Bernini, St. Ignatius, and Conclusion

Hello, everyone.
Sorry about the lack of blogging. My last day in Rome was a very busy one. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I made it home safe with absolutely no complications whatsoever. There were no delays on my plane ride, lost luggage, or anything else that would put a damper on my going home. Let me tell you, after such an amazing experience in a far away land, it's so nice to be back home. :)

Alright, so I hardly had time or energy to discuss what we saw on the last day of the program, but here goes. We saw Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa, which was actually an artwork I've been wanting to see for a long time now. One of Bernini's greatest strengths was the fact that he could make his sculptures look alive. St. Theresa had a vision where an angel repeatedly pierced her with an arrow over and over again, though I have yet to read her writing on the experience myself, the professor described it as a very sensual recalling of the experience. Bernini was able to expertly make the statue look like nothing was supporting it, and the cloud the saint rested on really did look like a cloud. He also had the challenge of reflecting St. Theresa's possible emotions during the experience on her face as best as he could. It must have been a very difficult and limiting situation having to put a truly indescribable spiritual expression on an earthly medium. Unsurprisingly, his final product received scrutiny from protestants during the Reformation.

The last thing we saw was the Chiesa del Gesu (literally, Church of Jesus), which served as the birthplace and center of the Catholic Jesuit order for a very long time. The Jesuits have a code that prayer is meant to be used with all the senses, so church art, being able to use the sense of sight during meditation, was a necessity. Although, what was inside the church was truly something else entirely. There was an altarpiece of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, speaking with Jesus. Then our professor turned on the machinery, yes, machinery, involved in the altarpiece. Over speakers, there was a recording of a choir and an orator going through a Jesuit prayer exercise with light focusing on each statue and painting, then the painting was lowered to reveal a gold statue of St. Ignatius.

Now, apparently, this was ancient machinery, not a new thing, and the painting was put in storage several years ago until historians discovered the old machinery in the altarpiece. This raised a lot of questions for me, what caused the machinery to function? Has it always been in working order, or was it just recently repaired upon discovering the painting's purpose? How has it been preserved for so many years? Of course then I have to remember this is an art history course, not an engineering course. So, the main focus was basically how extravagant the piece was and would St. Ignatius have truly appreciated this.

Before

After

Yes, art history is a very funny thing. Sometimes I have to wonder if those of us who seek the career path make up answers to the questions we simply don't know. This is probably why I'm attracted to art conservation. Interpretation doesn't matter nearly as much as simply using the best scientific techniques to restore and preserve art. This way, art can be kept surviving through the millennium, preferably as the artist intended it. There wouldn't be a need for interpretation because art, documents, and architecture are still there to tell us the answers. We would just know the truth. 

Hadrian and Desdes' Villas

Super tired, super weather beaten, and feeling lazy, then feeling bad about not going out into the city and taking advantage of all its wonders. Then I remembered that I went to Hadrian's Villa outside of Rome in the beautiful town of Tivoli. We went on a tour through the ruins with an insight to who emperor Hadrian was. He was the adopted son of the Roman emperor, Trajen. Unlike Trajen, who was a soldier and a conquerer, Hadrian was a philosopher who studied Greek and was enamored with the language and the philosophers,  according to our guide. Hadrian's villa was a very large establishment spanning over numerous structures including a library, two temples, a theater, fishing ponds, and a very large grove of olive trees. It was a very beautiful walk, and we even saw a large olive tree that was about 700 years old. It was a spectacular sight.

A very significant detail about this villa was that it was exavated in the Rennaisance period, and by excavated,  I actually mean plundered for its marble and statuary. A lot of the statues were transported to different parts of the world. The Vatican Museum has some, the Lourve has some, and some even made it to Russia. Some of the marble was stripped from the villa to be used for our next destination, Desde's Villa. The villa belonged to a Cardinal who lived there during the summer on his days off from his duties in Rome. The  tedious and fruitless moral debate on whether or not a church leader should have ever been allowed to have such an extravagant home in the first place aside, it was still a very beautiful place to visit. The mosaics on the wall and ceiling doubled as reliefs because there was such an intricate 3D design to the mosaics, like you could see the flowers coming out of the celing rather than just being nicely placed there.

Borromini and Leonardo da Vinci

Today mostly revolved around the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini. The first place we visited today was the Piazza Navona, where one of my roomates, Philip, gave his presentation on Bernini's Four River fountain in the middle of the plazza. He went into exemplary detail on what the fountain meant. The fountain itself represented the four continents that people believed existed with their best knowledge at the time. He described this knowledge of only four continents as Ignorance. It made me think about the very term of ignorance, and how in today's world, it equates with a very negative definition. This isn't necessarily the case. This reminds me of my studies in Chemistry, and how a hundred years ago, scientists' view of atoms and molecules deviates very much from our current knowledge now,  which will probably be disproven yeg again in another hundred years, yet we couldn't build our knowledge without the theories of findings from the alchemists of the past. Is art history any different? But, perhaps, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The next place we visited church of St. Agnes, which was amazing because it was probably the only church in Rome where the altar pieces were made up entirely of sculptures. Specifically relief sculptures done by Bernini's students. They were quite beautiful to look at.

Our journey as a group continued with a tour through Boroque Roma. We got to see several different sites where the general theme was the competition between the sculptor, Bernini, and the architect, Fracesco Borromini. Sant'Andrea della Fratte was the first chapel we got to see for this tour. It was cool to learn about the chapel's name, Fratte meant 'wood' because the chapel used to be embedded in a more sylvan environment. it had two copies of original Bernini statues of angels that illustrated the suffering of Christ. Fun fact: those angels could also be seen on one of the bridges crossing the Tiber.

Our tour concluded with a visit to Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza. This was a univeristy dedicated to Theology, Medicine, and Law. The tour guide, Irene, went into detail about the importance of the architecture and mindset of Borromini, who was a bitterbrival of Bernini who reportedly tore down a chapel Bernini built. Close to his house. While he was trying to sleep. 

Thag was the end of the day for us as a group, but I wanted to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit before I left for home. Unfortunately, there wasn't any original art or sketches by Da Vinci himself, but the people behind the exhibition took Da Vinci's sketches and created models based on the various machines and military inventions. It was interesting learning more about the techincal side of a Rennaisance artist such as Da Vinci. The walls were also covered with enlargements of Da Vinci's anatomical sketches.

St. Peter's Basilica and Necropolis

I'm going to start this blog post with my reading for tonight. The next paragraph will be about my excursion in Rome, so if you are not grading this blog post, please feel free to skip on to the next paragraph. Our reading for tonight involved the church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza and the many years and modifications it took tto to build this church. Construction on the church began 1644 after Pope Innocent X's commissioning the project after several concept sketches were made and were finally approved Pope Urban VIII. The church was finished in  1665 with the completion of the south portal. The significance of this particular church was the spiral tower and all the work that was involved inconstructing the spiral in a way that worked. There was a lot of engineering and pre planning involved in creating the spiral which involved tactics such as studying the Egyptian Obelisks.

We saw St. Peter's Bascilica today. Honestly, what can I say? To me, the church itself represented an example of the pinaccle of human engineering and artistic capability. The dome of the bascillica was amazing to look at and the way the light bled through it was gorgeous. Bernini's sculptural genius touched each sculpture in such a way many sculpturs couldn't even imagine before this time. The Statue of St. Veronica looked as though it really was running desperately to wipe Jesus' face. The statue of St. Longinus stood forever looking at the cross high up towards the dome as though he was forever reminded how he was the one who pierced the side of Christ, and it was fantastic, after so many years of learning and seeing photos, it was finally cool to get to see the actual Pieta of Michaelangelo.  I even spent ten minutes drawing a sketch and am happy to say I gained a small audiance of a couple fellow pilgrims myself. ^_^ There's something satisfying about hearing people from the far east try to tell your drawing is good.

It was also interesting to hear how the experience impacted my roomates. My experience was very positive, like I wanted to know if this is what humans could accomplish, and it's not even close to the Divine, then what could they accomplish. My colleagues had very mixed opinions, and it was interesting to learn about why, but we all felt something move inside us whether it was for better or worse.  I will not go into anymore detail because that is their business, not mine.

The final moments of the day ended with a couple of my fellow artsy associates visiting an art store that was about 180 years old, the company, not the building. I'm sure the building was much older than that. The art company is called Ditta G.Poggi, and there, I bought the most artistic of my younger sisters her own sketchbook. :) 

Weekend o' Fun and Carvaggio Day

Ciao my friendlies!

I hope you can forgive my lack of posting on account of this past weekend was more or less a free weekend. Saturday, we saw the amazing Vatican Museum. :D it was truly an incredible experience. I made sure that I saw the Sistine Chapel first, and then after that, my eyes were rewarded with marvelous treasures of the Catholic church as well as art from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. To me, this truly captures just how global the Catholic Church truly is, and even though the statues from Greece and Egypt were, I guess for lack of a better term, 'false gods', the fact that this art is displayed in tbe Vatican Museum shows how much the Church values these pieces as works of art and inspiration, as well as history that deserves to be preserved for future generations to enjoy. Apparently, there was also a contemporary art exhibit by artists such as Salvador Dahli and Francis Bacon. I totaly missed this exhibit and I really wish I didn't.  -.- I mean, contemporary art isn't exactly my field of interest, but I still believe it definitely would've been cool to see.

The next day was amazing!... for the most part. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures,  but early in the morning, some of my classmates and I hopped on the train and went to San Marinella beach for the day. It was amazing how the tickeg was only four euros for a twenty minute train ride to the coast. The free beach wasn't too crowded, especially when we got there in the morning. The water was warm, and the sand from the beach felt really nice. My skin is all smooth and rejuvenated from the Mediterranean environment. The downside to this excursion was that I got badly sunburnt and stepped on a sea urchin. XD

So, that was my weekend. Today, we went to St. Agostino, Madonna dei Pellegrini, the French church of San Luigi dei Francesi. I was absolutely blown away by St. Agostino. The church was so beautiful, it displayed a painting by Michaelangelo Carvaggio of the Virgin with Child and two people kneeling in adoration. We learned about how Carvaggio's art style was different compared to his collegues and rivals. While other painters strived for heavenly colors and perfect figures, Carvaggio prefered to paint from life. This caused the subjects of his paintings to be hyper realistic with details involving wrinkles and dirty clothes and skin. In his St. Matthew paintings, especially the painting of St. Matthew, The Inspiration of St. Matthew, Matthew didn't look like a glorified, perfect being, but a wrinkled old man that you might see on the street. This reminds me of the artist, Rembrandt, and how both artists could capture a certain beauty and quality in these everyday, ordinary, lowly people. 

The last thing we did was see the art gallery, Borrocco e Roma, which featured various Baroque paintings and sculptures as well as rough drafts of great works of art like Bernini's Habukkuk sculpture in a minature terracotta form. It was very interesting learning about how much these artists depended on the use of scale to get their art right. Before this excursion,  though, I went with my classmates to a restaurant and had seafood pasta where I had clams for the first time, and it was delicious.  ^_^

Catecombs, Chigi Chapel, and Borghese Museum

Hey, everybody. So yesterday, I went to the catacombs, and was not allowed to take pictures. It kind of sucks, but at the same time, I feel like there want a very strong feel to the catacombs either. Apparently, fifteen years ago, the Italian government got tired of jerky tourists taking little bones from the dead bodies, so the bodies all got moved from the second level of the catacombs to the lower third level, which is not open to the public. This was a little disappointing. A student who went on the trip before me told me there said there wouldn't be any bodies, but I don't know, I guess I didn't want to believe it. Now this isn't a bit if advice saying it's not worth checking out, it really is. The beginnings of Christianity as a more organized religion and learning about that was very fascinating, especially since the countryside it's just breathtaking.

Today, I gave my presentation on the Chigi Chapter, which is Agostino Chigi's mortuary chapel that involved numerous artists such as Raphael, Lorenzetto, Bernini, and other artists from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Apparently, I impressed my classmates with my presentation. Yay! It really was a crazy experience researching this chapel, then giving my presentation right on front if it.

I am super grumpy because I was two minutes late for our Borghese Museum exhibit, and I accidentally left my phone on my purse when I checked in my bag, so I didn't take pictures, nor did I have my pencil so I couldn't make sketches. The art inside was so beautiful. We learned more about Bernini and how his career I theater really reflected in his sculptures. We learned about what techniques Bernini used to make the stone look like flesh versus his bark, leaves, and stone in Apolo and Daphne.

No blog post today

7/2 Hey, guys, I'm really sorry about this, but I have my presentation tomorrow at the Chigi Chapel, so I won't have as detailed of a blog pist about how my day went due to the fact that I'm going to be doing last minute once overs on my notes, and making sure I have all my information organized in a cohesive speech format. I will have lots of pictures tomorrow though, because our journey today took place in the countryside and the catecombs of St. Callixtus and St. Sebastian. It was a beautiful experience, and I can't wait to share it. So please, bear with me!