Last Week

This last week has been an exciting one here in Roma!
We have been learning about Renaissance art, so we have gone to see several sculptures by Michelangelo and paintings by Raphael. Some of these were in the Vatican museums, others were frescos in a pleasure palace across the Tiber and still others were in churches. They were all amazing. The Vatican museums were overwhelming, even the second time through. It was interesting, we took a completely different route through as a class than we did when I went through with Grandma and Granddaddy, saw whole wings that we had skipped before, like the painting galleries, and we still missed the entire Egyptian wing and the Etruscan wing, and I’m sure there were other wings that we missed that I don’t know anything about. Overwhelming. And we got to see the Sistine Chapel again, which is beautiful, even though it is much smaller than I thought it would be. The detail in the paintings on the ceiling and the walls is astounding. The thing I enjoyed most about this particular visit was that I noticed that in one of the side panels, in which Moses had just led the Israelites across the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s Army was drowning, Pharaoh and his army look as if they had recently ridden out of Medieval Florence, they were all brunette white men, complete with the fashionable puffed sleeved, ornately detailed shirts, tight brightly colored leggings, and floppy Renaissance hats. It makes you realize just how little contact they had with other cultures when the painting was painted.
Michelangelo’s sculptures this week were all in churches. We went to see The Moses and had a long discussion about what moment in the story he represented or if the artist had made up a point in the story to represent. Later we went to another church close to the Pantheon where his Risen Christ is kept. This last sculpture is one of his least liked, because from the direction where you can see his face you also notice his extremely spindly legs and a huge behind. But if you walk around to the other side of the statue the change is amazing. Suddenly he snaps into correct proportion and you can see many details that were hidden before. It is a wonderful statue, from that angle. We learned that day that the intended setting for a statue is very important in viewing it correctly. This particular statue was intended for a niche that would have allowed people to only see him from this one side.
I just want to mention that while we were in Florence we also saw Michelangelo’s and Donatello’s Davids, and they were wonderful. We also go tot see Botticelli’s Primavera and The Birth of Venus and a completed Leonardo da Vinci painting and some works by Caravaggio. I was completely overwhelmed by the end of that week at everything that we got to see.
Oh, and at the end of this week we went to see the Catacombs. Those are so cool! And creepy. Very creepy. It feels so overwhelming to walk through these tunnels and see galleries filled with graves stacked like shelves that housed so many faithful for so many years, so many of them are empty now but often you will come across one that is still undisturbed. It was amazing.
How is everyone back home? Let me know how you are all doing!
Ciao!