Little painting of St. Peter's

Reality check time! Of all the kinds of paintings I make, I suck the most with architectual paintings. Trust me, St. Peter's isn't nearly so crooked as it appears in this little study. I took a snapshot of the dome from the Vatican, while trekking the 19 million miles of hallway galleries to the Sistine Chapel.

I do love Rome, and the Vatican/St. Peter's is achingly lovely. Hmmm, what is most memorable about the Vatican and St. Peter's? Well, several things come to mind....the grounds are gorgeous, for one. The hallway galleries are not that exciting to me, which is a good thing, because the sea of people heading to the Sistine Chapel will sweep you along with them----it's as if they are in a horse race and cannot be distracted from the finish line. The Sistine is breathtaking. Mary pointed out to me that we tourists enter the Sistine with the dammed in Michelangelo's The Last Judgment....haha! So Christ sends the souls of the saved to heaven on the left, and cast the dammed to hell on the right....enter the tourists.

As all the dammed walk in to view the chapel, we hold our possessions and our arms close to our bodies, tilt our heads, and slowly turns circles, mouths agape as we drink in the ceiling. We sort of gently bounce off one another----like a slow motion pinball machine. If I were an installation artist, I would have fun with this imagery :-)

St. Peter's was also stunning....and I was so please I was able to receive communion while there. I wanted to go to the top of the dome, but felt it would take an act of God to get me there.

Little painting of St. Peters is now in private collection.