September 9
The Vatican
After a long travel day the day before we didn't waste any time in our sightseeing, and woke up bright and early for our chance to see the Vatican.
We met up with our tour group and walked through the courtyard to get to the museum.
The courtyard itself had some amazing views.
Especially of St. Peters
Our tour was a 2 hour tour of the museum and Sistine Chapel, but it went by so fast the 2 hour tour felt more like a 1/2 an hour!
We started out our tour by entering the sculpture rooms. After visiting here as well as the Borghese museum (which will be another post in a few more days) I have fallen in love with sculptures. They where my favorite parts of the museum.
I loved this one. It is called Laocoon and he was a high priest of Troy who warned his fellow Trojans not to except any gifts from the Greeks. However the Gods wanted the Greeks to win and so sent serpents to kill him and his two sons.
The famous Belevadere Torso. This is all that remains of the ancient statue of Hercules seated on a lion skin. Michelangelo loved this statue and would caress it and say "I am the pupil of the Torso". This sculpture has been his, as well as many, as a source of inspiration.
This bearded River Gods pose was Michelangelo inspiration for Adam in the Sistine.
Brad was in awe of the tapestries. Just at the immense detail it would take to weave a picture like this! I mean you can see veins popping out, thats how detailed these were!
Listening to our tour guide
The School of Athens. Raphael pays respect to the great thinkers of ancient Greece. In the center are Plato and Aristotle, the two greatest Greeks. Theres also Socrates, and Leonardo da Vinci whom Raphael worshipped. When Raphael was finishing up this work he went down the hall and got a glimpse of Michelangelo working on the Sistine and was astonished. He returned to this work and added Michelangelo (he's at the bottom corner in purple). Raphael really respected Michelangelo, but from what our tour guide said, Michelangelo didn't give Raphael the time of day.
They say that when Raphael died that the Renaissance died with him.
The Sistine Chapel
Our tour ended with the grand finale: the Sistine Chapel. No talking or picture taking are allowed in the Sistine and so our tour guide spoke about chapel at the beginning of our tour. The Sistine Chapel is the personal chapel of the pope and where popes are elected, but what makes this chapel famous is Michelangelo's ceiling and his huge The Last Judgement.
Since I wasn't allowed to take pictures these next two are from the Vatican Website.
The Sistine Chapel is breathtaking! We stayed and listened to an audio guide on our headphones and it was fascinating as well as impossible to think Michelangelo could create such a masterpiece under the circumstances. Even though much of what our audio guide said was the same as what our tour guide. It's one thing to learn about it outside with a pointer vs. being in the chapel to see its breathtaking beauty. I'm so glad we downloaded the audio guide!
When the Pope asked Michelangelo to paint the ceiling he said no. He was a sculpture not a painter. However the pope pleaded, bribed, and then threatened Michelangelo to do it. Michelangelo finally relented as long as he could do it his own way. Not only was this project massive (5,900 sq. feet), but he had to design and erect the scaffolding.
To paint the ceiling they would plaster a section and then Michelangelo would paint on the wet plaster. So if he didn't get it right the first time they had to wait for it to dry and then scrape the whole thing off and do it again. I had always heard that Micelangelo was on his back when he painted the ceiling, but thats not the case. He was standing! The ceiling took him 4 years to complete and it almost killed him. Can you imagine the physical pain of looking up at the ceiling would do? Not only that but paint would get in his eyes and just the mental stress of it all. Its no wonder that many art scholars say that the Sistine is the single greatest work of art by any one human being.
Once inside the chapel, I was extremely surprised at the ceiling. I really only knew of the most famous section of the ceiling where God creates Adam (the finger touching picture), I had assumed that the ceiling would be domed shaped to fit in with most of the chapels in that area, and was surprised that it was long and narrow. I also didn't imagine the pictures would be divided the way they are. I assumed it was one large picture, similar to the Last Judgement wall.
One of the things our tour guide told us, was that in the 1980's a massive renovation was done to the Sistine chapel (1980-1994). They were cleaning away all the grime from centuries of candle smoke and soot. After the restoration scholars where blown away at the color and detail that had emerged. One scholar even said "Every book on Michelangelo will have to be rewritten" because no one knew that Michelangelo painted in such vibrant colors. There is a section in the corner of the chapel that they left unrestored so you can see the difference the restoration made.
The Vatican and Sistine chapel where really one of the top highlights of the trip.
Since we were at the Vatican on a Wednesday the Pope was in time we couldn't just go to St. Peters from the Sistine chapel and instead got to walk back through the museum to exit. The vatican was massive and being on a tour we missed a lot (like the Egyptian portion) and the things we did see we didn't linger very long at with the exception of Raphel's room and the Sistine, but I loved learning in detail the things we did see. We would have been so overwhelmed had we tried to see everything and not really even know what we were looking at. I guess walking back through we could have stopped some more to look, but I think we overstimulated and hungry so we just left. (FYI the food at the Vatican cafeteria is horrible, but we didn't have very many choices)
Here is the beautiful spiral staircase to exist the museum.
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