What it’s like studying Art history in Italy.

I’m an artist so I love art. And I especially love classical art. At the time I was living in the midwest where if you wanted to see classical artwork you saw it in books. Which in and of itself is kind of a magical experience where I would feel like a wizard surrounded by oversized art history books making a kind of castle around myself where the building stones were actually art books.

But then I got the chance to study art history in Italy. Everyday we’d all gather in a top floor classroom and listen to our professor talk about the days artwork. Then swiftly go down to the nearest cafe for a an espresso, to then go out and track down the artwork to experience it in person. We saw Michelangelo’s David, Bernini’s sculptures, I even gave a report on the Castle Sant’Angelo inside the castle in which my report ended by an unexpected gust of wind blowing the skirt of my dress over my head… but that’s a story for another time.

Anyways, seeing art work in person is the ultimate. It’s getting to experience the actual size, weight, and material. Like for instance an Oil Painting. Oil paint can be transparent, opaque, or somewhere in-between. So when Caravaggio would make a painting he would layer up the paint. You are able to see through some layers into other layers. Light passes through it differently and it really can make paintings glow. And when you look at the same painting printed in a book with ink, not oil paint, it’s still a beautiful and incredible image, but seeing that painting as a painting and all that oil paint can physically do is awe inspiring, it’s wow, it’s complete Wonderment.

And the most incredible thing is these masterpieces are everywhere in Italy. So much so that the locals have become accustomed to living around greatness. And can you imagine what being surrounded with masterpieces does for a person. It seems like the Italians just stand a little straighter and are perhaps just a bit more aware in the best way possible what humans are capable of.

The art is in obvious places like the middle of a plaza, to more hidden places like an obscured wall tucked away in a chapel of a church. Finding the artwork kind of felt like a treasure hunt, like I was hunting down secrets. Because even though the art is in public spaces, seeing the locals simply walk by them because they are used to them, but me seeing them for the first time standing in front of a masterpiece and it envelopes me in its greatness where time stops for a moment and I feel that magic of myself changing in how I see the world and my place in it. And the odd contrast of having this transcendent experience while others are just going about their day around you is dizzying.