Philokalist

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.

Dr. Horner stopped us before the last one, a marble statue staring down at us. We obediently paused and circled him.

“So the room that we’re going to go into is the Chapel of the Magi. Art historians say it is the most beautiful room of the Renaissance. It’s not much bigger than this right here,” he circled his hand at the square of floor between the two flights of stairs. Spacious for a staircase, but tiny for a room.

“Maybe fifty percent more. And it was the Medici’s private chapel—they had this guy named Gozzoli, who was the top fresco painter in the late 14, early 15 century for small layers of detail--not like the Sistine Chapel—and it’s—” he widened his mouth and eyes, “eye-popping detail. And it’s winding through the Tuscan countryside to go see the birth of Jesus with the shepherds, all of the Medici family and all the other Florentines. Of course, they weren’t really there, it didn’t happen in Tuscany—but the animals and the plants and the monkeys and leopards, and it’s crazy. It’s all of creation coming, all of it, coming to see the birth of Christ. And you’ll go ‘Wait! I’ve seen that!’ since people have taken pics and printed them in books, and things like that. So, hopefully, there’s someone chill in there,” he added, making the way to the last staircase, “and we’ve come at a weird hour—which I planned—"

We finally got to the very top…

And there was simply a small door at the end of the short hall. But I could already see the gold and color bursting through the gap I saw between the guard’s head and a wooden wall. My soul stilled in preemptive respect.

Dr. Horner led us through the door. Everything around me exploded into another world.

How could something so small, so intimate, so close, glistening, living, breathing, filled with a soul stuck in a past lost to us—how could that all exist in an entire world of its own? Everything else stopped existing. I was captured and did not want to escape in this strange link between now and back then.

My cranium died. There was too much detail to make sense of, so silent but so loud, so still but so alive. As tears blurred my vision, I suddenly became painfully aware of Dr. Horner trying to record our reaction—well…my reaction.

But the chapel! I turned my head trying to avoid seeing him—I gave up the instant his phone followed my head’s turn and did not move away.

“Yeah, I know,” Dr. Horner spoke low, as if speaking normally would reawaken something that slept here. “Isn’t it unbelievable?”

I wandered. Staring. Traveling. I followed the train of the Medici’s gilded, vibrant servants, horses, and knights. My eyes ran with the dogs and hunters after the stags, widening over the blood from a dead rabbit; adored the glittering feathers of so many different birds, puffing feathers around a small pool; followed with the servants after the Medici rulers, adoring the bedecked horses; prayed with the golden haloed angels, circling the altar with Mary and the infant Christ; flew over the mountains, villas, rivers, forests, so small and towering just over my head, yet so magnificently far away and expanding into another plane I could not touch.

But my eyes were ripped from their trance. A woman had come in. A Muslim woman, in her hijab, her face masked in full-glam makeup. Her eyes widened upon entering, her gaze not quite held captive by this mini-world, but admiring the exquisite beauty covering every inch of the space. I glanced up at where she looked as she walked in, tucking myself away in the side of the space in front of the altar as she continued through the tiny chapel.

She approached the altar; one glance at the altar, and her face twisted in reproach. I blinked in surprise. Perhaps it was just my ignorance, but I did not expect her level of disgust; I already had some idea of the conflict between Muslims and Roman Catholics, but seeing it in reality made me pity her. Heartbreaking, is it not, to see how bloodstains from centuries ago never leave no matter how much bleach of peace you put on it?

Understandably, she did not stay long. She left shortly after allowing another glance over the room, following the guard’s direction through the other small door opposite the altar.

Dr. Horner whispered to a classmate, motioning his wizened hand over details he had already seen, yet seemed to take as much hold over his mind like me. We moved together and aimlessly, circling one way, then the opposite way, trying to imprint something in us that could not be confined, not even by walls of a room no bigger than my bedroom back home. Time only continued when, with understanding, Dr. Horner motioned for us to leave, breaking us away from an impossible space. He talked some; I could not remember what, for I was trying to resurrect the obliterated pieces of my brain back and force them together.

What a fool I was for thinking I had already seen everything magnificent in Florence.