So why no updates, you ask? Well, the truth is that our schedule the first days was rather busy. Now that we are in Florence, however, we have slowed down some. I say "some" because today we are heading to the Bargello and Uffizi museums. But back to Rome...
After landing at 2:30 pm on our first day, we hiked from our hotel to S. Peter in Chains church, home to Michelangelo's famous Moses, part of his giant tomb for Pope Julius II, by all accunts a very scary man (and the father of Cesare Borgia, the "prince" of whom Machiavelli so famously writes). Other sites that day included the Coliseum and part of the Forum.
Day 2 on the ground was spent between St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum, where we not only took in an incredible amount of Renaissance and Baroque art, but some religious art by famous 20th C painters, such as Chagall and Bacon and Dali. The emphasis, of course, was on Raphael and Michelangelo--namely, thie frescos in the Stanze and Sistine Chapel. We had studied these specifically in class, so it was great to be able to study these from only a few feet away. I also had the iPad there with me, opened up to our in-class PowerPoints, so the facts were there when we (the presenter, prof, and classmates) could not remember all the details. The remainder of the day was spent in the Piazza Novana area after visiting the Pantheon and S. Maria Della Sopra Minerva, home to a Michelangelo misnamed "The Risen Christ" (he is really shown as the Man of Sorrows, we discovered, after being detectives).
We left Rome the next morning, but not after rushing off to the Borghese to see the world's best collection of Bernini sculptures. Words almost fail here... But I can say that the trek to see his Baroque masterpieces--the David, Apollo and Daphne, Proserpine--was an intentional move on my part to help understand Michelangelo's work from a century earlier.
That brings us up to Florence, so we are almost current. But the rest will have to wait for a few hours. Ciao! (for now)
No comments:
Post a Comment