[Exit Menu]
The Pleromatics Project
Prolog
The Cosmos of the Spirit
To walk into the Sistine Chapel is to walk into a cosmos of the spirit. I was there only once, three decades ago as a student and tourist, and only briefly, as one of a crowd. Even so, even when its images were darkened by the soot of centuries, I could almost feel the touch of Michelangelo's brush on the fresh plaster of soul. In the reality of that holy place, the One Who touches Adham into life also points to beckon the viewer to resonate with the spirit of creation.
The schedule and conditions then did not allow for contemplative study and reflection, but the images have remained in the soul and have been renewed in the mind, and the restoration work now in progress calls us all to look once again at the brilliance of the artist's vision.
So much has been written of the wonder and magnificence of Michelangelo's work in that room four hundred years ago, and of the spirit of his times, when Western civilization was born anew after the gestation of a long dark age. So many scholars, so many books, so many interpretions and depictions of those images have brought that reality even to those who have not been there personally. What more is left to say, especially by someone who is not a scholar of art or Renaissance?
Still, those images burn in the soul as brightly as their restored colors shine in the eye, and one wonders. Why has that restoration come just now, late in this particular century? Many "reasons" may be cited: money, science, technology, all now amply and conveniently available in the correct proportion. But why use that money, science, technology for that particular project, just now?
In that cosmos of the spirit, does some new vision lie in wait, expectant, groaning in travail? Are we about to see yet another renaissance of the spirit of the cosmos?
< PREVIOUS | TOP | NEXT >
[ TOP ]
Project Index
The Pleromatics Project