Musings of Priscilla

Hey everyone!

Got back from my short trip in London and Rome. Well,  I had the great opportunity to cycle around Rome and eventually ended up in a park. It was just lovely to have this change of environment and pace of living.  Sitting on the grass all relaxed, having wine and great pizza with my sister and her friends.
We  took in a lot more sights, starting at the Vatican City. It was very picturesque, the Sistine Chapel which Michelangelo painted was just breathtaking. I was awed at its magnificence , grandeur and most of all , Michelangelo’s’ brilliance.

I felt that the Vatican was very extravagant , but I just couldn’t help admiring all the artistry. I managed to see the Room of Constantine which was designed to be used for receptions and official ceremonies. I felt that compared with Raphael, Michaelangelo beat him hands down. The pictures drawn by Michelangelo were very vivid and really potrays the message very well. For example, in the Sistine Chapel, what struck me the most was the fresco of The Last Judgement. When I first saw it , I was dumbfounded, just the colors are enough to make you stand in awe.
Here’s a lil funny part of the fresco.

The Last Judgment was an object of a heavy dispute between Cardinal Carafa and Michelangelo: the artist was accused of immorality and intolerable obscenity, having depicted naked figures, with genitals in evidence, inside the most important church of Christianity. When the Pope’s own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, said “it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully,” and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather “for the public baths and taverns,” Michelangelo worked the Cesena’s face into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld  with Donkey ears {i.e.foolishness} while his nudity is covered by a coiled snake. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain.

In the painting, Michelangelo does a self portrait depicting himself as St. Bartholomew after he had been flayed (skinned alive). This is reflective of the feelings of contempt Michelangelo had for being commissioned to paint “The Last Judgement”.The figure of St. Bartholomew depicts the satirist and erotic writer Pietro Aretino who had tried to extort a valuable drawing from Michelangelo. He holds the painter’s flayed skin as a symbol of attempted victimization.

Talk about getting about painting with a vengeance ! To me, it looked like the snake is actually biting his *you-know-where*. I think that does show why you should not offend anyone in the creative industry, most of all painters.

Later I had a chance to go to St Peter’s Basillica, which took 120 years to finish ! It was so huge and quite frankly a tad bit too extravagant for my liking. Inside St Peter’s Basillica, the ceiling is covered with gold tiles. The altar was huge and entirely made up of bronze. There were more than 100 marble carvings adorning the place.  I know God deserves the biggest offering, but this reminded me of Solomon’s temple from the Bible which must have had been much bigger than this.

Well, that’s all for the moment, more about my exciting trip coming soon ! Check out the blog for more updates !