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 TrojanWar, 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.
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