D141 -- Awesome Art

Today's sightseeing activity: the Galleria Borghese. It is a mansion that used to belong to a Catholic Cardinal in the 1600s who was an avid art collector. Even with the mandatory reservation, the crowds we had to endure to get in were maddening. Luckily there were so many fantastic works of art that it was well worth the frustration. The highlights for us were the Caravaggio paintings and the Bernini sculptures. Caravaggio's work was groundbreaking in its day because he used ordinary, every-day people as models when he painted holy subjects like Jesus and Mary. He portrayed them as holy, but in a more accessible and less idealized sort of way. Bernini was also famous for portraying his subjects with great realism as well as dynamism. He was a brilliant baroque artist who by the looks of it had the ability to cut through marble “like buttah.” His statue of Apollo and Daphne was so amazing. All three of us were blown away by it. It depicts the climactic moment when Daphne, being pursued by Apollo, called to her father for help and he turned her into a tree. The leaves almost looked like they were blowing in the wind. My second favorite Bernini was a statue of David loading his slingshot.

We'd talked about going to the Vatican Museum after the Borghese, but just how much art can you appreciate in one day? Sarah and Thomas instead went to check e-mail and run errands and I'll give you one guess what I did. If you said nap, you are correct. If you said eat, you are incorrect, but your get points for making a well-educated guess.



After I got up Sarah and I went to check out a couple of churches, and Thomas went to yet another church to get us tickets to the Papal audience tomorrow. We toured the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral for the diocese of Rome, and the Basilica di San Clemente. This basilica was actually a 12th century church built on the remains of a 4th century church built on the remains of a 1st century pagan temple. The basilica was beautiful, with gorgeous mosaics and frescoes. The church below was really a shell, but you could still see some frescoes and also the presumed tomb of St. Clement. Another set of stairs took you down to the original level – the temple to Mithras. Very, very cool.

-Elva