There is something very strange about seeing Brunelleschi’s dome out of the airplane window. Brunelleschi's Il Duomo from an airplane window Please, I just want to get off. The thought repeated monotonously through my head as our plane flew slowly over Britain. I was curled up, scrunched, and twisted in my seat. My classmate in front of me had her seat leaned down back into my knees. Cheap pasta sat cold on my tray along with a full cup of orange…something—thinking of food

L’arte non è mai finita, solo abbandonata. Those are the truest words. We lost the right to finish created works, long ago. The Fall and The Temptation, opposite of each other in the chapel, high above, reminded me of that. That is why the background of the Temptation is blank—we could no longer see divine beauty. But still, we remain somehow close to it: the angel casting out Adam and Eve said that much. Massacio's Brancacci Chapel (1425-27) “You’re at the feet of your ma

I swayed on the bench, hunching forward to stare at the plain, sand-colored wood floor. Nausea both from exhaustion of having gotten lost last night—not getting to our apartments till one in the morning—and from rushing to hurry to the Vatican—that would not even let us in properly (it is a pdf, guard!)—were taking their toll. Fifteen of us crowded the white bench before the staircase to the chapel. The most infamous one. The Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel (15

My brain was murdered in that room. I had been looking forward to this most, since I missed the second visit to the Uffizi Gallery because of that stupid illness. Smiling at the banner above our heads, covering the construction and restoration of the front of one of the Medici’s seven old villas in Florence, I swung side to side, waiting for two more classmates to join us. Gozzoli's Chapel of the Magi (1459-1463) We pushed ourselves up a flight of stairs. Then another set.

A poem and a prayer, inspired as I sat crying over the meaning of Michelangelo's lesser known pieta, featuring a portrait of himself holding the body of Christ.