We visited the Vatican- St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel etc- the first time for me. I was impressed, but not, I suspect in the way I was meant to be. It was impressively big, overpoweringly powerful and ultimately ugly. Designed I think to make the viewer (worshipper) feel small and worthless. I have no doubt that Michelangelo's paintings are extremely wonderful works of art, but they were so far away that they were difficult to see. Add to the distance the fact that you need to dislocate your neck to see them at all and the result is somewhat over-awing. Bossy papal officials shushing everybody didn't help me to feel respectful! What I did get a sense of, was the technical difficulties and skill of painting at such a height and flat on one's back- and all into wet plaster in a limited amount of time. I now want to find more about it. (Sarah Dunant's
The Birth of Venus is an interesting take on the subject which I will now re-read.)
However, the Monastery of Saint Benedict at Subiaco was altogether different. It was quite simply the most beautiful and interesting church I have ever seen.
Clinging to the hillside like the swallow's nest that an early visiting pope called it, the building is difficult to fix in your mind. You enter by a corridor which skirts the side of the mountain and overhangs a small rose garden which sticks out from one of the caves. Staircases wind up and down, and chamber clings to chamber like an accretion of limpets on the side of a boat. Rock and building often merge, and frescos of great humanity and narrative power cover every surface.
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