Sistine Chapel

Editor's note: Contains no pictures (I'm a good tourist... mostly) and ramblings. Very skipable. 

Imagine a regular sized chapel, with a regular sized ceiling and a regular sized altar. Now, cover every inch of that ceiling, all 5900 square feet, with scenes from Genesis, cover the walls with the prophets and the apostles, and cover that plain wall behind the regular altar with a huge, busy painting of the Last Judgement, so full of characters that there's no one easy place to let your eye rest. Now, cram that room full of tourists, tour guides and tour groups, plus a couple of security members, and you've got the Sistine Chapel.

I would almost pay (more) money to be able to have time to peruse the entirety of Michelangelo's chapel, without being jostled away to crane my neck up at the ceiling from a corner. Still, despite the inconvenience of other people (oh other people, how shall I ever learn to deal with you?), you really can't help being impressed by the work. Or I can't. Though you might be even more impressed if you didn't know too much about human history in general, like the girl who sat with her friends on a bench by the exit, gazing up in wonder and saying, in English, of course, "Can you imagine what it would be like to discover this?"

Oh, dear.

But then, I can pretend she was being more profound than intended. Michelangelo, when he scultped, said that he didn't create a sculpture so much as he freed what God had already put there. So to be in Michelangelo's head, as he designed the figures and painted them for four long years around the room, would have been something amazing beyond my comprehension. I don't understand artists. I could never have been this creative. It's easy enough to throw in a joke here to make things less serious (because Michelangelo totally had an awesome sense of humor), but save the link-clicking until we're done and then you can laugh away. Preserve the moment, friends.

Sarai and I had lost Christine in the Vatican museums as Sarai had gone back to look again at Raphael's School of Athens and The Disputa, so we swam through the crowds to some place that we could use Rick Steves' guidance to making sense of the massive artwork all around us. We traded the book back and forth and found the Creation of Adam- oddly difficult to find, seeing how it's so iconic and everything- and remarked on the missing plaster and all sorts of interesting things. But what captivated me, once I had flipped a few pages ahead, was the paragraphs on the Last Judgment. I actually left the spot Sarai and I had been standing and almost ran over to the metal screen that separates the back of the chapel from the altar.

The Last Judgement was painted behind the altar twenty-three years after the rest of the chapel. And the rest of the chapel is quite cheery in comparison, playing up the humanist themes of the early Renaissance. Now, in 1541, the Protestant Reformation has started to take its toll and Michelangelo wasn't so optimistic. What drew me to the gate was a passive phrase of Rick Steves', that Christ is coming in wrath with his hand raised to smite the wicked, and that he looks almost happy to be doling out his judgement. No, I thought. People don't paint my Jesus like that. Such a ridiculous suggestion, that Christ would come with glee in his wrath, if there was wrath at all.

You know, it's a different Jesus.

And the Last Judgement is enthralling. There are sinners and demons, angels and righetous ghosts. There's Mary and there's Charon. Even heaven doesn't look too appealing- it's all storm clouds and trumpets. I'm sure you've seen the picture of the condemned man, sitting on his cloud with his hands over his face, leaving one eye uncovered to stare at you in despair. I'd think the pope was being melodramatic when he said upon seeing the painting, "Lord, charge me not with my sins when thou shalt come on the day of judgement!" but, honestly, I could be a little worried about my salvation myself, and this just from looking at pigments on a wall.

And poor Michelangelo! I wouldn't have wanted to be in his head to discover this part of the chapel. I couldn't have painted this and I wouldn't want to be around in a time that inspired a painting such as this. There's a saint coming up to Christ, holding the sagging skin of a melted man, which is said to be Michelangelo's self-portrait. I've said the painting is enthralling- given the chance, it entrances you and draws you in, the kind of work that you have to be drawn out of with a shiver.

Makes you think maybe we shouldn't have split the church in the first place.