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| Golden Doors of the Baptistery |
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| A replica of Michelangelo's David in the Piazza |
The city center is focused around the Cathedral or the Duomo. The outside of the church is fantastic and awesome whereas inside it is more simply and stark. We prayed here for our Saturday evening Mass in English. Yet, the baptistery is far more significant. St. John the Baptist is the patron saint of the city of Florence, home of many Popes of the medieval and renaissance times. Inside the baptistery is a huge round ceiling full of biblical art. There is plenty for a new Christian (or an ancient one) to mediate on. The doors are also stories of biblical characters and recent saints. The famous Lorenzo Ghiberti doors are now only a replica, but still very moving. Michelangelo called them the "Gates of paradise" with the beautiful scenes from the Old Testament.
The two famous museums are the Academia which holds the original David and the Uffizi with paintings by Lippi, da Vince, Michelangelo, Raphael, Ruben and Rembrandt to name just a few. I also visited several smaller museums including the Medici Chapel with carvings by Michelangelo and the del Bargello with carvings by Dontello and Michelangelo. How does this experience fit into a religious pilgrimage you might wonder? Is this not just art? The answer is that until the sixteenth or seventeenth century most art was religious art. Just studying the sculptures of David from Dontello to Michelangelo indicates how this religious art moves into a view of how God and humans are connected. Dontello's David is of a young boy standing on the head of Goliath, full of youth and innocence. Michelangelo's David is a young man, strong, powerful, and ready to be king. Both pieces of art portray the same biblical character but each says something about God's connection to us humans in different ways.
The other bit of art meditation is who gets painted into a religious painting and and what symbols. For instance, St. Sebastian, St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua often make it into pictures of the Nativity or the crowning of Mary or the crucifixion. There is less worry about portraying the scene of Christ in the first century and more so on relating the story of Christ to the Saints, and through the saints, to us. Also, John the Baptist as a child or youth is often portrayed in stories of Christ. In one picture (sorry, cannot remember the artist) Mary has the baby Jesus on her lap and John the Baptist is also on her lap as an infant handing Jesus a goldfinch. Rather than trying to understanding the meaning of the paintings at the time or even for our times, my meditation went a different way.
My meditation is what type of religious art is needed to help people today understand God's love, mercy and justice for humanity? Which saints need to appear in the scenes with Christ from his birth until his ascension into heaven? What sculptures will carry meaning for today and for centuries to come? Here in Italy, the churches are empty of Sunday. There seems to be only a handful of people at the Sunday liturgies. In the United States, according to the 2000 census, only 51 % of people are connected to a church of any type. A survey published last week, states that only 45% of Catholics realize that we believe that Jesus Christ is really present in the Eucharist. We need not just words and witnesses of faith, but symbols and images to help people re-connect with God. So in Florence I prayed for all Christian artists, especially those in the Catholic Church, to find the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and help a new renaissance of faith begin.
This was a pilgrimage of faith. In the midst of these famous artists and their works, I stopped in several churches simply to pray. I come back to Rome inspired and uplifted by the beauty of God. May the beauty be more clearly seen in our world today and our individual lives.
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| Ponte Vecchio with stores built on top of the bridge |
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