A man visits the Sistine Chapel on Feb. 1, 2021 in Vatican City.*Originally published on June 14, 2023.
For years, Canadian writer Jeannie Marshall, who has lived in the Eternal City for two decades, stayed away. Mostly she was turned off by the crowds, but also because the Sistine Chapel is both complicated and obscure — too difficult to unravel in just one view — and overexposed. Inexplicably, she found herself putting up with the crowds and standing under the dazzling array of Biblical scenes painted above her: God's finger reaching out to Adam's, infusing him with life; Adam and Eve being chased from the Garden of Eden; Jesus separating the saved from the damned; and the scene that first captivated her, Noah and the flood, otherwise known as"I realized what was going on in the painting was not what I thought," said Marshall.