Saturday

The class gathered on Saturday to go to two museums. One “La Specola” is the natural history museum, which had no direct impact on our trip (or so they thought); the other, the Pitti Palace, was museum of both “contemporary” and renaissance art. I put “contemporary” in quotes because the most modern pieced in the gallery was done over one hundred years ago.

La Specola was perhaps the most intriguing natural history museum I have ever been to. The museum presented animals in a way that I was not accustom to. The rooms were filled with glass cases that housed the animals. Often the stitches, evidence of taxidermy, were visible. The faces, sometimes worn with age, reminded me that this museum also predates most I have ever been to on this subject. A majority of the animals and bones dated from the early 1900s, some even older.

The last few rooms were full of wax sculptures representing the human body and organs. These were unlike the bodyworks display in that they are new creations, molded and colored from nothing and they dated back to the 1770s. It was an amazing feeling knowing that these figures have been studied for over 230 years. The museum was almost a museum within a museum with antiquities in furniture, specimen and history.

Perhaps it is because my purpose for being in this city is to study art, but the color, line and shape of the animals seem like works of art. Color, line, shape all come together to form the artistic elements of natural works of art. Animals can transcend function into beauty for the sake of beauty. The concept of the museum being in a way a work of art was further pushed even further with some of the rooms having elaborate painted ceilings of angels looking down on its visitors.

The second museum we visited, the Pitti Palace, was also a kind of museum that housed a museum. A former palace, one of the floors housed the apartment of the ruling monarch including a bedroom, bathroom, throne room and various other rooms of the private residence. Each room was filled from floor to ceiling with hanging works of art totaling in the dozens. I was able to see some really great works of art including:

Fra Filipo Lippi – Madonna con Gesú Bambino
Cigoli – Ecce Homo
Caravaggio – Amore Dormiente
Raffaelo – Madonna detta de Graduca, Ritrattio Del Cardinal Duvizi da Bibbiena and Ritratto di Donna
Cigolio – Santa Maria Maddalena
Pietro Benvenuti – Il Giuramento del Sassoni

and while I didn’t get the artist name, the Medusa that inspired Versace’s logo.

A lot of the greatness of the works were in how they were presented. The rooms each had their own color and feel with silk covered walls, furniture and ceilings that were each in their own way masterpiece works of art. Every detail was decorated in some way with a work of art.

Most ceilings had sculptures attached that would be symbolically holding up the sky and the painted frescos on each side as they met the four outer walls. Though the were sometimes twenty or more feet away, you could still see every detail over head, in facial expressions and the texture of the gilded plaster. The corners often featured more jovial figures holding the corners down or trying to climb them to reach the sky. The faces look down on those who pass, the faces of mythological figures, Gods and past rulers watch over those who walk below, the faces in three dimensions looking down upon their subjects reminding us that we all answer to a higher calling.

Here in Italy, I am surrounded by art and creation and I feel inspired. I don’t yet know how I can incorporate these new ideas or influences into my art, but the foundation is there. I am just a sponge soaking in everything around me. The curve of the stone arch over the windows with wooden shutters, some open some closed, and the variations in the texture of the terracotta buildings. The swirling languages around me and at this moment through the deeper connections with those around me, I can travel to any part of the world I desire.

I take photographs to try and capture everything I see, but there is no real chance of it. Instead, I wish I could just record my vision and sound as I experience it, narrated by thoughts and questions brought on by the new sensory inputs. Even then it wouldn’t be able to capture the emotional resonance of history and a place in the continuum of man. I imagine that for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years man has stood in my exact spot and looked out at the sights I am seeing.

I often imagine what it would be like to travel back in time and see the buildings when they were new, fresh painted walls, oil paintings still drying in voluminous rooms of royalty and the wealthy patrons. I question what is better, seeing these buildings and the cities with the patina of age or as they were originally created. There is no answer but, I still would like to have seen the Duomo first built, a wonder of modern architecture.

As I continue to study and wander through streets filled with history, I will push myself to work on my own ideas and my works. I wanted to write but so far, I have been so overwhelmed by my location, I have found it difficult to focus and dedicate time to sitting at a table and writing. I am someone who is constantly writing in my head, and that is still where I am at the moment but, hopefully soon, that will translate to words on the page and time in the screen.

Ciao for now!

Shaych