Vatican Museum

Today the Vatican, tomorrow the world. We went to the Vatican Mueum. It's a very nice place but quite dead.. like much of Rome it is obsessed with looking back. And I'm not sure that the restoration of artwork did the place any favors. You look at those pieces of art and you marvel at how.. well.. how pastel-to-cartoony they are. And that may have worked in the day when workers (hell, nobles) came in on limping pack-horses to look at the marvels that God had wrought in architecture and art, but these days the game of the church is a bit different and those austere and serious colors of the pre-restoration Vatican might be the missed ticket. There is a certain lack of gravitas in the light colors.

I mean, what do we like? Naves, wood, statues, and stained glass.. all dark and restrained. Warner Brothers can do the cartoons.. they have the artists.. It maybe shouldn't be so freaking bright. With that said, there is one room in which the thing really works. The Vatican Map Room has, on the walls, a series of well, maps... but on the ceiling? Holy crap. A pastiche of great paintings from any brilliant Italian who could find a paintbrush, a sponsor, and otherworldy talent. It is over there to the right and photographs really don't do it justice because the room is dark and the scale is vast. This was definitely worth the price of admission by itself.

Oh yeah , that picture up above is of the plaza in the midst of the museum and it is pretty cool. You will note that the church has placed yet another "eye of Sauron" in the middle of the thing. Just so you know he's looking. That's why. The dome peeking through in the background is St. Peters.

The Sistine Chapel is beyond photography. Those crazy closeups you see of God giving man (Adam?) the hand-job heard round the universe cannot do credit to the crazy-quilt almost comic-book sensibility of the place. And that makes sense, take a rube out of the fields and what can you expect him to understand? Nice little segmented stories in boxes... like comic books or the Sistine Chapel.

Oh well, there were cool things... below is one of the modern art piece.. Jesus flips us off? Anyway, the "modern" are didn't include the kind of avant-garde crap that one would find in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. More like Van Gogh and Salvador Dali which, I think, gives you some idea of what the Catholic Church thinks is "modern."

As we wandered from window to window we notice a tennis court on the corner right above where the line for museum entry bends to turn back to St. Pietro Plaza. I wonder if anyone plays in the Vatican? Certainly many who work there are old, but many are also fit. And though new blood may be scarcer in these secular times, there will always be a steady stream of repressed gays, obsessives and the truly religious to refresh the Vatican. It's the big time baby. Just as there may not be good actors in local rep and there are great ones on Broadway? Same with the Vatican. On the pines, big audiences, the biggest white-light ever. I asked a guard who, in fractrued English, told me that the new Pope (the "Rat" to Vatican insiders) does play and is quite fierce on the court. He doesn't like to lose and isn't above the tricks that come with age.

The guard says the Rat has a mean dropshot, and woe (and perhaps eternal damnation) to the young collar who tries to play the game straight. The Vatican hasn't played the game straight since... well, they've never played the game straight...

Apparently a succesful opponent plays just well enough to lose and thus doesn't jepoardize their chances at advancement. A well-timed hamstring injury has been key, more than once, to the career well being of a young member of the staff and if there are any service aces on this court, they are served by the Pope.

Why the guard chose to share all this with me is unclear, but it did deepen my experience in the Museum. On the way out we passed through what had been the Vatican Library. It had been gutted to host various reliquaries and once again the POSSLQ's tiny hands balled into impotent fists of rage.

On the way out we had a servicable and cheap meal in the Vatican cafeteria. If I forgot to say grace, I'm sorry.

Eh... here's two more things from the vaticanization and I'm out..

This first pic is the picture of Laocoon attempting to save his kiddies from the evil sea-serpent. Interesting stories float around this piece, but rather than tell those I will give a brief history.

In 1506 this was added to the Vatican collection after it was discovered on the Esquiline Hill before the eyes of Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo Buonarotti (Note: now there is a theory that Michelangelo himself might have sculpted the thing and "planted" it). The statue, which was probably originally commissioned for the home of a wealthy Roman, was unearthed in 1506 near the site of the Golden House of the Emperor Nero (who reigned from 54 to 68 AD), and it is possible that the statue belonged to Nero himself. It was acquired by Pope Julius II, an enthusiastic classicist, soon after its discovery and was placed in the Belvedere Garden at the Vatican, now part of the Vatican Museum.

The discovery of the Laocoon statue made a great impression on Italian sculptors and significantly influenced the course of the Italian Renaissance. The sculptor Michelangelo is known to have been particularly impressed by the massive scale of the work and its sensuous Hellenistic aesthetic of the statue, particularly its depiction of the male figures. Which is all another way of saying that Michelangelo was a big old gay dude.

As we cruised out of the museum we heard a guide who spoke English telling his charges that this painting on the left was a representation of how Michaelangelo wanted the St. Peters to look.

But the dome was really all he got accomplished in his life. Bernini put in the columns, but where did the obelisk come from?

Saint Peter's took two centuries to complete which was not related to actual construction time. Instead it was sort of like how planning goes (or doesn't) at community colleges. New Popes would come in with only few years left of their life to do anything. Each new pope picked a new architect, and that architect made unnecessary changes to Bramante’s original plan to make it his own, and by the time all of this was done, construction would start and the pope or the architect’s would die.

Repeat this "planning" cycle as (un)necessary.