European Vacation: Italy Part Two

Filed in archive on February 28, 2006

Waking up in Venice was a pretty special feeling. And considering how many tourists woke up with me at that same moment, either I was feeling pretty myopic or it was actually that special. There was warm sunshine hitting the ancient buildings and narrow alleyways of this site of antiquity.




Sitting at the confluence of the Po and Piave rivers, in an immense lagoon that meets the northwestern waters of the Adriatic Sea, is this city of more than 270,000 people. When you multiply that by a continuous year-round influx of tourists from all over the world, the place is pretty darn crowded. At this point in the trip I was not yet frustrated over the nuisance of so many people being constantly in your face. Oh, but that time was coming.




Avoiding massive tour groups of over 100, we walked in and out of the courtyards and palace grounds. The architecture was surreal. History books and history channels have inundated our consciousness with images of the classical Renaissance period, but no amount of pictures or text could prepare one's eyes for the surroundings.




Relief sculptures carved into the sides of gigantic, illustrious buildings that are so detailed, so excruciatingly perfect they boggled the mind! Most of the architecture, masonry, stained-glass, and paintings were restored treasures created during The Italian Renaissance. This well-documented period of history took place between the 13th-16th centuries; it was a time when artists tried to live up to the days of ancient Athens and Rome.




This humanistic movement sought to "classicize" or re-invigorate the culture that was so revered by the academic and papal community. During this intellectual uprising many great thinkers of the time declared that all the years between the heyday of Athens/Rome and their present day (13-16th century) were times of darkness. Often called the Dark Ages, those years were also referred to as the Middle Ages. Those years were times of war, disease, poverty and famine. Ruthless, disparate kingdoms waged bloody battle after bloody battle with little or no representation for the common people existent in the monarchy.




Raphael of my namesake, was one of the prominent figures in this explosion of artistic and intellectual reform. Once again, a dream was being lived. After studying a bit of art history, and looking at these images in textbooks and slide shows, it became a goal of mine to see in person a work of Raphael's. We do share the same name, and even though it took me a long time to embrace the name of Raphael, this experience helped to me to appreciate the name even more!

ER Harris