Duomo di Parma (an assignment for SOC 399)

The Duomo di Parma is a very old building, its 832 year-old façade a patchwork of replaced stones and mended mortar, its clock tower wrapped in scaffolding for refurbishment. The inside is dark and vast, a huge hall of endless pillars and apses, with a ceiling arching up into shadow. It appears much bigger than it is, because every wall is covered in paintings, opening out into whole other rooms and worlds that don’t exist- when I first walked in the door I turned around to find a completely different entrance depicted behind me, a giant archway flanked by stone lions, with crowds of people waiting on the other side. The trompe l’oeil was spectacular: some pillars and statues seemed to have three dimensions until I was close enough to see the cracks in the paint. I had seen good trompe l’oeil before, but I had never walked through an entire world of it.  The main hall is flanked by apses, and each apse has its own style. Some follow the mural-like frescoes of the main walls, with life-sized crowds gathered around a saint; others have smaller, comic-bookish storyboards of the life of a saint or stories of the Bible, painted in medieval style. One is done in Byzantine portraits surrounded by gold leafing and geometric patterns, another in a clean Victorian style with crown moldings, the next covered in more trompe l’oeil, this time of carved marble cherubs and Corinthian scrolls. One apse has no decoration at all, but has been done over completely in mottled gray plaster: an unadorned crucifix stands at the end, and the room is filled with plain wooden pews. Surrounded by all the extravagant embellishment and trompe l’oeil, the barren focus of this alcove pulls your eye in more than gold leafing and bright colors.
In the main cupola, the dome at the center of the cross-shaped hall, there are people painted all the way around the ceiling, dressed in colorful robes, bare-footed and surrounded by clouds, as if half floating and half climbing towards the top of the dome, which is incased in shadows. I cannot see what is at the top until someone from a tour group pays a Euro to turn on the lighting in the dome- then everything is suddenly and brightly illuminated. At the center is Mary, ascending to heaven, sunbeams bursting around her, groups of angels pointing and gesturing encouragingly. The painting is done so well that I can’t find the corners where the octagon walls meet the circular dome, they are covered so smoothly in clouds or flowing robes. I stare up at it until my neck gets sore, trying to make my eyes focus on the flat, solid walls I know are there, and failing. After 5 or 6 minutes, the lights go off again, and the ascension of Mary, with all her sunbeams, is darkened until someone pays another Euro.