Random notes from a Roman holiday
Feb. 19th, 2008 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quisletSo after the better part of a day in the Vatican museum, my entire brain reduced to gelatin from miles of sacred paintings, pagan sculpture, 20th century religious art (including a very Voldemortian sculpture of Pope Gutless Bastard I), we make our way back around 1/4 of the outer wall of the Vatican to St. Peter's. There's been Michelangelo everywhere, including the Pieta that assaults you just inside the gift shop at the painting gallery. There's Michelangelo fashion on the Swiss guard, Michelangelo architecture just across town above the Imperial forum, and the way-too-much-to-take-in Michelangelo painting of the Sistine Chapel.
Just inside St. Peter's, to the right, is the real thing, the Pieta. Regardless of how numb the brain is, it's simply breathtaking. I take in as much as I can hold, and just wander around the basilica from right to back to left, finding statues of so many popes that I'm left feeling very inadequate in Roman Catholic history, post-Protestant as I am. I found Gutless Bastard I again (Pius XII), just opposite Popeman (Pius XI). It was nice to find VIII and his nephew, Antonio Cardinal Barberini, too, as they both figure heavily into the Roman branch of the 1632 series I've been reading.
There was a marvelous angel of death sculpture back by the tomb of Leo XI, with billowing folds of pink marble piled atop the great bronze winged skeleton and his hourglass. There's so much amazing sculpture throughout St. Peter's that you'd miss him if you weren't looking for him.
But the most amazing thing was the creche. There is an honest-to-goodness plastic light-up creche scene in St. Peter's right now, looking like it came off a lawn in Miami. There's nothing classy or artistic about it, other than a distinct lack of blinky lights. It would almost be improved by a pair of plastic flamingoes. How does something like that end up as the counterpoint to the Pieta? I don't understand.
Oh, and why isn't there a cool sculpture of John Paul II?
Just inside St. Peter's, to the right, is the real thing, the Pieta. Regardless of how numb the brain is, it's simply breathtaking. I take in as much as I can hold, and just wander around the basilica from right to back to left, finding statues of so many popes that I'm left feeling very inadequate in Roman Catholic history, post-Protestant as I am. I found Gutless Bastard I again (Pius XII), just opposite Popeman (Pius XI). It was nice to find VIII and his nephew, Antonio Cardinal Barberini, too, as they both figure heavily into the Roman branch of the 1632 series I've been reading.
There was a marvelous angel of death sculpture back by the tomb of Leo XI, with billowing folds of pink marble piled atop the great bronze winged skeleton and his hourglass. There's so much amazing sculpture throughout St. Peter's that you'd miss him if you weren't looking for him.
But the most amazing thing was the creche. There is an honest-to-goodness plastic light-up creche scene in St. Peter's right now, looking like it came off a lawn in Miami. There's nothing classy or artistic about it, other than a distinct lack of blinky lights. It would almost be improved by a pair of plastic flamingoes. How does something like that end up as the counterpoint to the Pieta? I don't understand.
Oh, and why isn't there a cool sculpture of John Paul II?
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Date: 2008-02-20 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 02:17 am (UTC)Say, didn't Dan Brown write a book about that?
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Date: 2008-02-21 07:11 am (UTC)I thought they looked tacky.