La Dolce Vita University by Gambescia Carla;

Author:Gambescia, Carla;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2021-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

We moderns want to stay young forever and don’t want to think about death unless it’s treated as a camp statement of style but, for those living in antiquity and up to the beginning of the 20th century, death was seen as a motivator to live a virtuous life. To help reflect on this, artists created mosaics, paintings, and sculptures of skulls, skeletons, and other symbols of death to encourage contemplation on how you live your life. Romans also used the phrase memento mori to remind each other of the brevity of life, that death makes us all equal, and to remember to live life and each day to its fullest. By honoring death, you thus honor life.

The flip of memento mori is carpe diem . . . seize the day. Carpe diem comes from the great Roman poet Horace’s injunction, “Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero” which appears in his Odes (I.11), published in 23 BC translating literally as “Pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one.”

So, do as the Romans did . . . rejoice, and be glad in it!

MARBLE CARPET

For sheer scale and intricacy of detail, there are few surfaces in the world than can be compared to the floor of the Siena Cathedral. Its panels of interlocking marble create a marvelous carpet of allegorical and biblical scenes. The effects of contrasting light and dark of the marble inlay make for an almost dizzying expressionistic effect which is heightened, literally, by the Cathedral’s zebra-striped columns soaring above the floor. The whole shebang, on view only eight to ten weeks a year, has been known to move some—including that composer of spectacularly emotional operas, Richard Wagner—to tears.

Crafted by about forty artists and artisans between the 14th and 17th centuries, the 56 panels that constitute the 14,000 square feet of floor vary in size and shape and employ two different techniques: graffito, in which tiny holes and cutting lines are created in the marble and then filled with black stucco and mineral pitch; and marble intarsia, in which black, white, green, red, and blue marble are fitted together, in a fashion similar to inlayed wood.

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