If you could be transported anywhere in the world, at any point in time, where and when would would you choose to live, and why?
It's a pretty close call between Elizabethan England and the Italian Renaissance. But if I had to pick only one, the Renaissance would be the winner.
Would it not be amazing if we could go back in time to experience the Renaissance for ourselves? Being able to walk down the streets of Florence or Rome and experience this time period that not only gave rebirth to old values and artistic ways of statement, but also were a period of great individualism. To see people from various levels of society begin to make these great contributions to all facets of the arts.
It would be amazing to witness firsthand the sense of wonder that must have filled people when they began to see the advances in architecture that brought structures like St Peter's Basilica. I can scarcely begin to imagine what it must have been like for them the first time they heard Handel's Messiah. And I cannot begin to imagine the sense of pleasure they felt gazing at objects like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
To be a part of this time period where the Humanists began to make people realize the powers of their mind would have been a sublime pleasure. I can only wonder how it must have felt for people to begin to realize that they had open to them all sorts of possibilities of free expression and expansion. And to be encouraged, for the first time, to explore the possibilities that were there for you must have been something both liberating and slightly frightening.
