Monday at the Vatican Museums

As you begin reading this post, just a reminder. I have photographed works of art in what may be the greatest museum in the world. There are images of nude sculptures. If there are children viewing this with you, scroll down to decide if you want them to see it. It may save you from the task of explaining things.

Monday morning was a cool and cloudy day. Our schedule was to meet Liz Lev at the main entrance of the Vatican Museums (Plural, because there about a dozen museums at the Vatican.) I have visited these museums on several occasions but I have never experienced them like I did today.

When I was in my first year of seminary, I had a introductory philosphy course where the professor made a statement that I have never forgotten. "What is said can never be separated from how it is said." Liz introduced our tour by saying that not only is this one of the premier collections of human genius in the world, but that the various museums, and their exhibits are arranged so that the message of the gospel becomes evident. I never understood that before today. So, what is said is not separated from how it is said. After going through the security, obtaining group tickets, and the closed circuit headsets so that Liz could address our group privately, we gathered on a terrace with one of the most striking views of the dome of St. Peter's.

The dome is visible rising out of the gradens. It is one of the few places where the entire dome is visible, including the drum, that cylindrical portion below the actual curved dome which is hidden from view in St. Peter's square because of the extension forward of the nave by 200%. For Michaelangelo who always thought in terms of the human form, even in architecture, saw his dome as the head rising above the shoulders of the basilica. In the basilica are the statues of the saints, depictions of the human elements of the church, and burial vaults of all those awating the resurrection. In the dome are the angels, the blue sky, and the light radiating down to enlighten the world in its quest to reach that eternal life promised by the God incarnate.

Liz, began by explaining to us what this art would have meant to the ancient people through modern times. This art and these images would have had an impact on them not unlike the impact of television, cinema, and now the internet has in our culture. Art was information, education, political propaganda, news, and it defined social structures and order. It was not exclusive, because most of it was public. It was on display in public buildings and open spaces, on facades of buildings. There were private collections, but for the most part, art was accessible to the average person who would have been moved, excited, terrified, warned, and would have learned religion, culture, and stories of one's world. It is difficult for us to comprehend how much impact a single piece of art would have because we are inundated with images and media every day. We take it for granted. But a new work of art could take decades and people would wait expectantly for an unveiling, and if it was good art, it would move them and change them. A single work of art could change the course of history. This was the nature of Christian art particularly. For greats like Michaelangelo, it was all about telling a story of faith.

To begin, Liz took us to the first museum of Pre-Christian Art, especially the Roman region. Below is a photo of the start of this tour.

The series of museums are arranged for one purpose: to get us into the summit of all Christian Art; the Sistine Chapel. And so we begin with pagan pre-Christian art. People have asked why would the church preserve art from a culture that was trying to eradicate the faith. As the curator of the Ancient Christian Museum told us as he happened to walk by, (Liz snagged him. It was a real treat.) The church wants us to see what it was that we triumphed over. And so above, in the Pre-Christian Museum, these are mosaics of the floor taken from the baths of Caracala. These ruins show a huge complex of baths with both hot and cold running water and pools where wealthy Romans wold go every day. It was for bathing, exercise, gymnastics, everything was designed to glorify the human body alone as the summit of creation. Human perfection was achievable by the perfection of the body. So these figures are super muscular, super human. The goal was to achieve the perfection of the gods. Humans who looked like the ideal of the gods was the achievements of life.

This was the unattainable ideal. The god Apollo stands with his perfect mathematically precise form and proportions. His gaze is uninterested in the mortals below. His casual stance is typical and says to humans, "This is untouchable for you". The realm of the gods is not for humans and it is impossible to make a connection visually with this being. This was the pagan notion of the world, where all there is the physical and satisfying the physical urges and the glorification of the human being. There was no concept of heaven so perfection needed to be achieved in the here and now.

Michaelangelo would have seen this statue and it would have formed his early understanding of what sculpture whould be. But then there was the discovery of this other statue. "Lacoon and his sons".

Group of Laocoon and his sons. According to Greek mythology, Laocoon was a priest seer of the god Apollo. He tried to warn the Greeks not to accept the gift of the Trojan horse. For this he angered the gods and they sent sea serpents to destroy him and his sons. This statue was discovered in 1506 and changed Michaelangelo's vision of sculpure forever. The face of Laocoon is visible in the face of Adam when God sends Adam and Eve out of the Garden after their original sin. The forms in this sculpture are not the perfect, disinterested, faces of gods, but of real human suffering. These are the kinds of shapes, lines and images that Michaelangelo will use on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and his greatest work, the Last Judgement, also in the Sistine Chapel. 

After visiting the pre-Christian Museum, we get a chance to visit the early Christian Museum. The earliest Christian art is mostly in the catacombs, wall frescoes, burial plaques, and especially the sarcophagi. These relics tell us that there were very wealthy early Christians buried alongside the poor who did not have the elaborate tombs. The first Christian art was in the form of symbols - fish, ship, lamp, the acronym in Greek spelling the Name of Christ. These symbols told stories. But later the carvings in the catacombs and the sarcophagi tell the complete story of salvation. This is the pat of the tour that was totally new for me. It was curious that there was no evidence of a cross on any of the examples of early Christian art. The early christians were horrified by this instrument of torture and death. Again it was not until the persecutions ended and Christianity decriminalized that the cross began to take on a new meaning for the church.

I will try my best to describe the details of the tomb portrayed in my photograph below.

You have to read the two levels simultaneously. It is the entire story of salvation. In the upper left hand is the depiction of the Trinity. (and remember, this is 220 years before the council of the church which defined the Trinity in our creed.) The three figures to the upper left are the Spirit, Father, and Son. The Son's hands are on two children, representing creation. Next three figures are Adam and Eve, with God between them instructing them not to take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent and the tree are visible next to Eve. On the lower level is Joseph, barely visible behind seated Mary, holding the infant Jesus. Coming to them are the wise men. The first one is pointing not to 1 star, but 3 stars, not visible in this photo. Each star is directly below one of the persons of the Trinity. These are the wise and learned people who are seeking the truth in this child and the Trinity. The naked figure in the lower center is Daniel coming out of the lion's den. This is a powerful figure for these early Christians, many of whom had seen their fellow Christians thrown to the lions themselves. Survival from the lions was a powerful force and a sign of hope in the faith life of these early Christians. Next to the scene of Daniel, are scenes of stories in Jesus' life: Jesus welcomes the child, on the upper level, the miracle at Cana, and below, the denial of Peter, (see the rooster on the ground), and Jesus' arrest. Remember many early Christians were being arrested as Jesus was. This was seen as a sharing in the suffering of Jesus that would win them the crown in heaven. The large medalion in the center is probably the images of the couple who were buried in this tomb.

This finely crafted carving is the beginning of Christian art as it would evolve. We need to remember that until 321AD when it was still a capital offense to be a Christian, most Christian art was funerary. After the legalization of Christianity, the art begins to change dramatically to include images of salvation which were huge by comparison. Now Christian art could be displayed publicly and the scale begins to grow dramatically.

One of the favorite stories of the early Christians in Jonah. It was understood as a prefiguration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was stories like this one that gave the early christians hope in the resurrection, not the cross as we know it today. The following sarcophagus is a magnificent telling of the Jonah story for this person buried in the hope of rising again. I decided to photograph it in three sections. It will be clearer to view and there are actually three scenes depicted here.

Jonah is thrown overboard because he tells the crew he is running away from his God. They blame him for the storm that threatens to destroy them all. The head of the fish is ready to swallow him.

The figure of the fish is now turned around and is spewing out Jonah onto the land. You can see only the upper half of Jonah's body coming out of the mouth of the fish, his lower body is still in the fish's mouth.

Jonah is lying under the fig tree whitch eventually withers and forces him to do as God asks of him. In the sand, you can see a crab, and a snail on the beach. Also there are two scenes; one of a man and boy fishing, and a shepherd with his flock to serve as a precursor to Jesus' ministry and his call to his disciples as shepehrds and fishers of men.

The Good Shepherd. This is one of the earliest depictions of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. He is the youthful worker with his face coincidentally matching the face of Apollo. But it is smiling, not a disinterested gaze, and joyful at finding the lost sheep which he holds up on his shoulders.

And speaking of faces, here is the enthusiastic and brilliant tour guide, Liz Lev. I had to show you some of the great expressions as she shared this knowledge that she loves so much.

The tour continues for another 2 hours before we finally got to the Sistine Chapel. There are no pictures because photographing in the Sistine Chapel is forbidden. Flash and frescoes do not mix. 

What you ought to do, as I try to recall some of her descriptions of the ceiling and the last judgement, is to Google an image of the Sistine Chapel to try to understand it.

Michaelangelo was not trained as a painter, he was a sculptor. He thought in three dimensions. He thought always the human body. He was fascinated by what he considered to be the epitome of God's creation. And unlike what many think that his obsession with the human figure was some kind of "Freudian thing", as Liz called it, Michaelangelo believed that portraying the human body was to glorify God. His figures in both the ceiling and in the Last Judgement are sculptural in vision and in form. The ceiling tells a story. This is a first in the history of art. Until now, ceilings were to finish a room, blue sky, stars, and an occasional medallion in the center, or corners, surrounded by architectural shapes as frames. No one had ever attempted to tell a story on the ceiling. The original commission was to paint portraits of the 12 apostles. Michaelangelo came back with another proposal - to tell the story of Creation in Genesis. He was able to convince the pope that he could do it. Oh by the way, Michaelangelo did not paint the ceiling lying on his back, he stood through the whole thing. He wrote a sonnet describing his technique, and even supplied a drawing of himself doing the work while standing.

The days of creation begin with God being an almost opaque figure, as he creates the light, the sun, stars, and separates the sea from the land. Now as he creates the man, God is seen in full detail. In the very center of the room is the fall from grace. The scenes continue through the prophets who would fortell the coming mystery of the incarnation. These all come down the center axis of the room. Then is the story of Noah, Abraham and Isaac. The prophet Zechariah, who tells of the God who will enter our life once and for all, sends the eye back towards the front of the room with the prophets and the gentile sybils until we come to the last of the prophets portrayed - our friend Jonah again.

This leads our eyes back to the Last Judgement. In this masterpiece, there is virtually no landscape, no architecture, no animals, only 421 human bodies engaged in the struggle towards salvation, and some to eternal damnation.

I have seen the before and after of the 10 year restoration of this chapel. The stories that have come from the new view of this work are remarkable. Liz mentioned one today. In the center of the image, there are two figures being pulled up into heaven as they are grasping on to a rosary. It was always thought before the restoration that these figures are a male and female. As it turns out, they are both men, one white, the other black. We are talking mid 16th century when slavery was just getting into high gear in the Americas. Another detail, is St. Bartholomew who was martyred by being skinned alive, is holding his skin. But Michaelangelo put a caricature of his own face on the skin. Also, one of the Vatican Cardinals hated this work and demanded that it be covered over and repainted. Michaelangelo painted his face on the person at the lowest point in hell at the lower right hand corner. He added donkey ears for special effect. The pope must have really disliked this cardinal because he declared that it should stay.

I don't have the space, the time, or frankly the memory to tell you more of these stories. I'm sure I'll think of them as I go on. I just think this one is significant enough to give you a good idea of not just the MIchaelangelo's genius, but of his spiritual and social consciousness, his humility and his sense of humor.