Where's my Michelangelo?

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-4564 A.D.)
Italian architect, painter, and sculptor

If you have ever been to the Accademia museum in Florence, you might have seen the unbelievably beautiful "trapped sculptures" by Michelangelo. You know that the sight, though beautiful, is a bit unnerving. Maybe it is only unnerving to those of us who have trouble separating the spirit of the art from the actual material, in this case marble. Either way, it is true that Michelangelo believed that the complete sculptures already existed within the marble, and his job was to free them.

As you walk toward the very famous and more than radiant The David (which can understandably eclipse anything else in the museum or the universe), you may or may not notice that trapped sculptures flank both sides of the corridor. Though masterpieces because Michelangelo began them, these sculptures are sadly unfinished. Parts (faces, hands, torsos) of these struggling subjects protrude out of their stoney blocks. My heart broke to see them like that because I sincerely wanted them to be complete, to be free. Some would say that these sculptures are what Michelangelo intended them to be - stuck in their anguish. This means that some of them were not supposed to be complete... Whether or not you agree with this, they are there, immediate and palpable.

As irrational and, to borrow a term from my students, emo as it sounds, I trembled at the thought of existing as one of those unfinished sculptures, probably because I feel trapped in this imperfect flesh at times. I want so badly to be "finished," to be beautiful, and to be "free". I don't know exactly what that means, which may be part of the issue, but I know that I identified with the trapped figures and was frightened at the desperation I felt for them.

Maybe there is comfort in the fact that some of us do get close, for at the end of the corridor stands The David, created from a "trash" piece of marble. The David is stunning and stopped me in my tracks. I became lost in the beauty of his gentle presence and I completely fell in love with him in that light and in his expression. I couldn't look away once I saw him. He made it. The David- finished, beautiful, and free- truly exists! The others must be envious.

I was gutted to leave them all there and was heart-sick at the realization that that was it. American tourist Ginger,one of the millions who get to visit this museum each year, was moving on and might never see this beauty again.

My hope is that there truly is beauty in the anguish of the unfinished, and that eventually we can become free of our "marble" confinements.