A VIRTUAL STROLL TO ROME

Last Judgement, by Michelangelo, via Wikimedia Commons

                                                                  

I have never been to Rome. I know that it is close from where I live and that it would be relatively affordable to get there but somehow so far I have not managed to get there. I can take a stroll through the Sistine Chapel, however, entirely for free. A virtual stroll namely.

Virtual tours can help to make places more accessible to a greater number of people. The only prerequisite is computer, or mobile phone, which have Adobe Flash Player installed and a working internet connection. Of course, a virtual tour will never be the real thing. Never. That aside, I do think that it can reveal many a thing that say a digital image of a piece of art cannot.

The most prominent example that comes to my mind when it comes to virtual tours is the Google Art Project. However, I do want to cover this project in its own individual post. A number of individual Art and Heritage institutions offer virtual tours on their web pages.

What I like about virtual tours, apart from feeling like I am living in the future, is that one can grasp some sense of space and scale as to the size of the surroundings and art works. And while I feel that some aspects of a non-virtual stroll are much-missed, for instance the immediate background not being incredibly blurry, other aspects actually grant me a greater access than a normal tour ever could. On most virtual tours one can “zoom into” spaces that would usually be out of reach. Out of reach either literally because of location, too high up, for instance. Or, out of reach because of the limitations of my eyesight. On my visit to the sixteenth chapel this afternoon I was able to admire The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo and The Last Judgement all without the help of a ladder, a magnifying glass and without hundreds of other tourists right by my side. One particular thing that could be improved about the Sistine Chapel tour is that one looks out to the chapel from one fixed point and can then zoom into places of interest. Due to this, objects further away from this fixed point unfortunately can seem a little distorted. A funny thing that I recently learned about The Last Judgement, is, how the great amount of nudity was considered too obscene for the pope’s church. So do take a look at it, virtually or real, and imagine how Daniele da Volterra stood right there, taming the painting with the clothes that we see today.