Day 7- The Ides of March!

Beware! Today may make you so tired that you have to post the next day!

Started out the day with coffee with our friend Erica (fellow blogger-read it at http://ericafirpo.com/moscerina/)  with her daughter Xanthe at the Palazzo Braschi. Erica's the one who lent us her flat while she and her family were up north scouting the wilds of Saint Moritz for a review. Tough job! Actually, we had already gotten a coffee rush going at our new B&B, which left us refreshed after a nice quiet night (actually still as a tomb- it's weird to be in the middle of town and have it be so quiet!) Our new host is a chatty and friendly Roman woman named Michela who runs this two room place and served us a nice breakfast. You can find her rooms at http://unpostoaroma.eu/?lang=en.  It's a great bargain, recently redone, in a central locale close to the Piazza Navona and Campo de Fiori.

Xanthe models the latest in Roman fashions! Oversized is IN!

After quick coffees, we headed to the nearby Largo Argentina, which is a modern transport hub and cat sanctuary, but a also a cluster of 4 republican era temples that were located near the Theater of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was actually killed. There, a historical group was reenacting the event, which we only caught the tail end of, though we did get to see the costumes, which was fun for Xanthe. Chatted at their flat for a little, then Marianne and I walked up to visit the Vatican museums, always a favorite spot for me. 

Erica, Xanthe, Brutus and Marianne. Et tu?

Spent quite a while in the Hall of Maps there, four hundred feet of ornamental bliss! There is not a square inch of that hall that has not been lovingly caressed with a paint brush! They're still working on some kind of exterior renovation with scaffolding that covers a significant portion of the interior, but there is nevertheless many square feet of things to look at, even if you skip over the main narrative panels as I mostly do. The maps are exquisite- with all kinds of fascinating details, from sea monsters to landscapes, with beautiful legend cartouches interesting insets showing what the cities looked like at the time (1580's roughly.) I could easily spend a month in this room just perusing and copying things- it is so rich!

Just a little mascheron in the gigantic Hall of Maps at the Vatican, yet look at how skillfully it is painted.  Not one square inch of this room is wasted!

But we had to move on, so we went through Raphael's Stanze (rooms) with their amazing images of artists, philosophers, and religious images, and the earlier rooms by Pinturicchio, painted for the notorious Borgia pope Alexander VI in the late 1400's. These are interesting to me as one of the first places that grottesca work is seen after the uncovering of Nero's palace, the Domus Aurea, in about 1490. They also have intricate majolica tile floors and 500 year old graffiti that is all over if you look closely at the walls. 

Pinturicchio's ceiling in one of the Borgia apartments is a very early example of modern use of grottesca ornament, inspired by the uncovering of the Domus Aurea

Then we entered the holy of holies, the Sistine Chapel. This is the third time I have visited this room, and it just gets better each time. It was a tad less crowded this time of year, though the guards are still doing their "Shhhhhh!" act and shouting "no photos!". I usually don't shoot in there, as there are very good books that have wonderful details of most of it, but someone had asked me to try to shoot the painted curtains that run around the room, so i took a handful of those, and got scolded accordingly. There is no doubt that this room is one of the great wonders of the world in so many ways, and the fact that Michelangelo was able to pull it off in four years (at age 33!) is enough to make any artist walk away from their brushes!

After the Sistine, the rest of the museum is a denouement, but there are still some real treats. The room of the Aldobrandini Wedding, which has a small collection of Roman fresco panels and mosaics, is a stand out. The panels of landscapes based on Homer's Odyssey are remarkably atmospheric for their time, and the room itself has panels by Guido Reni on the ceiling that are also outstanding. The Sistine Library, which was recently closed off to the public, has yet more amazing grottesca work. 

Naturally, I am completely pooped after this experience, but I agreed to go inside St Peter's on our way back to our place. Again, as always, it is an uncanny experience. Michelangelo's Pieta is so moving! The way Mary's left hand releases the body on her lap, and seems to be forming the expression of "why?" is absolutely wrenching! Michelangelo had such an uncanny ability to get inside of the emotions we portray through our body language, in a way that is both natural and artistic. Right as we got there a ceremony  at the main altar was wrapping up, we just barely caught some of the smoke and singing, and Marianne swears she saw the Pope (and JFK, and Elvis) on the little balcony, even though everyone we talked to said it was just a regular Saturday evening service. We had a good laugh about it as we ambled away on our way home.

St Peter's at dusk

We made a vain attempt to get our phone service in order (it's working now!) and then stopped at a fun little fish restaurant near Largo Argentina where I had my second great octopus dish in as many weeks! Cruised back here and crashed hard. 

Got up for Marianne's last day here (at least for the week- she has to show up at work this week- long story!) and went over to see the interior of Sant'Ivo, Borromini's corkscrew topped church. The interior is elegantly plain (not severe, but unpainted), and then we went to see the inside of the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, a beautiful old house that is only open once a year, in celebration of the brief resurrection of one the Massimo family's ancestors. The family still lives in the house, and while we were there they were also receiving a variety of Rome's hoi polloi, including a Cardinal in his red propeller hat, and a woman who was having her hand kissed in a very regal manner. It was dark and cozy.

This fellow was waiting in his period costume to allow us into the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne. That was the real deal- not a copy.

After that we fixed the phone problem and headed back for a light lunch and computer time so I could keep you up to date.

Day 25- Vaticano!

Started the day with a fabulous visit to the lovely local laundromat, where we paid the ridiculous sum of around $30 for the privilege of washing our own clothes in their machines! Really! The only upside was that they had an issue of Q magazine from earlier this spring that had a bunch of good articles on David Bowie. So at least I was entertained. 

Bronze pine cone in the Belvedere of the Vatican museums is from Roman times.

After that much excitement, it was hard to get motivated for anything else, but we finally settled on going to see the Vatican Museums, since it was on our subway line. Just kidding- one of my favorite museums in the world, mostly because they dispense with all that boring stuff hung on the walls and just cut to the stuff painted right on the walls (and the ceilings, and the furniture, and the clothing). Of course, they do make you walk through about 10 galleries of "modern" art on the way to the Sistine, but that must be some of the loneliest art in the world- nobody stops to actually look at it. (there is a lovely little Odilon Redon drawing in one of the rooms, sadly neglected. I'll take it if no one else wants it!)

Hall of Hairdos. I love how the Italians get so excited about "repatriating" some statue or another from foreign museums (mostly the Getty here in LA) but when they get one that had its own room at the Getty, it's like "Put it over there on that shelf with the 450 others." Pass the duster please!

Anyways, we went down there around two pm and walked right in with no line. We had been told about a night time session on Friday nights that's supposed to be less crowded, but I'm glad we went during the day, since their artificial lighting is not so good, and I'm all about the photos, as you might have guessed. It was a bit crowded, especially in the first few halls, and especially since they are doing work in a couple of the big hallways which compresses the space further. 

"Scuse me- could you all just step aside so I can take my photos please?"

They have also added a ton of merchandising since I was here last time 6 years ago. Book counters were everywhere, adding to the congestion. I can just see some marketing fiend saying "You are missing a big income source here fellows! You gotta sell it to them before they get outside the place!" YUCK! Resin castings of classical sculptures are really awful, will be impossible to get home, and will be totally ignored once there. Most people are just trying to get into the Sistine while they are in there, and totally glide past the amazing creativity of halls like the Cartografiche and Raphael's Stanze.

Even behind a cash register, the ornament in the Hall of Maps is incredible!

But not me! I'm like that stick poking up in the river- all the flowing flotsam has to get around me one way or another as I steady my camera on the door frame or bannister of the staircase to take a detail shot of the amazing ornament on the walls and ceilings. Tough. The Hall of Maps (Cartografiche) was half draped with a scaffold, but it is still incredible- all 400 feet of it! About an hour into our visit we decided to get a snack downstairs, so we traversed that hall 3 times, including once against the flow (ever feel like a salmon?) The amount of traffic through there is phenomenal- I can well imagine them curtailing it for preservation reasons before too long- get it while it's good!

Flourish on the wall in the Hall of Maps with a Barberini Bee.

The Raphael rooms are impressive- some day I'll figure out how to visit the loggia, but til then these will have to suffice. His creativity in dealing with the same groin vaulted space in four different treatments is remarkable. There were also a couple rooms by Pinturricchio that were like a pleasant eddy that nobody went in. They had original tiled floors and a noticeably quieter feeling. These were the Borgia apartments, made for the not so nice Pope Alexander VI.

Pinturricchio ceiling in the Borgia Apartments was one of the earliest grottesca paintings in the Vatican. Painted in 1493

We did finally get to the Sistine Chapel, and it is worth all the press. I'm one of those who was all for the cleaning process, especially now that you can see the little patches that they left uncleaned. Michelangelo's way with color was as impressive as his way with form, in my opinion. The colors of the Libyan Sibyl just glow in a way that nobody else at that time was doing- at least not in fresco. He was also an obsessive experimenter with his colors. The green fabrics in the ceiling are never treated the same way twice. Here he uses a purple highlight; there it's pink, here the shadows are blue, there red. And the lower murals are also great, though they are merely decorations next to Michelangelo's work above. How I envy the job of the restoration people on that job! I would love to be face to face with one of those giant figures (for a little while- I guess I don't really envy them being there for months on end, cleaning a two foot patch with a sable brush and cotton swabs. 

These figures by Michelangelo are probably some of the most copied panels in the decorative world.

Damn! I'm really getting verbose! It's all your guys fault, saying you like reading it! 

Made our way home via the Piazza del Popolo, then up to the edge of the Borghese gardens at sunset. We have caught so many amazing natural lights on this trip. Also high point vantages around Rome! Fun getting a more solid feeling for the layout of the town. Went down the Spanish Steps and wondered why every city in the US doesn't have a space like that- a place that's just fun to hang around in when you don't know where you want to go. Also a great place to meet people: ones you know and ones you don't. 

The remarkable Spanish Steps in front of the Church of Santa Trinita dei Monti.

Finally went by the Trevi Fountain, which was overflowing with tourists and eager photo sellers. Not my cup of tea, but we did throw in a coin to make sure we can come back again. Made it back to the Casa della Stinche for our repast and catching up with internet. Need to turn in now so that we can meet our friend Carolina tomorrow morning for coffee.