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Transcendent Moments

It was a difficult thing to think that, during a trip, I would decide that I would have a transcendent moment. It’s not exactly something you plan ahead to do. I considered quite a few options of things to do while I was here on my day off in order for something like this to happen and now I am amused to find that it is difficult to narrow the experiences down.

Santa Spirito

The Basilica di Santa Spirito was one of the first churches where I was not distracted by the decorations in gold or by the statues or frescoes but instead, where I was completely focused on the feeling of space. In the presentations during spring 2008, we heard the Basilica being compared to a forest of pillars. In that space, I felt it. When I stepped out from under the side aisles into the transept area where the ceiling expands upwards dramatically, I felt my breath catch. It was unique.

Museo Bargello

In the Museo Bargello, I had a realization about why Florence was so unique and why a person could not give up what they love. I was sitting in the main cortile sketching a statue called “Il Pescatore”. I was wrestling with it. The statue was so fantastic in that it really looked like a boy who had just captured a fish and was struggling to hold it. But I couldn’t capture it on paper. This is when I realized how attractive this place is to artists.In this city, one can go into numerous museos, palazzos, and gardens while sketching to their heart’s content. They can wrestle with these images all they like and, by doing so, improve.

Basilica di Santa Spirito

April Pierce

Il Pescatore at the Museo Bargello

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At the same time, there was a girl sitting next to me who was evidently fairing much better with her battle against Il Pescatore. It was humbling as well. I realized that no matter how I am doing I can always do better and that I should strive for it. I should not be intimidated by the people who are doing better, but be encouraged and inspired to achieve that level in whatever activity I wish.

San Miniato al Monte

The trip up to San Miniato al Monte was an experience in itself. I went up late one afternoon with some food, a drink and some water to see the church and watch the sunset. As I was walking up the long Via Michelangelo, I was struck suddenly through the trees by a view of the Duomo. It was the first view of the day and it was breathtaking. Seeing the view from the mountain was fantastic. All the pictures I had seen of the city must have been from that location. It just made me realize that I was here, in this space, looking over the city I had learned about from home. A place I had heard about, not only in University and for this course, but from other studies of art and from when I was younger in high school hearing about Michelangelo for the first time. It was excellent.

View from San Miniato al Monte

Sketching at San Minatio al Monte

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Laurentian Library

It is difficult to explain the connection I feel to books and how that connects to seeing books that were created in the ninth or tenth century. The idea of a book for me is a piece of knowledge as well as a piece of art. The information presented is the knowledge; the art is how it is presented. For regular books there are usually those two levels in accordance with literature, so the story or information is useful and how it is explained is beautiful. But for books that have been hand crafted, it feels like there is another level on the physical aesthetic side. The level of detail and pure craftsmanship accompanied by the idea that people would read these pieces of art as we do to our books that have been mass made is something special.In the Laurentian Library, we just those kinds of books. Handmade bibles and other study material was presented with the idea that regular people, that is people who are not connected to the church, would be able to go in and access this material. That was the significance of this place.

Uffizi

The Uffizi was important as a place where I ran into the Tiziano “Venus of Urbino”. The significance of the encounter with that piece is due to the art history and theory classes I had taken as a fine arts student at the SFU Burnaby campus and the study of “Olympia” by Monet. In several of the classes, they talked about Olympia and how it directly references the Venus in several ways, through the composition, the painting technique, and the symbolic references. It was strange in that it was like running into someone, an old friend, you haven’t spoken to in years, then suddenly there they are looking better than ever. That was a unique experience due to the amount of time spent away from the subject.

Uffizi Gallery outside Loggia by Piazza Signoria

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Loggia

The Loggia at Piazza Signoria was significant in reference to Bernini and his piece Pluto and Proserpina. In the Bernini sculpture we studied in Vancouver, the composition and technique of making the figures look as real as possible was a reference to the sculpture the Rape of the Sabines. This was fascinating in that it made a connection for me in terms of how I will look at the Pluto and Proserpina in the future.

Museo San Marco

In the monks’ cells in the Museo San Marco, I had an experience relating to the space and the frescoes depicting scenes from the New Testament of the Bible. While I was in the space, there was a member of the group who was curious about the significance of the pieces in relation to the story of Christ and Christianity. It had been a long time since I had related that story to anyone and it was an excellent feeling to be able to relate it afresh with images to accompany it that happened to occur in a place where the inhabitants considered it for long periods of time.

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Kind Interactions: Hill Town to Hill City

On the very first day that there were no scheduled places to visit, I decided that, even though I had not yet acquired a map, I would head into the Centro to begin my experience of the space. This was to be a trip to try and orient myself, I was not looking for any museums to visit, but rather I was treating this city how I had treated Rome: as a place to enjoy the daily movements of the people living here. The only problem with that concept is that, a lot of the people in the Centro were not locals at all and, by the afternoon I was feeling a bit disheartened.

I stumbled onto a street at that time which was sparsely inhabited and, on that street, was a bookshop. This was not your typical bookstore, it did not have a sign, it did not have any free counters, and it was basically a storage space that had been crammed with as many pieces of literature and otherwise as possible. This looked promising.Inside the shop there stood two gentlemen speaking in Italian. When I entered, they looked at me and the gentleman I took to be the owner calmly looked over and greeted me coolly. I told him in Italian that I was just looking and he returned to his conversation.This was not satisfactory. I was a bit desperate for some interaction at this point and decided to ask if there was a classics section.He looked at me. “What kind of classics? Italian classics? Foreign classics? Dante?”“Dante.” I said quickly, glad that I had taken the Italian class back at home since he spoke no English.He then showed me over to a stack of books about three feet tall all on Dante. That was disappointing. There was nothing else to latch onto there. However, it seemed that at least asking a question was a good start. As I walked around the shop he began mentioning the different sections and their organizational patterns.

Transcendent Moments

Bookstore and books

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I asked him then a question most people who work in bookstores like to be asked. “Che e tuo libro favorite?”He looked at me and slowly, a smile began to spread across his face. He then led me around the store, handing over books to me while explaining about them. He spoke very quickly, but it was fun to see someone expressing their love of writing.Since this was a used bookstore as well, the books were relatively inexpensive, usually around 4-6 euro. After looking through the books he had shown to me, I decided it might be a good idea to pick up a poetry book called “Vita d’un Uomo”. It was poetry, so at least I could appreciate the language and they were short stanzas that I was most likely able to translate. I set the book down.“Prendo questo.”He looked at it. He nodded his approval. “Tre Euro.”I looked at the price on the book. Four Euro. This was excellent.I thanked him profusely as I began getting the money out. I explained how I worked in a bookstore in Canada and how it was relaxing to be in a space such as this one. The entire time I was talking he was nodding to show he was listening while looking for something in the stacks. Once I got the money out, he pulled a book off the shelf, walked over, and placed the book on top of the one I was going to purchase.“You take this one too. You’ll like it.”My jaw dropped. This was completely unexpected. In Rome I had come to expect a kind of dismissal by most people who worked in shops around the city. But this was different. I was in a city, but the people were kind and open to conversation. Maybe it was just that gentleman, but it made me rethink the experience of this city. I wanted to find these places where the people would open up; I wanted to learn about them and what they love about the area. That was a transcendent moment.

Awe

Florence is a city of aesthetics and beauty. It’s really not that difficult to find something fantastic, like the loggia in piazza Signoria or in any of the museums such as the Uffizi or Bargello. However, to be truly in awe, to be held prisoner by something in the room and the ideas behind it is something extraordinary.For me this happened in the Museo del Duomo. The layout of the museum was interesting in that you’re walking through it, enjoying the work when, suddenly, a highlight appears. This was Michelangelo’s Pieta.The masterpiece depicts Jesus as he was just being taken off the cross by Nicodemus, Maria, and another figure, st. Mary Magdalene. Jesus’ body seems heavy as they gently remove him from the cross. Life has left him and his body is but a shell. But the stunning thing about this piece is not that it is lifelike, certainly not since it is not even finished, but that Michelangelo has captured the emotion of that moment. The sculpture was created near the end of Michelangelo’s life, he was old and it seems as though his own physical mortality was dawning on him. In a strange connection to this concept, Michelangelo modeled

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Nicodemus’ face after his own and had intended to use this sculpture for his own tomb. However, due to the bad quality of a couple of parts of the marble, he ended up destroyed Jesus’ left leg and part of Maria’s shoulder. It was still considered masterful though, and others tried to complete it, but to no avail. The sculpture was later placed in the Museo del Duomo, where it now stands.When I turned the corner and saw the sculpture there, it was a moment of glory. I had seen the sculpture in photographs and art history textbooks and then, suddenly, it was there. I stepped forward and entered the room where it stood on its own.A flood of emotions opened up. I seemed like the very air in the room was heavy with the meaning of the piece. The idea that someone could capture the moment of death in stone is something that should be considered. It was the moment of death that was there in that piece. As if the piece had a life, and then it was taken away or that it was being taken away right before your eyes.

As I stepped around it, I was captured by Nicodemus’/Michelangelo’s face. I had come into that room knowing that it was Michelangelo’s face I would be staring into, but I didn’t realize how powerful it would be. The pain depicted there was so real. That figure was there, at that scene, taking Jesus down from the cross and setting him down on the ground. He was coming to the realization that it was the Son of God that had died before his eyes.This was another level that the piece struck on. I have been attending church since I was a small child and I am reasonably familiar with the stories of the bible. I found that this really made a difference in all the places that we visited such as the Last Suppers or the paintings in the monks’ cells at Museo San Marco. But this was bigger than any of that. It brought

Michelangelo’s Pieta and Sketch

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back all the images and all the concepts that I had heard or seen through my entire life in one moment. Suddenly I was there, standing in front of the death of Christ.All of this flooded my mind. I stayed in virtually the same spot for a good two hours before I realized that I had to go. It was a moment I will never forget.

High Places

The last Transcendent moment that really stuck with me was at Giotto’s Campanile next to the Basilica Santa Maria del Fiori. It had been quite a day, I had ridden around to the Bargello Museo in the morning and spent the morning sketching and fighting with a sculpture there then I had gone to Santa Felicita and enjoyed the Deposition before picking up a few things around town and making sure I had the homework I needed done for the day. I arrived at the gate of the campanile at 6:00, supposedly an hour before it closed.The first good sign was that there was absolutely no lineup at the gate. Bizarre considering a few hours before a person could hardly move around the Duomo without running over a tourist or twenty. I got my ticket and proceeded up the stairs.

It felt strange going up stairs again. We had gone as a group up the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and up Brunelleschi’s dome at Santa Maria Del Fiori but now it felt different. I was alone going up, passing virtually nobody until the second and third level. Once I got to the second to top floor, I stopped. The sun was lowering casting beams of light over the floor of the campanile tower. Patterns raced across the walls and across the few people enjoying the space. It was refreshing. There were only about four other people in the space with me and they were in their own little corners, so I didn’t even have to see them.I sat down facing Santa Maria Novella in the distance and waited. It was fairly warm still, but not bad and I had come prepared. I had packed away a couple of slices of pizza for dinner and a bottle of water, so I sat on the campanile and watched the view. In my entire time during the field school, I had never felt so relaxed and in place. Everyone keeps talking about having the experience of being in a space. This is not just being there physically, we can do that easily. Its being so in a particular place that you

View from Campanile

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being there physically, we can do that easily. Its being so in a particular place that you become completely aware of it and there’s nothing else you’d rather think of than being right there. That was one of my moments.I considered reading or drawing while I was there and realized that it would take me away from where I was. Not that reading or drawing was going to pull me away completely, but I just wanted to enjoy the serenity of the place. I felt as if I belonged there and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. That was important to this trip. It was what I wanted. I wanted to experience this place for what it was and learn how to get the most out of interactions between people and in places. After visiting Rome, the Tuscan towns, and Florence, I feel like I am able to communicate with people better and I have been learning how to just enjoy space and the places I am in when I’m in them. That is why this was an important experience to me.