I saw the Sistine Chapel. It was lower than I expected but magnificent in a way I couldn't have imagined, especially when I stood at one end and all the figures popped out (he was a master of perspective).
I saw the David. Even after seeing the two Florence-sanctioned copies of it, it still stunned me. David is poised. And the poise itself is a state of grace.
And I saw Michaelangelo's tomb, in the Basilica di Santa Croce. The tomb is a relatively runty thing, the three statues around it not hardly as good as anything the artist made. Apparently he was making work for his own tomb, but didn't finish before he died. A tragic figure. The picture of Jeremiah on the Chapel ceiling is his self portrait, and the exhaustion and anguish in the prophet's hung face is heartbreaking. Some guidebook told me that Michaelangelo was 80 years old when he died, and sculpted right up to the end.
What made me freak out, though, was the realization that his body is actually there in the marble casket in the corner of Santa Croce. The same bones that held him up as he moved over the chapel ceiling, the same ones that pounded out the David — they were right there, not ten feet from me as I stood before his tomb.
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