St. Peter's Basilica and Necropolis

I'm going to start this blog post with my reading for tonight. The next paragraph will be about my excursion in Rome, so if you are not grading this blog post, please feel free to skip on to the next paragraph. Our reading for tonight involved the church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and the many years and modifications it took tto to build this church. Construction on the church began 1644 after Pope Innocent X's commissioning the project after several concept sketches were made and were finally approved Pope Urban VIII. The church was finished in  1665 with the completion of the south portal. The significance of this particular church was the spiral tower and all the work that was involved inconstructing the spiral in a way that worked. There was a lot of engineering and pre planning involved in creating the spiral which involved tactics such as studying the Egyptian Obelisks.

We saw St. Peter's Bascilica today. Honestly, what can I say? To me, the church itself represented an example of the pinaccle of human engineering and artistic capability. The dome of the bascillica was amazing to look at and the way the light bled through it was gorgeous. Bernini's sculptural genius touched each sculpture in such a way many sculpturs couldn't even imagine before this time. The Statue of St. Veronica looked as though it really was running desperately to wipe Jesus' face. The statue of St. Longinus stood forever looking at the cross high up towards the dome as though he was forever reminded how he was the one who pierced the side of Christ, and it was fantastic, after so many years of learning and seeing photos, it was finally cool to get to see the actual Pieta of Michaelangelo.  I even spent ten minutes drawing a sketch and am happy to say I gained a small audiance of a couple fellow pilgrims myself. ^_^ There's something satisfying about hearing people from the far east try to tell your drawing is good.

It was also interesting to hear how the experience impacted my roomates. My experience was very positive, like I wanted to know if this is what humans could accomplish, and it's not even close to the Divine, then what could they accomplish. My colleagues had very mixed opinions, and it was interesting to learn about why, but we all felt something move inside us whether it was for better or worse.  I will not go into anymore detail because that is their business, not mine.

The final moments of the day ended with a couple of my fellow artsy associates visiting an art store that was about 180 years old, the company, not the building. I'm sure the building was much older than that. The art company is called Ditta G.Poggi, and there, I bought the most artistic of my younger sisters her own sketchbook. :)