january 21 story and pictures

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Leopardi for doing an outstanding job setting up this course, flexing the schedule (sometimes daily and hourly) to accommodate the vagaries of weather, the visit sites, and the students. It all seems so seamless, but some of us can see and appreciate the mounds of logistic and academic preparation that has occurred.

Today some of us left for a large open-air local market at 9:45 just up the street from our hotel, these are becoming more rare in Rome. This is where the local neighborhood shops for everything from groceries to clothes. At 11 am the class gathered in the hotel lobby, walked to the tram, took the tram, and then the bus to just outside Vatican City. We then walked briskly in the rain out of Italy and into the Papal State to enter the Vatican Museum. There we begin to see how the ancient Greek and Roman art, architecture, and ideals were co-opted in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. As we went through a very small portion of the collection heading toward Saint Peter’s Cathedral we were seeing what had led up to some of the most famous pieces by Raphael and Michelangelo. Dr. Leopardi did a magnificent job weaving all the art, political, and religious threads from the ancient past and fifteenth and sixteenth century together so that as we entered the Pope’s Library with it’s Raphael’s and the Sistine Chapel with its Michelangelo’s the course tapestry became more and more complete. All of this was accomplished in rooms full of competing tour guides, and the ebb and flow of masses of humanity. My words cannot describe what it is like to walk into room after room of truly legendary art. To round a corner and suddenly be confronted by Raphael’s School of Athens filling the wall or to emerge into the Sistine Chapel as it’s grandeur and size surrounds and engulfs you are indescribable. There are no pictures allowed in the latter and the former would not have justice done to it by amateur photographers. Please look them up on line if you are not familiar with them. We finish the day in St. Peter’s Cathedral concentrating on Michelangelo’s Pieta, and Bernini’s many artistic contributions.