4/7 - Rome (Part 1)
*This post was supposed to have some photos in it, but thanks to the incompetence/stupidity/laziness of a French Internet Cafe staff member in Nimes, they have been lost for eternity*
People complained that it was hot, yet they pulled a sheet over themselves when they slept. Strange.
I told the woman sleeping in my hotel room that I spent a whole day at the Louvre, and she asked, "Are you an artist?" Gah.
Rome possibly has even more grafitti than Berlin. Amazing.
At 8:35, there was already a very long queue to the Vatican Museums/Sistine Chapel, which opened only at 8:45. I entered the queue at 8:35, it started moving at 8:38, and although it moved quite fast, I only waltzed past the security checkpoint at 10:10.
I went to the Pinacoteca (picture gallery) first. Unfortunately it wasn't airconditioned since they were cheapskate.
*Nicolo e Giovanni - Il Giudzio finale (Last Judgment)*
2nd half of the 12th century
*Maniera di turino vanni*
Story of St. Margherita. c. 1400
*Melozzo da Forli - Apostol: e angeli musicanti (musicianangels)*
*Carlo Crivelli - La Pieta*
Mid-late 15th century
I think the sorrow was surprisingly unrestrained for the period.
*Ultima Cena Tapestry*
*Raphael - Crowning of the Virgin*
This was in the only air-conditioned room.
*Bellini - Il Seppellimento di Cristo (Lament over the dead Christ)*
*Paolo Caliare - St Helena*
*Raffaellino del Colle - Adoration of the Magi*
2nd third of the 16th century
*View out of the window*
*Caravaggio - La deposizione dalla croce (Deposition from the cross)*
*Orazio Gentileschi - Giudith (Judith and her handmaid with the head of Holofernes)*
Bloody hell. These were all undated.
The still life collection was laughable.
*Wenzel Peter - Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden*
Exiting the Pinacoteca, I found that there were many more galleries left (8 collections I wanted to see [ie No modern religious art], including the Sistine Chapel) in 5 hrs 10 mins, so I had to speed up my pace. The early Christian art section was closed, probably because they lacked the manpower. Oh well. From the description, it strangely all sounded like classical stuff anyway.
The ethnology section was special, since it had information and artefacts from the evangelisation of those areas.
*Taoist altar, 1904*
Tibet and Mongolia were closed.
*Our Lady of Japan*
Luca Hasegawa, 1927
*Copy of Nestorian Stele*
Found near Xi'an in 1627
*Virgin Mary with Child*
20th century, Taiwan
*Courtyard of the Vatican Museums*
There was this crazy guy taking pictures of signs pointing to the toilet (both male and female) and cafeteria. He must've had too much memory space on his camera.
The toilet bowls in the Vatican Museums had no seats so I had to sit on the bowl. Wth. This was not going to be the last time that I was forced to do this.
*Staircase*
A painted one, of course. This was leading away from a gallery of Classical statues and was just inside the courtyard.
*View of Rome from the Vatican Museums balcony*
*Mosaic with circus scene*
3rd century AD.
*Apoxyomenos* (Athlete cleaning himself)
Replacement picture:
Roman copy of 320 BC lisippus original
*Octogonal court*
*Various pieces of sculpture which I didn't note down on paper since they were not labelled anyway*
There were other works here and there I snapped but have no record of.
Almost all the Roman sculptures had no information (not even their name), and almost all had no audioguide either. Bah. Even the statue group of Laocoon and his sons was not labelled - the only clue to its significance was that a film crew had cordoned off the area around it and were filming it. Luckily, I recognised them.
*Laocoon and his sons*
Replacement picture:
*Sarcophagus?*
I like how the door was sculpted open.
Large parts of the Roman art gallery were closed also. Gah.
*Statue of Meleager*
Roman copy, c. 150 of 340-30 BC scopus original
*Relief with Dancing armed figurines*
Roman late rep. copy of classic Greek
*Mosaic*
Floor of Greek Coorls (?) room
*Mummy of a woman*
21st dynasty, Thebes
Or as an American said: "This is where beef jerky comes from"
*Anubis-Hermes*
1-2nd century AD
Anzio (?)
The Egyptian collection was alright, but there was a reason why it wasn't in the top 5 list.
Almost all of the Vatican museums collections had no airconditioning. Ugh. One lady was siting on a chair and being given water by a male paramedic.
The Etruscan art collection was closed. I was very pissed off. Every decent museum has a Classical and Egyptian collection, but Etruscan artefacts are hard to find.
In the Louvre, everything was labelled in French. Here, there were no labels at all. Luckily I have my Louvre pictures. Oh wait, due to the dual screwup by both the Cock and the bloody French guy, I have neither.
*Massacre of the Innocents*
Workshop of Pieter van Aelst. 1524-31
I should commission a sequel where unbaptised infants burn inhell, and call it "Torture of the Innocents"
The museum guards all didn't care about flash photography for sculptures. As far as I know, sculptures will not fade on being flash-ed, but there were lots of flashes in the tapestry gallery which has low lighting precisely to protect the tapestries, yet the guards did not pounce on anyone. Maybe the heat made them indolent.
*Death of Julius Caesar*
1540, Brussels.
*Italia nova*
In the Gallery of the Maps
I was looking for the Donation of Constantine in the Hall of Constantine. Unfortunately it was not on display. Aww.
*Battle of the Milvian Bridge*
Replacement pictures:
In the Hall of Constantine
*School of Athens*
Replacement picture:
In Room of the Signature.
I had a nice stitch waiting but, yeah, well. Maybe another year.
The guy with the black beret on the botom right is Raphael.
*Parnassus fresco*
Raphael. In Room of the Signature.
Replacement pictures:
*Dispute over the blessed sacrament*
Raphael.
Replacement picture:
A sign in the toilet said the tap water was non-potable. Whoops. But if I survived Malaysia, Italy should've been no problem. Anyhow I'm still aroundm so.
*Use of the toilet is free*
This sign was in a few languages.
I should've erected these all over the Low Countries.
Again, there were no toilet seats in the toilet cubicles. I asked a woman if this was the case in the female toilets and she said it was. The mystery deepened. I bet it was because everyone either hover pissed or didn't raise the covers before peeing.
As I half-expected, part of the modern religious art section was closed. It was damn ugly. They should've redeployed everyone to the Etruscan section.
The guards did not care about flashes going off in the rest of the Vatican Museums (even in the tapestry gallery where it was injurious to the works), yet in the Sistine Chapel they shouted at people taking non-flash photographs (which were prohibited). It wasn't as if the flashes (or the invisible rays emanating from cameras and video cameras when they were used) could damage the paintings on the walls and ceiling. The motive was obvious - they just wanted to earn money from postcard sales, since the Sistine Chapel was the most coveted part of the collection. What a shining example the papacy had thus set the world!
Moral objections aside, I wouldn't "mind" paying for a postcard in theory just as I wouldn't "mind" buying a bandana at cut-throat rates from a merchant before setting off into the desert, yet even if I had bought them, they would be useless to me - I want my pictorial representations in digital form, where they can be easily manipulated, are easy to index, catalogue and find, can be easily replicated and will not deteriorate. Furthermore, photography frees me to seek my own angle and take on what I want to remember, something that postcards, for all their engineered artifice, can not replicate.
For the same reason, even though I've found replacement pictures for some of my lost photos that sometimes exceed them in raw value, it is just not and can never be the same; the personal touch is important, for just as how a sex worker might be more skilled in the arts of the bedroom than your lover, nothing can beat the personal intimacy and familiarity which the latter affords.
[Addendum: Keywords to locate this post more easily in the future: a prostitute, that a lover affords]
*3-4 pictures - one wall and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel*
Replacement pictures:
Travel tips:
- Get an ISIC unless you're going to North America; I only saved US$1 with my ISIC there - there're no student rates there! I got by with my student card, but then it's an EU university, so