A quick left turn at the Castel Sant'Angelo, an impressive fortification, and one is led into St Peter's Square. No complete photo of the Square here, not because its so big, although it is, but because a substantial chunk is under scaffolding and hoardings.
But my main target was St Peter's, but the Vatican Museum round the corner. Fortunately I ignored the touts offering tours with signs saying "Skip the line" by only paying twice the admission price. On returning to England a friend asked how long I queued to get in. I said I didn't queue at all, just walked straight up to the ticket desk. He said he had queued for 2 1/2 hours. As I say, there is a great advantage of going out of season.
Now let me say at the outset, the following photos are not a totally proportionate reflection of the contents. If I were to offer a representative sample of what there is to see I would be showing photos of bored teenagers and Japanese tourists taking photos of each other. They are biased towards ancient marble statues. There are a number of reasons for this. If you take photos of things in glass cases you mostly get a reflection of yourself with a camera, so that takes out most small valuable items. Paintings don't look good due to reflections and low light, so not many of them.
More positively, I really like classical statues. Basically the Greeks and Romans pretty much perfected this art form. Ok, Michelangelo might have a decent claim to be good at it too. And yeah, Bernini was very good too. And Canova could wield a mean chisel come to think of it, but you know what I mean. Compare to modern sculpture which tends to be sticking together rusty girders and saying if you stand far enough back from the right angle it looks a bit like a bloke.
There are also no photos of the Sistine Chapel because you are not allowed to take photos, because its a chapel. Odd as I never found the bit about not taking photos in the Bible. Its probably next to the bit about how you maximise income from postcard sales, but I missed that bit too. Oh they can't be real postcards either can they as that would mean photographing them so they must be all individually painted musn't they?
But now I have started on this subject, I should say more about the Sistine Chapel. This is of course meant to be the highlight of your visit and the one must-see in the Museum. Let's be honest, its not. That isn't to say Michelangelo's works are not great and iconic and all that. But they just aren't easy to enjoy for a number of reasons. First an obvious one that no one seems quite willing to point out. They are too far away to see, and ceilings aren't all that comfortable to examine. They are too far away because you can't have everything however rich and powerful you are You want the grandness of a big space, but that very fact makes the detail of the art difficult to appreciate. Secondly, there are just too many people. Even out of season, there are still lots of people milling around not looking where they are going. And if there was any atmosphere it is destroyed by guards shouting "No photos, no photos!" at all the people trying surreptitiously to take a souvenir of their visit.
In fact, all the signs to the Chapel show there are two no-nos. One is taking photos. The other is inappropriate dress, eg shorts, vests, strapless dresses, diagrams of which are displayed throughout with vivid red crosses covering them. Now surely I cannot be the only person who sees a certain irony in being restricted as to how much bare arm can be shown WHEN GOING TO SEE A ROOM COVERED IN PICTURES OF NAKED BODIES!
And finally on the subject of the Sistine Chapel, and I know this is not an original comment, but it really has to be made as it stares you in the face. Its all just so blatantly gay. Its obviously painted by a gay man for a gay client, ie the Pope. Which does make all the Catholic crap about gay marriages and so forth seem particularly hypocritcal. And before anyone says you don't have to be gay to paint or appreciate the male body or the that there are women as well as men on the walls and ceiling, yes of course, I agree. But its the scale and sheer obsessive nature of it all. I should also add that Michelangelo's women are not really women at all, but men with breasts. Look at the arms and they all look like Bulgarian Olympic shot putters. The Last Judgment is essentially just one huge wall of writhing muscular naked men. It couldn't be more camp unless you played an Abba soundtrack and had Julian Clary mincing down the aisle.
Ok, now for the pictures I could take. The Vatican Museums are huge. And it is really a collection of collections. So lets break it down. Quick one to start, the Museo Gregoriano Profano - a collection of classical statues And quick because, for no obvious reason, it was closed. Telephoto lens to the rescue.
Next, the picture collection in the Pinacoteca.
Triptych by Giotto
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| Coronation of the Virgin by Filippo Lippi |
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| Transfiguration by Raphael |
but he had it easy compared to St Erasmus. Here is Poussin's Martyrdom of St Erasmus who is having his entrails pulled out and slowly wound on a drum like sausages. Nice.
And here is another on the same subject. One might question what sick minds would get such a kick out of seeing muscular near-naked men being tortured in unrealistic ways. Oh yes, Roman Catholics.
But the end of these galleries has a room with paintings by an artist I hadn't come across before, Wenzel Peter. A sweet fantasy of the Garden of Eden, showing off all the exotic animals he knew. Happy ending to the gore.
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| Note the two recurring themes in these statues, shown particularly well here - first the added fig-leaves and second the rather vacant looking expressions, because the heads don't belong to the bodies any more than the fig-leaves. |
A particularly famous statue of an athlete scraping dirt from his body (Apoxoyomenos, to give its proper title) gets a roped-off room to himself.
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| The Apollo Belvedere, another of the most famous statues in the collection. And if you are wondering why I have got only the top half of him its because there was a a hoarding in front of him and I just stuck my camera over the top and took as much as I could! |
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| The octagonal courtyard |
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| Laocoon, perhaps THE most famous statue of antiquity |
The Animal room - marbles of animals, though not all ancient ones, or if ancient, not all, or even very much, ancient.
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| What puts this above the rest is that the coloured eyes are included in the two heads, which removes the slightly vacant look in classical statues to which we have become accustomed. |
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| The Belvedere Torso, another very famous sculpture which hasn't been worked up into a restoration job |
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| Pericles |
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| The magnificent Sala Rotonda, with a massive bowl from Nero's Domus Aurea sitting on a mosaic depicting battles between men and sea-monsters, from a town north of Rome. |
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| The Emperor Claudius as Jupiter. I suppose the equivalent of seeing a statue of the Queen as Aphrodite. |
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| Antinous, a much copied bust seen in many collections. He was Emperor Hadrian's "favourite," a euphemism of course! |
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| Hercules - a very rare thing, not only a bronze that has survived, but a gilded bronze. |
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| Antinous again |
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| The Greek Cross room containing a pair of porphyry sarcophagi |
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| Nice Egyptian style statue, but this is nineteenth century |
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| An Egyptian fertility goddess. Rather overdone the breasts I feel. Yes, they really are breasts. |
And then on down the opulently decorated corridors and galleries - marble pillars, ceiling paintings, mosaic floors, nothing but the best and most lavish.
The Egyptian collection
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| Is it just me or is this statue of Nubis just funny? Too used to seeing Pluto in Disney cartoons I guess. |
The Vatican also has a rather small collection of modern religious art. It seems to have run out of zeal for collecting (or rather its not very PC to steal any more), and lets face it religious works are rather dull compared to all the rest. So, best bits in my view, a small Van Gogh and a room designed by Matisse.
Just about the quietest spot in the Museums most recent nod to political correctness, its ethnographic gallery. Needless to say not up to the quality of the rest of the collection. This nineteenth century sculpture of a fallen native American was the easiest to photograph. Very much in keeping stylistically with the classical collection. Barring the bullet wound in his chest.
And that's all the main galleries, so here is just a random flavour of some of the rest as you wander through the corridors. As you will note, by no means a totally religious theme in the collection. Some nice (and enormous) vases for example.
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| There are frequent stops amongst the artworks for mammon - ie lots and lots of gift shops with guide books and expensive trinkets |
Oh, and one thing they don't stress about the Vatican, amazing huge walls, bigger than I have seen anywhere. Well they have a lot of wealth and need to keep out the scum somehow.
After all that, well then there is St Peter's Basilica - monument to the glory of the popes who built and decorated it. Their monumental tombs tend to dominate, along with the sheer expanse of the place. But it is overall just a very soul-less place.
More entertaining is the climb to the top of the Basilica. Over 500 steps, so I think its fair to say I was breathing a little heavily by the time I got to the top, but definitely worth it for the views. Breathtaking in more ways than one.
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| The Pieta by Michelangelo, but you knew that didn't you? |
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| Tomb of a pope, sorry can't remember which one, but there are lots. |
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| No, this is not an odd camera angle. Remember its a dome, so it has to curve, making for an odd corridor. Don't climb if drunk. |
St Peter's Square at dusk.
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