The Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel like I've never seen it before!

On September 30th Liz Lev directed us on a tour through the Vatican Museums.  Though I had been to the museum many times before, I never truly appreciated the history and development of Michelangelo's craft and theological mindset when sculpting and painting.  We began in the Etruscan room with significant B.C. sarcophagi with Old Testament figures.  Jonah was a hugely influential figure in the early Christian church.  They believed he was a pre-figure of Christ.  He was in the belly of the whale for 3 days.  Christ was in the tomb for 3 days.  He was expelled onto Ninevah and the people repented.  Christ was resurrected from the dead and people believed.  So, when we began there it was much easier to see how the figure of Jonah became the largest figure painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Also, we begin to see what a tremendous artistic genius Michelangelo was and how it helped develop the talent and the abilities of other painters such as Raphael.  When Raphael was doing his work on the Borgia apartments, Michelangelo was sculpting and painting for St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.  When he noted the skill and expertise of Michelangelo he knew he had to step up a notch or two and improve his abilities.  His earlier work is significantly different than his later pieces simply because he now had competition for commissions and knew that it would be difficult to match the genius of Michelangelo.

Raphael's work reveals the power of light.  In the Stanza do Elidoro he paints with such beauty and utilizes four kinds of light in his work.  It's amazing to see the transition from a great painter to an
exceptional one.  In his piece, with St. Leo the Great doing battle with Attila the Hun Raphael uses stunning imagery and incorporates even the Colosseum's image in the background.  You can see the battle between evil and good, light and darkness on opposite sides of the piece.  The power of evil is depicted in the muscular stance of the horse while the power and light from Leo is coming from the angels and heaven above.

Of course the Sistine Chapel was a highlight at the end of our tour but, sadly, there were so many

people and noise and guards yelling, "Silenzio, Silenzio" that it deflates the experience a bit.  I can just imagine the College of Cardinals gathered in that prayerful space discerning the next pope.  If there is anyplace where heaven touches earth it certainly is in this magnificent depiction of the creation of man, the Last Judgment and the story of the flood.  Ironically Michelangelo was commissioned to paint Christ and the twelve apostles.  Being the over-achiever that he was, he ended up painting over 300 figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  It took him four years to complete the work which has been left to humanity as a gift to the achievement of what God can accomplish through his greatest creation.