I toured the Vatican museum today and I purposefully lowered my expectations because I was afraid that it wouldn’t meet them. It is the Vatican. It is supposed to be incredible, but I just couldn’t feel it until I was walking through the Raphael rooms and I turned to see “School of Athens,” which is perhaps my favorite painting for many reasons.

I had no idea it would be so big that it covers an entire large wall, but there it was. I am and have always been very knowledge driven (hence the name of my blog “knowledge life”) and the “School of Athens” represents for me the pursuit of knowledge at its highest point. It represents a time when people sought knowledge from every facet of life. When people debated as an art form instead of as a form of argument. It represents a time and a method where people were taught to think instead just what to think. The individuals in that painting changed the world sometimes with a single thought and knowing that helps reinforce my own belief in the individual. I was overwhelmed because of all the things I see in the painting and the genius that created it.

A few rooms later I was walking through a series of more modern (comparably) paintings that most people don’t pay any attention to and I saw a couple of Chagall’s. I noticed them because I am familiar with his style, but it struck me that most of the people just walked on by and missed these amazing pieces. I caught myself the other day looking at the artist’s names instead of the paintings (as if the artist’s name attached to it made the painting somehow better) and I realized that by doing that I deny the possibility of something great coming from someone I’ve never heard of (which is absurd). After that I started looking at the paintings first and if I was intrigued then I would look for the artist (to be fair the famous artists are famous for a reason), in this way I discovered Paul Brill and some amazing landscapes.

I have been in Rome for most of three days now and I have seen so much history I don’t know how to quantify it all. As a student of that history, I imagine the legendary figures who walked these streets. The sheer grandeur of it all is enough to help you understand the kind of impact that Rome had on the rest of the world. They don’t seem to have done anything small and yet it somehow seems appropriate here. I could probably write about each individual thing, but I think for me it is the collective which intrigues. The arches, the fountains, the palaces and yes the churches are all symbols of human achievement and human arrogance at the same time. They are what they are and they are incredible to behold 2000 years later. I leave for Paris tomorrow and I look forward to its inspirations.