The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

It is always interesting to see how different artists depict the same story.  And artists love telling the same mythic stories.  This week, I’ve seen at least a dozen versions of the Rape of the Sabine Women, several Davids in various stages of fighting Goliath, and any number of versions of any number of events in the life of Jesus.

One story that I’ve frequently seen is the tale of Judith and Holofernes.

In the Biblical story (well, Biblical if you are Catholic: not all protestants count the Book of Judith as part of the Bible), Holofernes is the general of an enemy of the Israelites.  Judith, a heroine of Israel, manages to seduce him, get him drunk, and cut off his head.

There’s many artistic depictions of this.  Here’s one that we saw today at the Uffizi:

That one’s fairly typical: a nice delicate lady performing a bloodless decapitation.

We were walking through the gallery and came across this very different version:

You can practically hear the bone crunching as Judith saws through Holofernes’s neck in this one.

Julie mentioned that this was her favorite painting of the story, when two women who were walking by joined in on the conversation.  From all of these eager fans of this painting, I learned the following:

– This was painted by a 17th century woman artist.

– She had previously been raped.

– It’s thought that she painted Holofernes to resemble her rapist.

There is something rather satisfying about seeing an artist take some measure of revenge in this way, even if it is not all the justice she deserved.  And it’s also nice to see works by a woman artist of that period, something that was rare.

And as Julie says, this is far from the sanitized view of the Judith story that most male artists present.  This Judith is powerful and not at all squeamish about the work she must do, and the work itself is an act of butchery, not at all delicate.

But it was also interesting to see these three women, Julie and the other two, so enthusiastic about the history of this painting.

And a special bonus travel note: several of the great art museums of the world, museums that gather huge crowds, will stay open late one or more nights a week.  If you go there on those evenings, the crowds are much smaller.  You can see the famous paintings without having to elbow your way to the front.  We used this trick at the Louvre a few years back to see the Mona Lisa without being mobbed.  It worked just as well today at the Uffizi: we did an earlier tour, but then stayed until closing.  There were huge mobs around the most famous paintings earlier in the day, but at night we practically had Venus and the others all to ourselves.

Today was a day of iconic artworks.  For example, my Venus with Venus:

And here’s, well, no.  I can’t really claim to be a David.

I was fairly blown away by David, however.  The setting is amazing and the sculpture is just plain gorgeous.  It definitely lived up to the hype.

We spent the morning at various art activities, including the Galleria Academia, where David is, and visiting the Duomo, which is astonishingly beautiful and elaborately decorated outside but rather plain inside.

Of course, after St Peter’s and all those other Baroque churches in Rome, just about anything would look plain to my eyes.

In the afternoon, we visited the Uffizi Gallery.  The Uffizi was the personal art collection of the Medicis, and the Medicis had amazing taste and the money to indulge it.  In addition to the Birth of Venus, they have three DaVincis, a Michaelangelo, a bunch of Donatellos, several Raphaels, and, outside of the Ninja Turtle school of art, tons of Titians, three more Caravaggios to add to my list, and a truly astonishing range of Medieval, Renaissance, and later art.

Which raises an interesting little point about the art museums we’ve been visiting this week.  We’ve visited five art museums so far.  All but one was the personal collection of some wealthy family.  Even the Vatican Museum was the collection of a virtual family: the popes.

This is an entirely different approach to art museums than I am used to.  But perhaps most interesting of all: all these personal collections are amazing.  The Uffizi is one of the greatest art museums in the world.  But I suppose you can collect a lot of great art when you were the leading family of the city where the Renaissance began.

Speaking of which, here’s the home of the Medicis – a beautiful building right next to the Uffizi (which means “Offices,” as the building was originally built to be the offices of the Florence government, until one of the Medicis decided he’d rather have an art gallery than another set of government offices).

Today was a travel day.  We moved our base of operations from Rome to Florence.  Which limited our time in both.  So in Rome, all we did was:

– Three churches, one of which had another three Caravaggios.  That brings me up to, gee, I’ve lost count.  Eight?  Nine?  Something like that many Caravaggios.  Rome is full of the most beautiful churches that are incredibly well decorated and contain art by the masters.  You can walk down the street, stop into a random church (no entrance fee!), and expect to see at least one masterpiece inside.

– One dead rat.  I’ll spare you the photo I took.

One other observation about Rome, before I move on:

The original Romans were some of the best looters in history.  One of the places they looted was Egypt, taking away many obelisks that they used to decorate their various public spaces.  At some point over the years, Rome’s later masters moved those obelisks all around the city.  So in addition to running into random beautiful churches on any corner, you’re likely to find a random obelisk pop up where you least expect it.

But there’s one weird thing about all those obelisks.  Here’s the base of one:

Note the guy on the bottom left, the one with a hawk head.  That’s Horus, an Egyptian god.  In fact, the carvings on the obelisk are all Egyptian religious writing.

But at the top of the obelisk, you find this:

Those crazy Christian Romans didn’t even bother removing the pagan religious symbols. They just slapped a cross on top and figured it was now a Christian monument.

You can see this on a lot of the old Roman and Egyptian monuments throughout the city, though the symbols on top are not always crosses.  Sometimes they are statues of saints.  It’s an interesting approach to recycling.

After an education in the Italian train system, an education that only cost us an hour’s delay and a bit of stress, we find ourselves in Florence.  We enjoyed a rooftop snack in view of the Duomo.

Then after a quick meal, we took an evening tour that told stories of various bloody doings in Florence.

My impression so far: Florence is an amazing place, where you see designer shops set in medieval towers.

The Duomo is so beautiful and unusual that sometimes while looking at it I find it hard to believe it’s not just a model.

And there’s all sorts of lovely views at night.

But I am discovering to my chagrin that I did not do enough homework for this trip.  While I read a survey on Italian history, I did not study the history of Florence in detail the way I did Rome.  I did not memorize the Medicis in the way I memorized the Roman emperors.  (Yeah, I actually did that.  I’m a geek, I admit it.)

The result is that I’m failing horribly at serving as Julie’s guide.  Further, the place doesn’t have the same buzz for me as Rome, given that I am not steeped in its history.  I shall have to find a way to spend time over the next few days poring through Wikipedia.  What’s worse is that we’re headed to Venice in a few days and I didn’t study up on it either.  Sigh – better get cracking, Joe!

We’re on our last full day in Rome.  Our stay has been marvelous.  There’s been three themes:

1. Great art.

2. Amazing history.

3. Great food.

Today included all of these.

First, the art.  We spent the morning in the Galleria Borghese where one can see the palace and art collection of a 17th century cardinal.  Cardinal Borghese used money, power, threats, and extortion to put together an astonishing art collection.  While it’s not the largest art museum out there, piece for piece it’s one of the best collections I’ve seen, right up there with the Louvre.  Among many other things, it has major paintings by Caravaggio and sculpture by Bernini, two guys who are quickly climbing to the top of my list of favorite artists.  Here’s a couple of poorly photographed examples:

This is a detail of a Caravaggio painting of David holding the head of the slain Goliath.  The key thing to note is that Goliath is a self-portrait of Caravaggio, painted as an expression of guilt over a man he had killed in a duel.  Caravaggio hoped to get a pardon as a result and be able to return to his home in Rome.  He got the pardon, but alas died before he got back.

Here’s a Bernini sculpture of Apollo and Daphne.  Apollo is on the verge of capturing Daphne when Daphne’s father, a river god, turns her into a tree to protect her from Apollo.

This sculpture has to be seen to be believed.  Daphne is transforming into the tree even as Apollo is grabbing her.  Her toes are taking root, her skin is turning to bark, and her fingers are sprouting leaves.  It’s hard to believe that this can be done in marble.

Cardinal Borghese was patron to both Bernini and Caravaggio.  The man clearly had taste.

After a quick lunch:

we headed off to the Capitoline Museum, a collection that combines art and history.  Here, for example, is an ancient statue of the emperor Commodus:

Doesn’t look at all like Joaquin Phoenix, does he?

And here’s some guy standing next to the remnant of a giant statue.  That must have been some statue!

After that, we returned to the ruins of ancient Rome.  Once again, I found being there incredibly evocative.  Walking down the street that Cleopatra took into the city.  Seeing the stone where Julius Caesar was cremated.  Walking through the room where the Emperor Domitian was assassinated.  I can’t think of a place on earth that has so much history that had such an impact on our modern world.  Even our language comes from the names of places where I stood today (Capitoline Hill, which led to the word “capitol”; Palatine Hill, which led to “palace”).  Rome is not where western civilization was born, but  it is where it grew to adulthood.

And while we’re talking about amazing things, here’s Julie, holding a piece of mosaic tile that she found on Palatine Hill.  Roman emperors probably stepped on that little piece of stone in her hand.

(She tossed it back.  Taking relics from Rome is not a good thing.)

As I mentioned before, all of our children have already been to Italy.  I realized we’d be seeing things that they already saw, but sometimes that can go too far.

To whit: last year Andy was particularly impressed by the virtuosity of one accordion player.  There are plenty of accordion players in Italy, but most of them limit their repertoires to bad versions of the love theme from “The Godfather.”  This one, by contrast, was playing Mozart.  Here’s a picture that Andy took of him.

And here’s a picture of a terrific accordion player that Julie and I heard today.

Hmm….

Today we visited the ancient part of the city.  I loved it.

At one point, I told Julie I’d make a terrible gladiator.  My years fencing peaked with me becoming the worst rated foil fencer in Virginia (a long story for another day), and being the worst rated gladiator sounds like a bad plan.

But I can’t deny the thrill I felt when I stepped onto the ground floor of the stadium and looked up at all the people milling about in the seats above me.

While I liked the Colosseum, I found the Imperial Roman city much more evocative.  After much study of the history of Rome, I found it thrilling to be walking where Augustus walked, talking where Marc Antony gave Caesar’s funeral oration, standing in Domitian’s bedroom, walking down the Sacred Way where all those triumphs passed.  There was magic to it.

One of the things that helped us imagine the scene was a lovely little book that Julie bought.  It’s called “Rome: Past and Present,” and it shows views of Roman sites as they appear now and as they appeared then.  Here Julie holds up a view of what the Roman forum looked like then against how it looks now.  I strongly recommend this book if you ever find yourself visiting any of the sites of ancient Rome.

Here she is, again looking at the book while standing next to the site of the Circus Maximus, the stadium where the chariot races took place (and note: chariot racing was more popular in Rome than the gladiatorial games):

And one last note, before we move on from the Imperial City: throughout Rome, there are open running water flows set up to allow for easy filling of water bottles.  Here’s one with a wolf’s head that’s across the street from the Colosseum:

I’ve seen similar things in other places, but generally not run by the city.  And not with constantly flowing water – something that would be a no-no in a water-poor city.  But this does hearken back to an older Rome, back when all those lovely fountains served the purpose of providing water for the people of the city.

Later in the day, we took a tour that promised to be nicely gruesome.  A visit to the Capuchin Monastery that is decorated with various tableaux made of the skeletons of past monks.  It was about as gruesome as one would wish, though also contemplative (the monks apparently did this with the idea of giving a graphic demonstration of the fragility and impermanence of life).  Alas, no photos were allowed, so I will have to leave you imagining what a chandelier made of human bones looks like.

No photos were allowed in the Catacombs either, another stop on the tour.  There were no actual human remains on display either, though many more philosophical musings on mortality.

And finally, we visited San Clemente  Basilica.  A lovely church that contains areas built in the 14th, 4th, and 1st centuries, the last one being a pre-Christian temple to Mithras.  No photos allowed here either, which means that the last half of the day was a complete shutout where photography was concerned.

A long, tiring day, full of great art, good food, and lots of walking.  We went to the Vatican, including spending several hours in the Vatican Museum (which has amazing art), not to mention St Peter’s Basilica and the Sistene Chapel, visited the Pantheon, visited the Doria Pamphilj gallery, visited some random church, and had a marvelous dinner at the restaurant where they supposedly invented Fettuccini Alfredo (and the FA there was the best I’ve ever tasted).

Not much theme to the day, other than the great art.  I have developed a great fondness for the paintings of Caravaggio, and I saw three of his originals plus one very good reproduction.  But there was plenty of other good stuff.

But before I get into a bunch of pictures from the day, let me share a picture of one of the most important shrines in Rome.

That is the tomb of Queen Margherita in the Pantheon.  Margherita was the second queen of Italy.  It is because of her that we have the modern pizza, with cheese, tomato sauce, and basil (which represent white, red, and green – the colors of the Italian flag).  It was invented by a Naples chef who wanted to impress the queen, and even now in fancier pizzerias you will find that kind of pizza called a Margherita Pizza.

Now on with the pictures:

In this depiction of the geniuses of ancient Greece, Rafael decided to paint in all his artist buddies as Greek geniuses, including Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and himself.

There’s that woman I keep running into in Italy, this time at the Vatican.  Good thing she’s pretty.

My favorite Caravaggio of the day, one that’s in the Vatican Museum.  I love Caravaggio’s use of light to tell story – and it should be noted he’s a favorite of many cinematographers.

In Rome, Annubis is so cool that he wears a toga to all the parties.  He invited me along as his wingman at this one.

Meanwhile, Julie started tumbling down a truly awesome staircase.  (Okay, she didn’t really.)

In Rome, if you walk into a random church that you just happened to pass on the street, you’re likely to see all sorts of cool art like this.  Pretty neat.

Travel gives a chance to see and think new things.  But it can also bring thoughts of those we once knew.

This trip, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about my dear friend, Walter Neill, who passed away last November.  Walt loved to travel, and one of his favorite trips had been to Rome.  He also was a fond reader of this blog and frequently commented on my travel posts.  I’m sure that if Walt were still alive, he would be reading and commenting on these entries, and probably passing on valuable tips for travel in Rome.

I’m particularly missing Walt today because I have a story he would have loved that is in part about him.

Today, after visiting the Vatican, Julie and I popped into a minor art museum in Rome, the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj Gallery.  The Doria Pamphilj is a family of Italian nobility who collected art over the centuries.  Their family palazzo is now opened as an art museum, and it is well worth a visit.

As I was listening to the audio guide, I noticed an interesting coincidence.  One of the things that Walt and I shared over the years was role-playing games, games in which one plays characters in a scenario created by another player.  In one game that I ran set in Victorian England, Walt played a character based on a nobleman of the time, John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury.

As I was listening to the audio guide today, I found that Mary, the real-life daughter of the real John Talbot, married the then Prince Doria Pamphilj.  Her portrait now hangs in the gallery.  Walt had played the father-in-law of the then Prince Doria Pamphilj.

Walt would have loved that little detail about his character.  And I would have loved sharing it with him, and finding some way to work it into the game.

Imagine that you wake up one fine morning and head downtown for a couple of meetings.  After a full morning, you’re just finishing lunch when you look past city hall and notice something strange. Is that mountain really supposed to be exploding?

That’s what happened at 1:00 PM on August 24, 79 AD, in the little city of Pompeii. I’m happy to report that it didn’t happen today: the smoke over Vesuvius in the background is only a low-hanging cloud. Phew.

A fascinating day, full of fascinating ruins, lovely preserved art, and a constant weird feeling of what it must have been like on that August day so long ago.

We not only visited Pompeii, we climbed Mt Vesuvius itself. Here’s the crater, which is bound to erupt again one of these days.

And lest you doubt that it’s still live, here’s some steam rising from part of the crater:

Note that there are several hundred thousand people living in the red zone.  When – and that’s when, not if – Vesuvius goes up again, it’s going to kill a lot more people than it did back in 79.

Any trip with Julie is going to involve the occasional Art Attack.  This time, she’s got a strange little book that gives her little assignments.  One was to stomp some dirt onto a page.  She of course chose volcanic dirt.

But that wasn’t the only art up on the mountain.  On the road to the drop-off point, before the last steep hike up to the crater, there’s several odd and lovely things  made of volcanic rock.

And special bonus for the day, with a special call-out to my WWII-history-geek friends: on the way to Pompeii from Rome, the bus made a bio-stop in sight of a little monastery named Monte Cassino. Yes, that Monte Cassino. (Clearly, they have rebuilt it since 1944.)

Shockingly, it’s been three years since Julie and I went on our last big trip, our voyage to Egypt. Further, a year and a half ago, Andy went to Italy. A year ago, Kate and Diana went to Italy. It’s getting so that Julie and I are left out of the family conversation. All of which is to say, going to Italy has become a necessity.

So here we are now. After a day of many transit delays, we are here.  (Yes, many transit delays.  Late planes, missed connections, screaming babies on red-eyes.  All the joys of modern travel, with the only consolation being that a hundred years ago it would have taken a week-long ocean voyage to get to Europe, not an annoying day of airport roulette.)

In any event, we had a nice afternoon wandering around Rome near our hotel. Though all in all, some of the things we saw were a bit disappointing. For example:

The Trevi Fountain is a lot less impressive when there’s no water in it.

The Spanish Steps lose some of their romance when there’s several hundred people sitting on them.

Augustus’s Tomb is a pile of dirt with some trees growing around it.

But Rome does have its consolations, chief of which is that everywhere you look, there’s:

– An amazing statue in front of a old church:

– A relic of the Roman days (in this case, Marcus Aurelius’s column):

– A cool fountain, many of them with actual water:

– A beautiful woman standing in front of a bunch of latin inscriptions:

Though I have to admit, the thing that I find most entertaining in Rome (other than the beautiful woman, anyway) is the way they incorporate their ancient history into their day-to-day existence.  For example, this is what a drain cover looks like in Rome:

And this is the city’s Logo on the side of police cars:

(For those not up on their Roman history, that’s the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, a key detail in  Rome’s founding myth.)

And of course, there’s gelato.  Lots and lots of gelato, sold on every corner.

So all in all, it’s a good place to visit.  And we’re just getting started.