Vatican, part II; Broken "junk," Big Eyes, and other Art

I know if you have returned to see more you must be anxious to see some broken genitalia and headless nudes and I aim to deliver. 

This section of the Vatican museums seemed to be part workshop part museum, and it appeared to contain areas where they were actively restoring or cleaning some works. The modern architecture here was a sharp contrast to the rest of the Vatican museums which were either built in the 1900s, or were converted to museum space from papal quarters.

 These mosaics were interesting to see unfortunately we weren't able to get too close to them. I think that section of the exhibits was closed for some reason but we were able to look down upon it through this atrium from an upper floor.

 This section of the Vatican museums is called the Chiaramonti Museum, It was assembled in the early 1900s and holds many Roman busts and statues.

 Kate with Roman stuff.

 The view was fantastic from certain vantage points within the Vatican. Per usual, the church likes to "lord above" it's patrons, (pun intended) and chooses the highest vantage point to build it's main houses of worship. Remember Romans, God is watching you, so if you have to do what we all know you are going to, please remember to pay your 10% and such indiscretions will be forgiven. Since not enough of you are murderers, we are going to make a bunch of other little nothings illegal and make you feel guilty about it. Hey, the Pope needs to look pretty for his people, golden accented papal tiaras don't grow on trees! Also there's the outside chance the Church may see it within in their purview to occasionally burn someone alive. Can't have witches running around with any crazy controversial ideas.

 ARRRGGH MY EYES ARE SO BIG.

 Margaret Keane, did you visit the Vatican?

 I tried finding out the meaning of these sculptures, as I failed to read about it while there. I really am having quite a difficult time. The first one strikes me to be a recreation of a theater mask. I recall from Latin that they used to build in megaphone typed structures in the masks, thus the reason for the open mouths.

 This statue in the Vatican says "All are welcome, all are welcome...."

This rotunda is in the Vatican museum "Museo Pio-Clementino," which houses some grand Roman and greek statues. The marble floor in this room was quite breathtaking. Adjacent to it were wings containing Egyptian and Babylonian art.

 We went through many, many halls like the one above. This one housed ancient maps.

 Ahead of the Sistine Chapel in former papal quarters are these masterpiece frescoes by Raphael. Raphael's painting style seems to be light and bright. It does bear some resemblance to Michelangelo, but does not have the same level of physical detail or predilection towards nudes. These actually were commissioned for private Pope living quarters so they could live in poverty and think only of the poor huddled masses.

As we were heading between these rooms often through very narrow hallways, inevitably there were pushy yuppies doing everything but honking the horns of their BMWs (they had to leave those at home unfortunately) so they could get by all of us inconsiderate idiots holding things up. We let some pretentious beautiful people by us only to have mixed emotions of pleasure when they realized "we" weren't the problem, and that a young British woman was helping her elderly grandmother up the stairs ahead of us. The nerve of some people getting old. She must not have got the memo that you aren't allowed to leave the house after 70. What's that, some people that age get around fine you say? No, I'm sorry, if we let one 70 year old out then we have to let them all out. It wouldn't be fair.

Next post I'll talk about my experience in the Sistine Chapel, which soured me on the Church touring experience. Yeah, I realize that is a major part of the whole Italy thing. Did I ever mention that I hate authority with an unmitigated passion? No, no, cross that out, I am some times mildly frustrated by the mindlessness..., no I'm sorry, let me start again. Something milder, how about "at times it can be difficult to exist in this reality?" Yeah, I know, I probably don't know the half of it.