The Vatican Museums

[jere7my]

Tuesday, June 30 - Rome

It turns out there are things other than the Laocoön in the Vatican Museums. Since they were unexpectedly closed on Monday (thank you, Saints Peter and Paul), adfamiliares and I were forced to take a whirlwind tour — only three hours, which counts as "whirlwind" for the Vatican Museums — on Tuesday morning, before we caught our train to Florence. It's strange to be surrounded on every side by priceless things you've been seeing all your life in books, things that launched whole artistic movements — I felt privileged, and a little overwhelmed. The crowds were like a river in most parts of the museums, but we danced pretty deftly through them, and saw everything we'd hoped to see (if not as thoroughly as we might've liked).

There are no lesbians in swimwear allowed in the museums!


The Belvedere Apollo


Rut-roh! Anubis has been Hellenized!


"I see you. I seeeeee you!"


Bird vs. snake vs. goat. Baffling. Any ideas? Is this the parentage of the Chimera?




"Will someone please help me get this plunger off my head?"






Details of Raphael's School of Athens, which is a fun who's who riddle of philosophers and artists. Plato (modeled on Leonardo da Vinci) and Aristotle are arguing in the middle of the first detail. Pythagoras is scribbling in a book in the second, and Michelangelo (as Heraclitus) is looking emo in the foreground, possibly because he was added last. adfamiliares and I squabbled about the identity of the figure in white:


A woman (as I insisted)? Or an effeminate dude? Turns out we were both right — this seems to be Hypatia of Alexandria, a female mathematician, but Raphael told a bishop who inquired that it was the pope's nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere. Or it might be Raphael's mistress. Or it might be someone else — I was concocting elaborate DaVinci Code theories about her. (Is that a suggestion of a halo?) One of only three figures looking at the viewer — the other two being Diogenes of Laertius (two figures left of Hypatia) and Raphael himself (in the black hat at the far right of the fresco, chatting with Ptolemy and Zoroaster).




Dali's Soft Monster in Angelic Landscape


The Belvedere Torso, which had a disproporionate effect on Renaissance art. You can see it many times on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Behind it you can see the Belvedere Asian Tour Group.


You can see Australia on this armillary sphere, as well as the sun and the moon, both orbiting Earth. There was, in fact, quite a lovely collection of scientific instruments and clockwork.




Note the extra hands to mark the length of dusk and dawn ("FINIS CREPVSCVLI").


Ceiling detail with angel and farmer


Every minute or two, when the rising babble got too loud, the official shusher in the Sistine Chapel would go into action. Shhhhh!


Stained glass Mary & Jesus


An arch I quite liked


Even the exit stairs are a masterpiece.

All my Vatican photos are up in my Vatican Museum Flickr set. As I upload more sets, they'll show up in my Italy 2009 collection.