Excerpt
illions of people who also want to see it.”
Ken was adamant. He didn’t care about the realities of the situation.
He wanted to see the statue of David on his own and he wanted to take
all the time in the world to absorb its beauty. He would talk of nothing
else and finally his father relented and asked permission to see the director
of the museum. They were ushered into his office and Ken explained
how his grandfather had given him the book of Michelangelo and how
very interested he was in seeing David and how disappointed he was after
coming all this way, that he couldn’t see the statue properly because there
were so many people.
The director smiled. “That’s true,” he said. “There are quite a lot of
people who want to see David.”
“But, you can look at it alone,” Ken said. “No one comes at night.”
“That’s quite true,” the director admitted. “In fact night time is the best
time to see it. The incandescent lights make it look very different.”
The director agreed to allow Ken into the museum that night. But first
they went out to supper where they discussed Michelangelo’s works. The
director explained that the art world knew a great deal about Michelangelo
because he was a profuse letter writer. The museum had all his
writings in safekeeping, even his grocery lists. His letters had allowed historians
to determine his relationship to the Pope and to authorities in
government.
That night Ken walked through the museum completely alone. Time
stopped. He was carried away by the experience – so much so that he
could not afterwards describe to his father how he had felt. He only knew
that it was as if he had discovered an electrical cord attached to the universe
that he was able to plug directly into his soul.
After they had toured Florence, they travelled on to Milan to look at
some of the works of Leonardo da Vinci, which Ken thought seemed cold
and cruel. He told his father that the Last Supper was an odd painting. “If
it’s supposed to be the twelve apostles why is one of them a woman?’
“No, they’re all men,” his father said.
“But look at that,” Ken insisted, pointing at the figure leaning away
from Jesus on his right hand side, “That doesn’t look like a man.”
Once again they found themselves talking to a museum director. The
director of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie insisted that all the
figures in the painting were men.
“Show me a man who looks like that,” Ken said.
“Oh yes, it is – absolutely, it is a man,” the director insisted. “There are
no women in that picture.”
Ken left, wondering why neither the director nor his father could perceive
what he saw so plainly.
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