A Great Museum, Especially If You Have Six Years

Thursday, we had our first tour with Cecilia.  Fortunately, we all thought she is a wonderful guide, because she was also our guide for Friday's Vatican museum/St. Peter's Basilica.

We were picked up by our driver promptly at 7:30 am (it's a bit far to walk from the apartment to the Vatican), then picked-up Cecilia along the way.

Doing a guided "skip the line" tour is the only way to see the Vatican museum (and to keep keep your sanity).

There is so much to see on the tour that you need a guide to take you to the most important sights.  There is so much in the museum that, according to Cecilia, if you spent 30 seconds looking at all of everything in the museum, it would take six years.

(Editor: "All of everything"?  Writer: I am trying to convey the vastness of the collection.  You are welcome to test whether the 30 seconds/6 year is true.)

I am not Catholic, but to give credit where credit is due, when Rome collapsed in AD 476, the Catholic Church preserved a great deal of Western Civilization, collecting art, furniture, and other items from many cultures, and that eventually became the museum (after serving time in their palace).   

I really don't need to write much about the Vatican Museums -- just know that, if you haven't been, you can't see it all.  And you really shouldn't try.  Go see the greatest hits as led by a guide (preferably Cecilia) and enjoy it until you enter a museum fugue state.

The Sistine Chapel

I am going to say it right off the bat.  The Sistine Chapel is amazing, and for all the reasons it is said to be.  

It's the place where new popes are elected.  It's the personal chapel of the pope.

But it is perhaps more famous as the location of both Michelangelo's ceiling and, at one end, the Last Judgment.  Remember, Michelangelo believed he was a sculptor, and not a painter, so at first he turned down the job.  Pope Julius II stayed after Michelangelo and finally convinced him to do it.  

Julius had only asked for the 12 apostles along the sides of the ceiling, but Michelangelo had a better idea.  Across the ceiling he painted biblical scenes.

The most famous is the Creation of Adam, as God reaches out to bring Adam to life with the power in his finger.  The picture dominates the middle of the ceiling, although it is no larger than any other scene.  God, and his entourage (I believe none were named "Turtle") are enveloped in what is shaped like the human brain.

Other paintings on the ceiling (vault) include the Separation of Light from Darkness, the Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Planets, the Separation of the Waters, the Creation of Eve, Original Sin and Explusion from Paradise, Noah's Sacrifice, The Flood, and the Drunkenness of Noah.

On the curved down part of the ceiling, there are prophets, sybils, and ancestors of Jesus.

No one is allowed to take photos, or whisper, or linger too long.  Frankly, having been through a similar experience back in the spring with the amazing Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, frescoe'd by Giotto (his style was a precursor to the Renaissance), the Scrovegni experience was more satisfying.

Now, I have seen the Sistine Chapel twice before, and I am certainly NOT knocking it.  It's amazing.  But if you are going to northern Italy (Milan and or Venice), detour out of your way to go see the Scrovegni Chapel.  (Get tickets well in advance, not everyone can be as lucky as we were.)

   

I decided to put the "no pictures" dictum to the test. . .I hid behind another tourist, put my iPhone in selfie mode, and took these two pictures, hoping for the best:

Okay, so while I didn't get the

best, I got something, and I

didn't get caught.

You'll note I didn't get the Last Judgment, which Michelangelo started work on more than two decades after he finished the ceiling.  I didn't get any pictures of that 

I didn't take this, and I'm

supposed to attribute it, so

I will: Created by Michelangelo.

Vatican Museum Photos

Whelp, most of the Vatican museum, Vatican, Sant Angelo, and Galleria Colonna photos were taken by Maria Meredith because a stupid camera "malfunction" by me that I will be blogging about down the road a bit.  Sigh.

Me.  And a whole bunch of geniuses.

(In the painting, not the crowd!)

The School of Athens is such an amazing

painting I had to show it twice.

This fresco by Raphael painted between

1509 and 1511 shows famed ancient

 philosophers, mathematicians, and

scientists, including Plato, Aristotle,

Socrates, Pythagoras, and Archimedes.

It is believed that Leonardo di Vinci,

Michelangelo, and Raphael himself

are in the painting.  The first two as

ancients, and Raphael as himself.

A hallway in the museum.

In the map hall of the Vatican.

Also in the map gallery.

The maps were the official

maps of the Popes from

1582 until the 19th century.

The ceiling is painted molded

stucco, with the style taken

from excavated Roman

grottoes.

Michelangelo's dome from a museum patio.

Roman mosaics.

Random collection of random Romans.

"I'm even taller now!" says

the exurberant statue.

Not quite DaVinci's Last

Supper, but not bad.

A copy of Michelangelo's

Madonna della Pieta.

The Cortile della Pigna. . .

the courtyard of the pine cone.

The pine cone itself is 12 feet tall,

and is 2,000 years old.  The

courtyard is Renaissance, designed

by Bramante.

The insignia of the pope.

The Sphere within Sphere.  By Italian

sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro.  Julia

got to help Cecilia start spinning it,

which was pretty cool to watch.

It came to the Vatican museum

courtyard in 1990.

Other similar spheres Pomodoro created

are at the UN and Trinity College of

Dublin, among other places.  There are 17

in  the U.S. and another 17 in Italy.  Some

are much smaller than this one at the

Vatican Museum.

A Greek statue.

"Laocoon and his sons," a

Greek statue from around 500 BC.

This represents the end of the Trojan

War, as he warned his fellow Trojans

to "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

(unless its baklava, then eat it

without a second thought.)

The gods wanted the Greeks to win, so

they sent huge snakes to crush

Laocoon and his two sons to death.

A Greek tragedy, I suppose.

The Belvedere Torso.

Signed by a sculptor named

Apollonius from the 1st 

century BC, the exquisitely

carved torso was an inspiration

to Michelangelo.  

 Look at the definition of the

muscles.  Michelangelo used

the torso as the model for the

body of Jesus in the

Sistine Chapel.

A huge Malachite vase on an

1,700 year old mosaic floor. The

vase decorated Nero's palace.

The vase was made from a single

block of purple porphyry marble

brought from a mountain in Egypt.

Great pic by Maria of

the Dome of St. Peter's

from a window.

An excellent picture of the 

School of Athens by Maria.

Plato (center, in red), points up, showing

his belief that mathematics and ideas

are the source of truth, whilst

Aristotle (in blue) gestures down,

highlighting the need for hands-on

study of the material world.

Socrates is on the left, in green. He

is with the other thinkers on the left,

while the scientists are on the right.

While Raphael was painting this

room, Michelangelo was down the

way painting the Sistine Chapel.

Raphael had finished his fresco,

and then went to check out the

Sistine Chapel.  He was so

blown away by it he added

Michelangelo as the man in

purple right at the front, leaning

on a block of marble.

I don't think there is a country with

as much amazing ceiling art as Italy.