Yesterday I read Eric Rhodes' email about his upcoming group art trip to France. What caught my eye was this . . . "I'd been to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, battling the lines and crowds and seeing it all with no lights. With Fine Art Connoisseur, we had rare access with a small group, no crowds . . . and the lights on."
While I agree lights are usually a good thing, we should not forget that the paintings in those churches were not created to be viewed with lights. Several hundred years would pass before electricity became the ubiquitous creature comfort we all enjoy. The paintings people wait in long lines to see were made to be viewed without lights.
Noah Charney in an article titled "The art of learning: Why art history might be the most important subject you could study today" said it best:
"For many years, I taught a course for Brown University in Rome, called Secrets and Symbols of Roman Art and Architecture. While popping into various churches in the city, we'd approach a chapel and there would inevitably be a box into which you could slip coins to turn on bright lights, to better see the art.
"My students seemed never to have considered that these 16th- and 17th-century paintings should not be seen with bright electric lights. Sure, it's easier to see with them, but they were not intended to be seen thus, centuries before the invention of the lightbulb. They are dark and murky, crisscrossed or engulfed by shadows: that was how they were meant to be seen. The only illumination would come from natural sunlight (usually limited in chapels), and perhaps a candle held aloft by a member of the clergy or the family of the patron of the work. This is the natural habitat for Caravaggio's shadowy canvases, for instance."
