Submitted by William Voges on the 2019 winter session study abroad program in Siena, Italy sponsered by the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures…
What has struck me about Italy the most is how different it is while still being familiar all the same. My first thought while walking through Rome was “Wow, this is like New York City, but with marble.” Of course that is a vast exaggeration, but little things felt familiar to me, the little food carts on the side of the street, just substitute hot dogs for roasted chestnuts. Ever walk through Time Square past people in costumes who will pose for a picture with you for a dollar? Head on over to Rome and take a picture with a gladiator impersonator for a euro! Those little familiar differences stuck out to me, humans are the same everywhere, it’s just the details that are altered.
I’ve never been one to stare at art in we, but when we went to Florence, that changed for me. I don’t think I had ever actually gasped in my life, I didn’t even think people actually gasped, but when I first laid my eyes on Michelangelo’s David, I gasped. The detail to me is unreal. How a man in the 1500s, with no aid of any type of machinery, can perfectly etch every detail of the human body into marble blows my mind. He got everything, the curvature and divots of the kneecaps, the tiny wrinkles of skin on the joints of each toe, even the veins on his hands were spot on. Words cannot do it justice, neither can pictures. I tried my best to capture in HD quality the tiny details of the work, but even with an $800 camera, only seeing it with your own eyes will truly highlight its beauty.