Possessing Beauty (Essay Post)

 Before coming on this trip, I had determined that the Florence Duomo was one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the world. This beauty was even grander in person. Pictures do not do it justice. The first thing I was aware of was simply the size. It was huge, and you could feel it. The red dome swept over the sky and red, green and white marble ornately decorated the eternal surface. When I saw it in person, I could feel the age and wisdom stored in the whole structure. This age can be felt in the buildings darkened façade, burned by years of standing in Florence’s hot sun. This darkened façade also revealed many details. Because the façade is very complex and cannot be fully described in even 1000 words, I focused my attention on a small section. A small stone carving of a man holding a harp. He seemed very wise and wore a small cap and held a long scroll in one hand. His beard was caught on the harp. The stones were smooth to the touch and were thick in the hands. What I found most beautiful was the feeling of age and wisdom emanating from this structure. On either side of this carving are two pillars that spiral like a single strand of DNA. The interesting thing is that one of these pillars is noticeably darker and dirtier than the other, which stands pure white. I began to question myself as to why this occurred and determined that it was not due to the lighting alone and must have been due to weathering. Perhaps one pillar was restored earlier than the other, or perhaps the rain comes in more strongly from the North. There is also weathering on the red marble, but this might be due to variations in the marble, or it can again be attributed to the rain. Just like a wiseman in the carving’s white beard, this aging effect is a sign of the cathedral’s wisdom and being in the presence of this wisdom and years of experience and toil was beautiful.

While I found the structure to be beautiful, drawing it proved even more useful for me to appreciate the beauty as “the very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a wooly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities” (deBotton 222). I began to notice all the intricacies, even in just that lone detail. I found flowers in the spiraling pillars, the amazing depth and shading of the old man, the fact that the small pillars are not spirals like the big pillars but have small chalices inside them. I saw behind the carving was a yellowed surface, something that varied from the other green, red, or white marble. All of this was due to me sitting down and drawing (although I admittedly ran out of time when drawing and had to take a picture to finish it). I am glad that I focused on only a small part of the façade, as attempting to discover the weight behind the whole structure would be too much for me.

This exercise was very different from the typical approach to seeing beauty. These days, we can approach beauty by simply taking a picture, but as I emphasized repeated at the start of this post, one cannot fully feel the grand weight of the structure through photos. But even the people who come in person do not come to fully appreciate the structure. They say “wow- I am somewhere famous,” take a few photos, some selfies, post them on their story, and leave. As deBotton states- we have “an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me’” (214). The current world is focused on always moving, on seeing as much as possible to enjoy life to the fullest. While seeing things is great, understanding what you are seeing and taking in the whole experience is key to truly appreciating beauty. I believe that the postmodern world, with art that attempts to interact with more than just the eyes and bring the viewer into the frame with the art, will try to reverse the current trend of simply being there. We need to “analyse …beauty in more psychological terms” (deBotton 232) and thus we can understand not only the beautiful imagery more, but we can understand who we are by why we find this object beautiful. I don’t believe that people need to draw every beautiful object they see, but I do believe that people should ask themselves why they find that object beautiful whenever they seem to discover a particular connection with a beauty they wish to possess.

The cathedral is massive, and darkened by age

Attempted sketch

Picture of area sketched

de Botton, Alain. The Art of Travel. New York: Vintage, 2002.