The Vatican Museum

I presented a report on the Merchant of Venice this morning, so I haven't been able to update about my adventures (The report went well).  But yesterday we went to the Vatican Museum, and although we were there for 4 or so hours there was a lot more to look at.  That's a theme in the Vatican City.  Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries so I wasn't able to document everything. 

My three favorite moments were the pope's contemporary/modern art collection, the painting gallery where you witness the brink of the Renaissance (in Giotto's work), and the Sistine chapel.  Being in the Sistine chapel was worth coming all this way (Mom and Dad!).  My best description is I've never felt like I could read so much about the artist in a work (or wanted to meet artist so much!), especially one so long gone.  Now I'm realizing that it was probably so incredible and striking because I've somewhat modeled my own art practice and art theories after him.  Ah!


It's the Vatican Museum.  Collections of popes and cardinals.

Giotto: he's the father of Renaissance paintings, you can compare these naturalistic figures to medieval ones.  From left to right, the crucifixion of St. Peter (too humble to be crucified in the same way as christ... also, happy St Peter's day everyone!) , Christ, beheading of an unknown saint o:

 Detail of St. Anthony

Painting of St. Jerome by Raphael's master il Perugi.  St Jerome translated the bible to Greek and removed a thorn from a lion's paw (having never seen a lion, he had to extrapolate a lion from the house cats he'd seen.  Cute!)

Raphael:  the transfiguration of Christ. The emotions you see and the synthesis of two biblical events together was novel for Raphael to do.

 ...more St Jerome by Leonardo da Vinci. The square around his face is because that part was used to make a chair when Leonardo was less liked .............(also this is a print, not the actual painting)

Caravaggio

St. Peter's dome!  You can see where we climbed to, at the base of that cylinder on the top.

Greyhounds of Italy

 Cats of Rome

Note the ceiling.  Along the walls are maps of popes' home towns.

Anyways, we had class yesterday evening and then I went out to dinner and had a mixed fried things plate (fried mashed potatoes, fried rice, fried olive...) (hannah-In the past few days, I've had pistachio, nutella, raspberry, dark chocolate, truffle, and passion fruit gelatos.  Apparently pagliacci has good gelatos so we'll frequent that as I withdraw from pizza/gelato diet).  So we had a long day of Mona's class and Ricardo's class today, (and I had falafel... something to stay in the US for) and I'm about to relax and catch up on sleep before we depart to Florence TOMORROW!

Dad, what kind of espresso should I pick up while I'm here?