The author, Jeannie Marshall, is a writer who has been living in Italy with her family since 2002. The opportunity for this dissection and absorption of an extensive work of art came in early 2021 when many of Italy’s museums and the Sistine Chapel reopened. However, few locals were going about, and there were no tourists at that point. It was in this setting that she learned to look.
Marshall asks a fundamental question about art and, in turn, explores the meaning of art, particularly this art, and how what she learns to see when she looks at art impacts her life. I found her explanations of the art itself enlightening. The language of her imagery to convey her insights was uplifting, elegant, and inspirational.
Though she lived in Rome, Marshall had been reluctant to fight the crowds and visit the Sistine Chapel. She described it as “something that seemed simultaneously too complex to be understood just by looking at it and too worn out from overexposure.” The absence of crowds at the end of local pandemic restrictions removed that excuse. Once she learned to look, she became obsessed with knowing everything about it, visiting many times over more than a year.
Throughout the book, Marshall weaves together several backstories, including hers and those of her parents. She describes herself as agnostic and an atheist at various points. She explores practices of the Christian religion, which was the Catholic church then. There are stories of how Popes commissioned art and the church’s failings leading to changes such as the Reformation and the Inquisition. All these personal and religious histories are combined with her in-depth exploration of the Sistine Chapel, its story, imagery, and artistic technique. She covers the whole of the Sistine Chapel, not only the ceiling. One of the most exciting works in the room is on the altar wall, “The Last Judgement.”
There are likely many academic texts on the meaning of the art in the chapel. Still, Marshall simultaneously builds the big picture while sharing the intricacies in engaging and vivid language. She contemplates the nature of art in general and the Sistine Chapel specifically. It’s a huge accomplishment in a book of less than 250 pages.
I learned that the chapel’s ceiling reflects the story of Genesis. None of it was about Jesus, except that many consider Genesis the start of a much larger story. Genesis is the story's beginning, from the creation of man to God’s destruction of man, with the flood leading to a new beginning.
She describes Michelangelo’s work as trying to make the spiritual visible. She begins with the ending of Genesis or the flood. This panel is known as “The Deluge.” Michelangelo painted it first. She quotes Andrew Graham Dixon, an art historian, “The world is a picture that God can unpaint at any moment.” Like the historian, she is drawn to the shades of gray in the painting. She notes, “Now I could see how the artist painted the sky meeting the flood water in a way that obliterates them both,” continuing, “Michelangelo blends the sea and sky at the horizon into a void, an unbearable emptiness.” She leaves that day saying, “I left the chapel with a sense of having glimpsed something more elemental than myself.”
The Creation of Adam is the most well-known scene on the ceiling. She notes the contrast between our more familiar story and Michelangelo’s vision. She says the story we know is that “God makes Adam from the soil and breathes life into his nostrils. Here, Adam is already fully formed and is simply being animated by the touch of God’s hand.” I don’t think this measure of artistic license diminishes the power of God’s creation of man. It makes it more evident that the physical structure of a body was nothing until brought to life by God’s touch. Marshall describes a later visit when looking up, “I saw God flying, creating, commanding. I felt the individual pieces of the narrative connecting.”
In a fitting conclusion, Marshall closes the book with “The Last Judgement.” That fresco completed in 1541 is the end of the Christian story and is not on the ceiling. He was thirty years older when this work was completed at age 67 than when he finished painting the ceiling at age 37. The Catholic Church experienced cataclysmic change during that interim. The Reformation and the Sack of Rome led to doubt about the Church as the source of salvation. Michelangelo painted Christ in the middle of the wall. The saved were on his right, our left as we view it. There seems to be more emphasis on the damned in this painting. As Marshall mentions, “The abandonment of hope and the sense of failure and disappointment come across clearly.” She contrasts this with his sympathetic view of those lost in “The Deluge.”
Throughout the book, Marshall describes many scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in varying detail. She contemplates art in the in-between places, connecting the major scenes, such as the Sibyls and Prophets. Marshall delves into the overall impact of the chapel when viewed as a whole. This scrutiny extends to a sidebar about the graffiti left by the soldiers who led the Sack of Rome in 1527.
Alongside her discourse on the chapel’s art, she considers the more significant meaning of art. When Marshall speaks of looking at art, she observes, “There is a structural element, there is intention and idea, and then there is the impression, the feelings it evokes. It can feel like remembering something you already know but can’t quite bring to the surface.” She also remarks on how her personal history and experiences color her interpretation. “We don’t encounter art as a blank slate.”
Marshall’s phrase “learning to look” encourages me to consider how I look at art. What is helpful to know before? How do I reflect on it afterward? What’s the point of looking at art? What’s the value of it? I have been to museums where I see what I presume are students sketching a work they are inches from on their paper pads. I used to think they must know what they are looking at. Now I’m not sure they know, but the sketching is about the artist's technique, not the message. Marshall leads me to understand that I am free to see art from my perspective, which may lead to a different interpretation than someone else without being wrong.
I have been privileged to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up. I was in a crowded room with a tour group from my home state. We had been briefed about the subject matter of the various panels before entering. We weren’t elbow to elbow, but we couldn’t move uninterrupted from one area to another without looking down. We also couldn’t stay but for ten or fifteen minutes. I could see that the detail was exquisite. The time was too short to take everything in, put the big picture together, and recognize the significance of specific details. However, I saw the Sistine Chapel and am still learning about it. Having read Marshall’s book, I would like to see the Sistine Chapel again, search for important pieces, look up at that ceiling, at the altar wall, and attempt to internalize the whole of it.
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