Seeing Things in the Sistine Chapel

A writer studies a famous work of art only to see herself and her own cultural moment revealed at its heart. Jeannie Marshall lived in Rome for ten years without visiting the Sistine Chapel: she didn't want to have a superficial experience of the frescos, but she wasn't sure how, amidst the crowds of tour groups and the noise of pop culture allusions, she could have anything but. What's more, she wondered what this very old, very Catholic art, created by a man who grew up under the warm Tuscan sun of the Renaissance, could possibly have to say to a modern woman raised in the New World by a family in retreat from Christianity-and what could it say to any of us living in the twenty-first century. Seeing Things in the Sistine Chapel is Marshall's story of her intentional encounter with one of the world's most cherished artworks and an impassioned defence of the role of art in our lives. A personal account of finding meaning, and a model for how to engage deeply with the past, Seeing Things is a quietly sublime meditation on how art, once invested with the power to save our souls, can enlarge our lives if only we learn how to look.