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Time has been good to very little in our work-a-day world, since it tends to “blear and smear” all that is physical (I’m getting sort of Gerard Manley Hopkins in this language), and as for Time’s influence on the thoughts and beliefs of mankind, well, thoughts and beliefs are fickle, and mankind is extremely changeable, so, once again, Time proves not so benign, as It passes along its way. It seems to only destroy. To dim. To lessen. To cut down to size.

Except for one area of my experience:

The magnificent marble sculptures and haunting religious paintings of the Italian quattrocento, which only seem to grow in their magnificence as the centuries pass….and I’m bringing focus in particular onto two specific works of the genius Michelangelo Buonarotti: his sumptuous David and his ethereally inspiring Piéta, both comfortably settled in their private/public homes, their viewing spaces in Rome.

I’ve seen both several times up close and personally, and the last time Peter and I were in Rome- during a preferred month of January, when weather is chilly and tourists are few – we had almost the entire Académia to ourselves, and visited with David for a couple of relaxed hours. We had him all to ourselves.

I was once again ravaged by his monumental beauty, and felt so sensuously satiated, I had no appetite for dinner following our “date”. Like I had been making out in the backseat of a limousine with the popular quarterback of the high school football team. David is so luscious, so firm, so shining, so magnificently
large of hand and lengthy of leg, well…what can i say: he just keeps getting better with age…or is that me that is getting more appreciative of male beauty with my aging?

Am i just being a horny old lady when i go to visit my David in Rome?
As my skin thins, am i more susceptible to male gorgeousness?

Or is it the marble?

If it were just the statuesque male physique represented by that sculpture, then how do you explain why I stood in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica and openly wept like a child when I once again laid my eyes on Buonarotti’s astonishing Piéta…that stunning, heart-breaking Mother and Child? I’d seen it several times before, but this time around, it slammed into my eyes, crashed through my skin and made me gasp, before my tears began to flow. Why THAT piece of art in that moment? I just stood there and cried, for the sadness of all the world.

It IS the marble.

What that artist was able to do with blocks of stone mystifies me, as I cannot even begin to imagine, first of all, how he sees into the rock and secondly, how his mere human arms can take away anything that does not look like what he sees.

The stone itself is quite special – Carrara marble, white or blue-ish grey marble that holds a bright high gloss when polished ….such brightness that the ancient Romans called it Luna marble, since its gloss when rubbed resembled the light of a full moon. And then, there’s this marble’s ability to hold very fine detail when cut into, so the sculptor , surely inspired by God or Something akin, can let his full inspiration run through his gifted hands and put all his infinite impulses into the marble’s surface.

That crystalline rock from which “marble” got its early Celtic name seems to be able to deliver messages, faith, love, awe, from another sphere…it is manifold in its subtleties and layers of communication, it vibrates – as do we all – in ways that contain as much light as they hold form.

What I experienced was the Light in the marble. David and that Mother and Child shone all the way into my spirit, and it felt….well….honestly,…it felt healing. I not only saw, I experienced.

Stone is as old as our Earth.
And in the presence of those sculptures, it’s a relief to realize a certain kind of Light is eternal and ages well…..ages well on our behalf, assuring us that Life does go on. Light can shine through anything. Even stone.
And it is beautiful .