Two and a half years ago, immediately after the election of
Trump, I was walking my dog and commiserating with a neighbor about the state
of things when she said flatly, “You know, we’re not Greece, we’re Rome.” So I should have been prepared to discover our
American roots when we traveled this week to visit my stepdaughter who is
doing her final semester abroad in Florence.
But, as we crossed the Atlantic for only the second time in my life (my
grandmother brought my cousin and me to Europe when she and I were twelve), I
was thinking more about exchange rates and not having time to grade midterms
during spring vacation than being prepared to be immersed in the history of the
Roman Empire – and the Church – and the art that the latter spawned – art that opened
the door, or at least marked that the door was opening, to a new broad humanism
that has culminated in a vast human awakening that is ongoing and that has
contributed to our being able to be aware that this progression is intimately
related to inhuman levels of oppression.
Let me start in the middle of the story. We arrived Saturday morning after a largely sleepless
and significantly shortened Friday night flight. After two days getting oriented to Florence
and the Medici, who had a stranglehold on political power and the Papacy and
oversaw the transition from the middle ages to the Renaissance, we traveled to
Rome on Tuesday. Flying along at 250
km/hour on tracks that were as smooth as butter, we were hurtled back into the
hurly burly days of Rome, starting with the Coliseum.
Walking through a metal detector with a crowd of people to
get into the Coliseum felt not unlike entering our local baseball or football
stadium on game day. Once inside, this
edifice, which I had seen on the first trip, came to life this time in a
different way. Depictions of it in its
glory days helped me realize that it was closer in appearance and size to our
current arenas (the name arena derives from the Latin word for sand – which was
used to cover the floor of the area that the gladiators fought on - according to the younger stepdaughter - in order to
soak up the blood). The guidebook claims
that the best guess about the Coliseum’s capacity was about 60,000 spectators and that it
was largely covered in an awning. Contrary to its’ current appearance, in
antiquity it was symmetrical, so it looked very much from the outside like the
round space ship looking stadia that were so fashionable in the US in the
1970s. That said, it was slightly oval in shape
and the fighting space was perhaps a bit smaller – so it may have felt more
intimate – like a basketball arena with many more fans than fit into any of those spaces. Oh, and one other difference, there was a prison outside in which the captive gladiators trained.
We walked up from the Coliseum to the Palatine
Hill, the place where the Emperors had their palace (which, along with palazzo,
palatial, etc. is derived from the word Palatine - as we speculated - might be the name of the emperor in the Star Wars series). To do this we had to take a left turn before
going to the forum. When I was here
before, we just went straight to the forum which, then as now, was
disappointing – more about that in a moment.
We turned left because I wanted to see the Circus Maximus, which I had
not seen before. This huge race track
seated 200,000 fans in the day – double what the largest football stadia hold –
close to the numbers that see the Kentucky Derby or the Indianapolis 500. If you saw Ben Hur as a kid, this is where
that took place. What I was unprepared
for was the acreage (literally) of land we needed to cross that had been the
footprint of the Augustinian palace.
Huge. And now largely vacant
earth with some brick walls poking their heads up. In the middle of the building was a large space for exercising horses, as well as many enclosed atria with gardens.
A sign caught my eye.
It stated that the Augustinian palace was purposely small (the acres I
was treading across) to avoid the appearance of ostentation compared to the
palaces of others at the time. But after the fire,
Nero tore down tons of fire damaged tenements below the Palatine to expand the size of the palace
to suit his vision of the empire (he also erected a 210 foot statue of
himself). Sated by the mere size of the
Augustinian palace, we proceeded to the Forum.
There’s not much left standing here, and what is standing is not of much
interest because the things that mattered here – the stuff that took place within the Senate – like Caesar stating “Et tu, Brute” – had been replaced when the
rulers transitioned from a representative form of government – with Senators –
to one with a supreme and unquestioned leader – the emperor. (Comparisons with our own recent history of
Senators (and Congressmen) failing to check our leader were hard for me to
avoid making).
From the Forum, we walked up the hill, taking in one of my
favorite spots from last trip, the Pantheon.
We learned that this is the only ancient building in Rome that has
remained intact from inception in part because it was converted to a church and
the Popes funneled money into maintaining it through the middle ages. I also appreciated that they did this for another reason – since it is a church, there was no admission charged to go
inside and marvel at the architecture. Hadrian
built the church and, according to the signage, not only was it an engineering
marvel in its day, but that with our current tools, it would still be a
difficult building to erect. I have
always appreciated that the dome, if turned upside down, would just fit into
the bottom space, making the room both circular but also oddly spherical. This, then, becomes a place to worship all
the gods, each of whom has their niche in a democratic space – though presumably
Saturn had the place of honor opposite the entry where the altar now sits, with
various statues of saints and portraits of the Christ story occupying the
niches.
Walking further up the hill, we sprinted through the Vatican
museum to immerse ourselves in the Sistine Chapel (the link is to the Vatican Museum's website - not only were we not allowed to take pictures, a snap shot could, in no way, do it justice). When last I saw Michelangelo’s masterpiece,
it was dark and had an almost sinister feel to it. After the relatively recent cleaning, the
colors are bright and the palette is more that of Easter eggs than Lent. Pastels dominate – but there is still plenty
of sinister feeling to the work as a whole.
We listened to three audio descriptions of the frescoes. The first clarified that the frescoes done
before Michelangelo that line the walls are intended to connect the story of
Christ’s life with that of Moses – essentially clarifying that Jesus was the
second great prophet of the Jews. There
are six panels on the left of the altar and six to the right – and each panel
on the left, telling a story of Moses, has a corresponding story on the right –
with a story of Jesus – including Jesus handing the keys of the kingdom to
Peter – the first Pope – who then hands those keys down through the successive
Popes to the current one.
It was here that my art history and history appreciation
began to sprout. Art was intended, it
dawned on me, to tell a story – one that “worked” not just for the priest and
noble class – the class that could read and write - who ordered the artists to
create it for themselves, but also for the rest of humanity – the illiterate
class that did the muscle work. They needed a pictographic representation of the stories that were binding them to the religion. Even here, where the commoner would not, until current times, be allowed, the pictures supported the stories that the priests were telling. The common man, though, who worshiped and worked for and with the
priestly and noble classes also built the palaces and the stadia and the churches
– as well as the homes and aqueducts and roads – and fought for
the rulers to build the nations that would sustain them all.
The artists – like the priests – though drawn at first from the
higher class – advanced based on their skills – they were a meritocracy – and the
brightest lights – Michelangelo and Da Vinci – ended up at the top of the
heap. And there they did the work of the
priestly class, who at this point were also the noble class in part because they had the economic resources to hire them - and this work was educational. On one level they were telling religious stories in pictures - the language people spoke. On another level, the were indoctrinating the masses into a narrative that interwove reverence with service to God, and therefore to church. Christ, then, became a symbol of the church – and the order that men created to promulgate Christianity, but also to pass on the spiritual power. The narrative
woven into the walls became a significant component of the force by which this was accomplished.
The next two narratives (to pick up my own narrative before
it gets completely dropped) were about Michelangelo’s ceiling, which was
painted when Michelangelo was in his early thirties, and then a separate description
of the Last Judgement, the fresco that dominates the wall behind the altar,
that the artist painted when he was in his sixties.
Michelangelo’s masterpieces – and there is no other word for them – tell
two very different stories – the ceiling tells old testament stories – and the
last judgement tells a story that unites the old and new testaments. The ceiling speaks to the stories it is supported
by – but tells a very different version of what it means to be human than the
stories below.
The stories on the wall, though painted in renaissance style,
are stories of the middle ages – intended to tell people how to live as
subjects of a world that is ruled by others.
The ceiling above is a true renaissance tale – one that speaks about how
to live as a subject – as a person who is privy to a creation that is divine –
the creation of the world that we live in – but also the creation of ourselves –
and the importance of celebrating that life that we live. Perhaps the central narrative of the ceiling
is the creation story. God, in what some
believe to be a self-portrait by the artist, creates the heavens and the earth,
then separates the light from the dark and, in the iconic moment, creates man –
reaching out across the void to bring the divine to life in a human form. Michelangelo also depicts the creation of
woman from man, but then the fall – with original sin leading to the expulsion
and to continued difficulties, including the covenant with Noah, but also Noah's failure to maintain himself as a godly and upright person.
The commentators point out that Michelangelo has human
observers (ignudi) throughout the ceiling noticing the failings of humanity and
their varied reactions consistently portray (at least according the commentator
I was listening to) disappointment with the human condition. Meanwhile, the countenances of the featured prophets
and Sybils are more measured – they appear to be able to take the long view.
While the ceiling also contains a pictorial representation
of the family history of Christ, giving him the required pedigree to assume the
mantel of the King of the Jews, and thus is connected with the intent of the
paintings on the side walls – the tension here is not between rulers who need
subjects who will follow them and the need to educate those subjects (and, from
a psychodynamic perspective, convince themselves that they are the rightful rulers –
and therefore suppressors – of others) – the tension is between the glorious
beings that are being depicted – this truly is a celebration of the human form
in all its variety of expression – and the failings of these potentially divine
beings.
The last Judgement, then, suggests a sort of resolution to
the tension – but it is not a stable one.
Instead it is a swirl of motion as Jesus – who now, finally, enters
Michelangelo’s piece, is transformed – on judgement day – from the loving,
caring, available person who was martyred and destroyed into the idealized
human form that is capable of judging good from bad – who uses the counsel of
the saints who surround him to cast, via the oar of Charon, the boat’s captain,
sinners into a massive and undifferentiated pit in hell and to raise those who
have lived good lives to live with him.
This intensively spinning piece revolves around the resplendent and
glowing Jesus - a representation of a
man who is functioning in a fully human and divine way simultaneously.
Perhaps most importantly, the artist in both the early but
especially the late version of the work is not taking orders from the rulers –
he is asserting himself as an interpreter of the Bible – but even more directly
– as an interpreter of creation itself.
He is functioning as a theologian – one who is independent. I think that, at just the moment when Luther
is suggesting that humans don’t need priestly or papal intercession to commune
with God, Michelangelo is articulating that in the most sacred space at the
heart of the church – the very chapel where the popes are chosen. And he is suggesting that it is not just
Peter – but also he – Michelangelo – and, perhaps by extension – every other
human – that is capable of a sort of divinity – or at the very least, reaching
out to connect with the divine and to interpret it in a way that is uniquely
his or her own.
I found it interesting that, when a critic published a list
of all the ways that the Last Judgement was inconsistent with the theology of
the day and was further upset about the extent of nudity depicted,
Michelangelo, who was still not finished with the work, depicted the critic as
being cast into hell and covered his naked body with a snake entwined about
it. When the critic complained to the
Pope about this, the Pope is reported to have responded that, because the
depiction was in the part of the fresco that depicts hell, the Pope had no
jurisdiction over that area and the depiction would stand.
I found it interesting that the description of the Last
Judgement made only passing reference to the possibility that the second self-portrait
in the two works might be the one attached to a skin that is hanging from the
hand of a figure immediately below the Christ figure. The figure holding the skin is St. Bartholomew,
who was flayed alive. This may have to
do with Michelangelo feeling martyred by having to spend four years in the
prime of his life working on a fresco at the behest of the pope when he would have
preferred to have been using his powers to sculpt – something that he felt he
was better at.
We left the Sistine Chapel and went to St. Peter’s. As we were entering, I overheard a group from
the States saying, “What is it that we are seeing here?” The professor in me kicked into gear and I
explained that this was the church that was built above the place where Peter,
the first Pope, was buried. It also was
the Pope’s church (I have since learned this isn’t quite accurate, but it is
the church where the Pope is crowned and it is the lead Papal church or
Basilica). I explained that most of the
Popes – an unbroken line from Peter – were buried there. Soon after this, I heard a docent explain to
his audience that the Basilica, which covers a number of acres and is the
largest church in the world, can hold 60,000 people. Saint Peter’s square, in front of the church,
can hold 300,000 people. In the square, there is an obelisk that was in the area where Peter was martyred by Nero. When Peter was crucified, he chose to be crucified upside down so that this crucifixion would not be like that of Jesus. I was struck by
how similar the numbers who could fit into the spiritual spaces were to the numbers that could be held in the Coliseum
and the Circus Maximus respectively.
When the guide book noted that Constantinople, in his role as first
Christian Emperor, began a process of transitioning political power in Rome
into spiritual power, there was a sense of continuity in space as well as the political sphere.
The irony, in my mind, in this transition, is that the
political power and muscle that had oppressed Jesus and his fellow Jews would
be harnessed to proselytize him as the Christ.
When watching a documentary recently about the theologian behind the
Civil Rights movement being brought up short by a trip to India where the
locals confronted him about being a man of color who was proselytizing for a
religion that had oppressed people of color all over the globe, he responded by
working to articulate the differences between the historical Jesus and the
Christ figure who had been used as a vehicle for suppression. Consistent with this, there is perhaps no greater depiction of Jesus the man than the shrunken and very human body being held by his mother after his crucifixion - Michelangelo's Pieta that is tucked inside the front door of the Basilica. Mother and son are seemingly carved, as the reluctant wife so eloquently put it, from milk. I think that the current Pope, a Jesuit, is working to help the church reconnect with the historical Jesus. He has a lot of work to do and that work will
not, in the words of the Romero prayer, be completed in his lifetime, but it is
important work if we are to realize the vision of Jesus, Michelangelo (as I am
naively interpreting it), and many other enlightened people – including, I
think, Freud. This is a vision that
includes the dignity and worth of each individual's subjective experience of this
grand creation- one that is even more spectacular than the marvels of a place
like Rome can possibly represent.
As a mundane example of what I am talking about, I was
struck, while walking through the Uffizi today, back in Florence, by the number of people who
stopped to look out the windows– to take in the
vistas – whether the jumble of nearby rooftops – the grand vision of the nearby
Duomo – the views of the Arno River – or the vistas of the distant hills – and that
each of these images competed with and frequently surpassed the masterful canvases
and sculptures for visual interest. Arguably
some of the greatest creations of man approach the liveliness of experiencing
life as it exists in front of our eyes – if we only have the ability to see it.
More on Florence and the complications of mixing political and spiritual power here.
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