Separated Only by Time

One of the strangest, and most important, events in a person’s life is when he leaves home and departs for foreign worlds, the worlds unfamiliar and the worlds spoken of only in legend and tale. He leaves home for the worlds of great thinkers whose great thoughts became great actions, of creative minds that refused to be anything less than what they could conceive, and of those who shaped the figure of history with chisels and hammers. It is the boy leaving the farm to face the dragon and save the princess. It is the hobbit leaving his hole to destroy the evil ring. It is the girl tumbling down the rabbit hole in chase of a thing not from her world. It is the great adventure that comes only once in a lifetime; the adventure that takes you to where the legends exist and dreams come true. That is me. I am the boy discovering himself in the world far from home. I am the boy who has stumbled into the land of great thinkers, creative minds, and history-shapers.
Italy is a land full of ancient tales, absolute powers, and legends who refused to accept the limitations of a medieval mind. Italy was the center of the Roman Empire, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the throne of Catholicism. Upon first arriving in Florence, which rivals Rome it-self in great history and immortal legends, I was slow to fully realize where I truly was. Disoriented by jet-lag and confused by culture-shock, I spent the first week trying to stay calm and keep one foot in front of the other. But I began to relax and only saw it in the light of today, a land no longer center of the world and sitting in the shadow of younger nations with lesser histories. I enjoyed the quaint, little medieval towns stuck in the past and the gelato that made my taste-buds sing in Gregorian chants, but it wasn’t until I came face to face with the work of Michelangelo that my “aha” moment slapped me in the face and told me to wake up and smell the Giglio.
Our group was touring the museum which sat in the shadow of the great Duomo, the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower, and viewing the statues and artifacts that used to decorate the giant halls of the ancient church. The museum contained many works by Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Michelangelo himself. The museum was nice and enjoyable, with a few statues that moderately held my interest, a few works of art that were weathered with age and no different than the thousands of other artifacts that decorated thousands of other churches. And then we turned a corner, climbed a flight of stairs, entered a small, circular room, and saw Michelangelo’s 3rd Pieta.
The 3rd Pieta was one of the last endeavors of the great Michelangelo. This Pieta, also know as the Deposition or the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, depicts the body of Christ being held by his mother, Mary, as well as Mary Magdalene and a hooded man who could be either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea. This Pieta is special among the great artist’s works because he did not finish it. Because of an impurity in the marble, Michelangelo actually took a hammer to the construct and attacked it in a fit of rage.
It wasn’t until I was standing right in front of the statue, trying to get a clear picture of the work of art with my camera, did I discover that I was actually standing in the same room with something that the great artist himself had thought of, had begun, had sweated and labored over, had actually touched and morphed to fit his imagination. Our tour guide said that the face of the hooded man is actually believed to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo, looking sorrowfully down on the broken body of Christ. And so there I stood, gazing into the face of a man who had painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, had crafted the famous, and infamous, statue of David, and had astonished everyone from the Papacy to the Medicis to the world with his masterful skill.
Soon after we saw the Pieta, we went to a small room that had once been a courtyard. Our tour guide said that the very spot where we were standing had been the exact location where the David had been built. “Aha!” went my mind. I was standing where Michelangelo had stood, where he had worked, and where he had dreamed. The “Aha!” continued as I began to realize that this was merely the first of many encounters with sharing the same space with the legends of the past. I will be wandering the roads where fearsome Roman legions marched on their way to conquer the world; I will be walking along the footsteps of Cardinals and Popes; I will be touring through the great cities where kings ruled and history was made. I stood there, in the exact same spot where Michelangelo had once stood, sharing the same space, separated only by time.