two days into one blog posting)?
I sit here in 2011, hundreds of years, more than a few centries after these artists, these protijays, were alive creating their works and masterpieces. I am sitting here and yet in the last two days, I have seen their works. I have sometimes even touched their works. I have been moved to tears by their works.
In the last two days, I've seen the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museum, Michelangleo's Pieta, St. Peters Square and Basilica, and the Borghese Palace complete with works of Caravaggio, Bernini, and Raphel.
And I am speechless.
Just...speechless.
And there's no other word for it.
We took all Context tours (three all together) and I could go into long detail for hours on here to tell you everything I saw, experienced and felt. I took notes at every spot we visited, like the good little student that I am, wanting to soak in and remember everything and every piece of history and story and work of art that was talked about.
I wanted to take a piece of everything that I was moved by with me so that I can show you all that it is in fact all it's cracked up to be.
And more.
And I can tell you that when I stood at the end of the church this morning, with no tour guide telling me anything about what I was seeing or should be taking in-when I planted my feet at the end of the Sistine Chapel and looked up at the one of the greatest pieces of art known to humankind, I started to cry. Never, ever, have I ever been moved by a piece of art so much that I cried. Nor have I ever felt that I could have laid down in the middle of a floor and looked at every single section of the ceiling (which took him only four years to paint) and the back wall where Michelangelo was later commisioned to paint The Last Judgement for hours upon end.
I could have stayed in the Borghese Palace and stared at Bernini's sculputures--whether it was the portrait sculpture of Napoleon's wife, the marble statue of Apollo and Daphne, Pluto's kidnapping of Persephone--for forever.
I could have stood and studied the Sacred and Profane Love painting by Titian for a lifetime. Ruben's works. Lavinia Fontana's paintings (one of the only women who gained any recognition back then as an artist). Jacopo Bassano's Last Supper. Caravaggio's David.
These geniuses. Artists. Painters. Sculptures. Composers. Playwrights. Architects. Costumers.
These masterminds of the yesterday centuries and I got to see their works, imagine their ideas, practically envision and feel their paintbrushes filled with paints as they began to placed the color onto, later, what I would be seeing.
My God.
If there has been anything or anyone to make me truly, perhaps for the first time, as Henry Miller stated, make me feel the significance of life, it was these people. And their works.
And my tears.
Speechless, I tell you. Speechless.
Love love,
Adrienne
-Henry Miller
I sit on the balcony of our junior suite here in Rome with a glass of wine in one hand and my journal open on my lap to refer to as I have started the familiar and now comforting click clacking on my laptop to blog to you all. Do you know what I've done in the last two days (yes, for the first time, I'm going to combine two days into one blog posting)?
I sit here in 2011, hundreds of years, more than a few centries after these artists, these protijays, were alive creating their works and masterpieces. I am sitting here and yet in the last two days, I have seen their works. I have sometimes even touched their works. I have been moved to tears by their works.
In the last two days, I've seen the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museum, Michelangleo's Pieta, St. Peters Square and Basilica, and the Borghese Palace complete with works of Caravaggio, Bernini, and Raphel.
And I am speechless.
Just...speechless.
And there's no other word for it.
We took all Context tours (three all together) and I could go into long detail for hours on here to tell you everything I saw, experienced and felt. I took notes at every spot we visited, like the good little student that I am, wanting to soak in and remember everything and every piece of history and story and work of art that was talked about.
I wanted to take a piece of everything that I was moved by with me so that I can show you all that it is in fact all it's cracked up to be.
And more.
And I can tell you that when I stood at the end of the church this morning, with no tour guide telling me anything about what I was seeing or should be taking in-when I planted my feet at the end of the Sistine Chapel and looked up at the one of the greatest pieces of art known to humankind, I started to cry. Never, ever, have I ever been moved by a piece of art so much that I cried. Nor have I ever felt that I could have laid down in the middle of a floor and looked at every single section of the ceiling (which took him only four years to paint) and the back wall where Michelangelo was later commisioned to paint The Last Judgement for hours upon end.
I could have stayed in the Borghese Palace and stared at Bernini's sculputures--whether it was the portrait sculpture of Napoleon's wife, the marble statue of Apollo and Daphne, Pluto's kidnapping of Persephone--for forever.
I could have stood and studied the Sacred and Profane Love painting by Titian for a lifetime. Ruben's works. Lavinia Fontana's paintings (one of the only women who gained any recognition back then as an artist). Jacopo Bassano's Last Supper. Caravaggio's David.
These geniuses. Artists. Painters. Sculptures. Composers. Playwrights. Architects. Costumers.
These masterminds of the yesterday centuries and I got to see their works, imagine their ideas, practically envision and feel their paintbrushes filled with paints as they began to placed the color onto, later, what I would be seeing.
My God.
If there has been anything or anyone to make me truly, perhaps for the first time, as Henry Miller stated, make me feel the significance of life, it was these people. And their works.
And my tears.
Speechless, I tell you. Speechless.
Love love,
Adrienne
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