2015-07-05

【Aiden in English】

        Vatican City or the Holy See is the world’s smallest country and home to less than 900 residents, including the most famous person, of course, the Pope. It has its own set of laws and even a different language. They speak Latin. No, apparently it’s not a dead language. Although they are Catholics, the citizens of the Vatican seem to have a unique culture to share with the world.

        Michelangelo was arguably most talented artist ever. Not only was he a great painter, but also a terrific architect and a fabulous sculptor. Being a world-class artist, it’s not surprising that he was asked to decorate the Sistine Chapel. Actually, he was sort of ordered, because when Michelangelo requested another painter for the job, he became the only one to stagger “Creation of the World” and “Last Judgment”. So the chapel was done quite wisely, moving Vatican City up a few spots on the tourism list. Before Michelangelo came and remodeled everything, the Sistine Chapel had a sky blue and gold mosaic roof. 

        From the outside, it seemed like a fortress with a battlement-like roof, and the building gave little hint to what was held inside. It masked wonders timelessly. Michelangelo transformed the Chapel with his masterpieces into what I witnessed today. Like most churches, paintings of scenes throughout the Bible were used as the decorations on the wall. The artist could be creative though when describing heaven and the … boiler room. Heaven was painted with bright upbeat colors of gold, sky blue, white, and a bit of green. Downstairs, red, black, and crimson reigned supreme. But instead of demons, lava, and pitchforks, Michelangelo painted people being attacked by vicious creatures, for example, a man being choked by a giant snake. And the snake’s head bit a rather, ah, tender part of male’s body. It’s interesting how colors defined life. Brighter shades were better than darker shades, so was Light blue to dark red. It’s like entering a dark haunted house versus entering a beach with a bright sun out. What if you went to a beach with everything normal, then there’s a tsunami and everyone died. It’s the very typical inference that people make to good and bad, possibly because our main sense is blocked in darkness to pair it up with evil. Nevertheless, blinding light can also be bad to your eyes, even worse than darkness since the blindness just might be permanent.

        The Holy See wasn’t over yet. The Vatican Museums offered 24 huge exhibition halls of art and history, which looked absolutely spectacular. I think that its specialty was in the tapestries. Tapestries are carpets that instead of walking on they are hung on a wall for decoration. The skill to make a tapestry is much more challenging than painting. To make a stroke of color in paintings, you just ran your brush along the canvas. To make a stroke on a tapestry, it required knots knit in precision and order to get the right result. Precision is important because this kind of art is way more precise than any other even sketching. In a square inch, there could be hundreds of knots jammed into it. Every piece of art here could take years to finish.

        Vatican City may be the world’s smallest country, but it feels as if it has the most to show. Like the saying, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, and it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

【紅霞譯文】

        梵蒂岡城即梵蒂岡教廷堪稱世界上最小的國家，充其量不足九百號人口，當然包括最著名的教皇陛下。它履行自己的法律，操持不同的語言，舉國上下全都講拉丁語，千萬不要再以訛傳訛，誤以為無人使用拉丁文。儘管梵蒂岡是天主教聖地，但當地人熱衷與各方來客分享本土文化。

        米開朗基羅被視為史上天賦最高的藝術家，其實他不僅是了不起的繪畫巨匠，而且還是頗有建樹的建築師和才華橫溢的雕刻家。作為當時知名人士，由他負責裝飾西斯廷教堂完全在意料之中。事實上，米開朗基羅起初完全被趕鴨子上架，因為他曾請求增加人手，但最終只能孤軍奮戰獨自完成《創世紀》與《最後的審判》。正因其卓越貢獻，西斯廷教堂一躍成為全球名列前茅的旅遊景點，而在此之前，西斯廷教堂穹窿天頂呈天藍色，並鑲有金色馬賽克裝飾圖案。

        外觀上，西斯廷教堂跟城堡墩子沒啥區別，一點反映不出裡面到底是個什麼樣子；內觀上，它讓創造生命的力量永恆地保留在無限的時空當中，米開朗基羅傳世巨作讓我有幸目睹西斯廷教堂今天這般盛況。如同其它教堂一樣，西斯廷教堂所有壁畫場景全部取材於《聖經》故事，藝術家憑藉豐富的想象力盡情描繪天堂和地獄。天堂常被畫得明亮透徹，藍天白雲外加少許青色，下面穿插紅黑兩色，深紅色代表最高統治地位。與表現惡魔、熔岩、刀杈不同，米開朗基羅手下畫有許多被各種動物攻擊的人物，譬如受巨蛇折磨窒息的男人，蛇嘴正死死咬住男性軀體最脆弱的部位。饒有趣的是藝術家通過顏色變化來再現富有靈性的生命，無疑明快的色調總比陰暗的色調好得多，而淺藍色肯定賽過暗紅色，這種對比與置身於黑乎乎的鬼屋還是亮堂堂的海灘所表達的道理相同。當然不排除意外發生，人去了海邊偶碰海嘯，結果大難臨頭。正因有這樣那樣的思想指導，人們的行為才存在好壞之分，只要代表正義的勢力被削弱，邪惡的東西定會應運而生。世間事物都有正反兩個方面，強光雖好，但也會影響眼睛，有時甚至比黑暗更加糟糕，因為它對視力造成的傷害可能是永久性的。

        羅馬教廷並非僅此而已。梵蒂岡博物館向遊人開放廿四個宏博藝術展廳，各個展廳都別具一格，在我看來，掛毯最有特色。不像腳踩的地毯，掛毯是高懸於牆壁的藝術品，與單純的繪畫相比，製作掛毯的難度更大。畫一幅油畫，你可以直接在畫布上塗抹；而畫一幅掛毯，你必須準確把握每一針每一線，其精細程度至關重要，設計草圖也不容易，每一個平方英寸要用手橫七豎八編織出上百個花結，由此說來，這裡展出的每一件藝術作品非得花上幾年時間才可完成。

        梵蒂岡固然成為世界上最小的國家，不過麻雀雖小五臟俱全，凡事不能以大小評判優劣，正如俗話所講的那樣：“兩狗相爭，比得不是個頭大小，而是鬥志高低”， 也就是說外因是條件（狗的大小），內因是根據（狗的鬥志）。