Remembering Rome: The Sistine Chapel
Sometime ago I visited for the first time the capital of Italy, Rome. I remember that I was very impressed by the old and beautiful aspect of the ancient city and that I wanted to see as much as I could from it.
I was in Rome with some of my university friends and we organised our time and visiting places ahead while we were still in Romania pointing out on a touristic map of the city the spots which were interesting for us.
Since we were studying art and history of art at that time, our goal was to have a direct experience with all of the artworks we’ve learned about and which were to be seen in Rome.
In regards to that, on our visiting list were places like :
- The Sistine Chapel
- The Vatican Museum
- The Saint Peter Basilica
- The Colosseum
- The Forum Romanum
- Villa de Medici
- The Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art
The Sistine Chapel, a visiting place for every culture lover
While visiting Vatican, one of my favorite places was the Sistine Chapel. I’ve been learning and studying about it since high school hand I really wanted to see it one day because I was always inspired and impressed by Michelangelo’s story and connection with his works especially after I read the book written by Irving Stone and named “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, a biographical novel of the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, the main painter of the chapel.
I found the Sistine Chapel in Vatican being situated to the right side of the Saint Peter’s Basilica. There were lots of people wanting to enter inside the Chapel being known all over the world due to Michelangelo’s mural paintings.
The mural paintings of the Chapel's ceiling
Before I stepped in the Sistine Chapel I was getting pretty nervous about it because I was about to encounter the paintings of the so famous and talented artist. I got in and there were so many people in the chapel, but my eyes were immediately caught by the tall large ceiling. Everything was so strongly colorful.
I didn’t knew where to look first. The security men were trying to keep the visitors quite and try to stop them from taking photos of the building because photographing was forbidden.
Recognizing the painted scenes of the chapel
Together with my friends I was trying to recognise some of the scenes we knew about. Soon we discovered the main and most well known fragment of the entire painting: “The creation of Adam” from “The making of the world”. Other recognizable scenes followed in front of our eyes such as “The Creation of Eve”, “The Removal from Heaven”, “Noah’s Sacrifice”, “The Flood”. As I said, the colors were very saturated, it was like the painting was finished today.
After some time, our view went a little bit down to the rectangular fields where we tried to look for the representations of the prophets and recognize them. The ones that stood out were the Prophet Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah.
The Last Judgment
Because at first we entered from a door belonging to the eastern wall where the altar is found and got caught by the ceiling without turning over, at a certain point we turned and faced the tall wall above the altar and got even more impressed by Michelangelo’s huge mural painting with the subject of “The Last Judgment”.
The painter represented figures and scenes full of horror that were descripting The Second Coming Of Christ and The Eternal Judgment by God for all humanity. In comparison with all of the other paintings done by the italian renaissance artists, this one stood out due to the light blue color of the background in which the biblical characters were placed symbolizing probably the Heaven.
Michelangelo had a specific way of drawing and painting its figures which was visible and also criticized in that period consisting in a nude and muscular depiction of the bodies. Likewise he portrayed himself as a few of the characters, an example being the image of Saint Bartholomew displaying his flayed skin.
On the other walls we got the chance to watch scenes and fragments illustrating the life of Jesus like “The Baptism of Jesus”, “The Temptation of Jesus”, “Sermon on the Mount”, but which were not made by Michelangelo, but by different italian masters, namely Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Trying to take photos even if we were not allowed
Even if taking pictures was not allowed especially with a professional camera, we still managed to take some photos of us with the high painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a memory of being here together. Oups! The pictures were not so good at all, but anyway, we tried.
