Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Day I fell in love with David.....

How do I fit into a half-page travelogue the experience of 5 full days in Italy??
How do I capture the feeling of walking around
the Colloseum in Rome ,
the Sistine Chapel in Vatican,
up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and
the pathways of Venice

in just 500 or 1000 words?
How do I pen down my Fascination of staring at the amazing masks in
Venice??

I know it is difficult, but try, I shall…

Italy is very similar to India –it is quite dirty, has chaotic traffic and people even dry their clothes out on a clothesline!!!
but the amazing fare it has to offer would ensure that an art enthusiast’s hunger is fully satiated.

Walking around the Colloseum in Rome, you would want to imagine all those gladiators and animals who were killed to the applause of the cheering spectators (this is when the movie Gladiator helps you…)

Staring at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel might leave you with a bad (s)p(r)ain in your neck but it is worth it – especially after seeing ‘the Creation ‘and ‘Temptation of Adam’ by Michelangelo.

And then I chanced upon David , standing tall and mighty, in the Academia Gallery of Florence and I instanly fell in love with this statue.

Trivia says that Michelangelo's David is based on the artistic discipline of disegno, which is built on knowledge of the male human form. Under this discipline, sculpture is considered to be the finest form of art because it mimics divine creation. Because Michelangelo adhered to the concepts of disegno, he worked under the premise that the image of David was already in the block of stone he was working on — in much the same way as the human soul is thought by some to be found within the physical body.

So herez a picture of a replica of David (which comes nowhere near the original but still, somethingz better than nothing...)


And as to the masks of Venice – they are so fascinating that I found myself dreaming about them for nearly a week .


Ok, so before I sign off, lemme wish myself a ‘Appy Blogday for having the patience to hang around on this space on the world wide web for exactly a year now.