Vatican Museum

This morning, before we heard the bad news about Reggie, my buddy John and I went to the Vatican Museum. The Vatican Museum was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I have no photographic evidence of the event. We got up bright and early, killed our breakfast, and sped over to the Vatican Museum around 9 am, which was perfect timing. There was absolutely no wait whatsoever. I think this had something to do with the Papal Audience; since the Pope has one every Wednesday at 10 am, everyone was in line to get into the seating on the Piazza San Pietro while we just walked in to the Museum. Not so when we left a little after noon. The line followed the walls of the Vatican for nearly half a mile. I read somewhere that the Vatican Museum averages over 4 million visitors a year. No wonder, it's really amazing. Julius II founded the place in the 16th century. He was invited to an archaeological dig where the Laocoon statue was being uncovered. He luckily visited the site as they were unearthing it from the ground, and with the haughtiness of a world leader declared that he had to have it. The statue was already promised to another collector, but Julius said that he would pay ten times the asking price. Money talks and Julius got what he wanted. Julius built a collection of antiquities around this statue and thus began the Vatican Museums.

I've heard people say that the Vatican Museums are intimidatingly large, but we didn't have a problem with that. It is a large complex, but we only spent half the day there and saw a good majority of the stuff. We got through the modern art galleries, classical, Egyptian, and statuary museums, as well as the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel. I really enjoyed the hallways leading up to the Raphael Rooms. For most tourists, it's a long hallways that's kind of a filler to moderate traffic flow into the really famous rooms. People look at the stuff on the walls, which isn't very impressive by itself, but I found really gratifying with my incomplete knowledge of Latin. The hallways are painted with maps of all of Italy and its environs. Each area is blown up into sections of only a couple miles at a time with some fantastic Latin descriptions, informing the reader about what rivers, forests and mountains are prominent there, what minerals and trade products grow well in the region, and show little pictures of each town and village. The ceilings are painted mostly with biblical and church history stories, many of military iconography. My favorite was a picture about a guy named King Theodore being thrown into hell. It looked like two bishops were throwing him down into burning damnation. I researched online for a bit and found to what this could be referring. St. Thomas Aquinas says in his Exposition on the Psalms of David:

Et in synodo Toletana quidam Theodorus Mopsuestenus, qui hunc ad litteram de David exponebat, fuit damnatus, et propter hoc et propter alia multa; (Super Psalmo 21 n.1)

And in the church council of Toletana (Toledo?) a certain Theodore Mopsuestenus, who was explaining this according to the letter of David, was damned both on account of this and many other things.

Apparently, this Theodore had some teachings in his early writings that were antithetical to the reigning members of the Church. After he died, some condemn him pretty heartily. I don't think this is what the picture depicted, since he wasn't a king, but it could possibly be related.

I also enjoyes a certain picture in the Raphael Room. It was pretty funny, but also kind of gross. In one of the large epic military scenes, there's a dwarf. This dwarf is super ugly and really deformed. He looks out of the painting right at you while putting on a helmet as if making fun of the war behind him. The best part is that if you look closely, the dwarf is showing off his balls. Raphael must have gotten bored with painting all this highy and mighty elegant stuff and decided to put in some bawdy elements. I almost laughed out loud when I realized it.

Besides that, the Sistine chapel was beautiful. I won't go into all the details because you can open up any art book or look at any website and get the whole thing. It was really cool seeing the artwork that I spent a whole semester studying for my upper level writing requirement at Michigan. I know more about the Libyan sibyl Michelangelo painted than I ever really cared to, but it was great to actually view it.

The rest of the Museum was good too. They had a ton of Roman statuary and a decent, yet kind of small, Egyptian exhibit. The modern art was good, but there wasn't anything too exciting. A couple paintings did interesting things with color, there were some of Salvador Dali's paintings, and an immense 7 piece bronze artwork showing Pentecost and bishops, priests, and laymen looking upon the scene as if there. There was also an area that showed some museum workers as they were cleaning dirty reliefs. To steal the words Ferris Buehler, the Museum "is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend it."