Day 7

[unforth]

Today, exhaustion hit hard. Doing this kinda always-on-the-go tourism can get pretty tiring. However, there is always more to see! So we decided not to take it too easy, and managed to get to two more of the museums we were most interested in. At this point, I'd say we've visited more or less all of my highest priorities, which is nice - I usually feel like I don't get any where near enough time in a place; here, I feel like there is enough to sustain another visit, but I'm not leaving with a long list of things I wish I had the time to see.

In the morning, we started at the Palazzo Barberini. This formerly privately owned collection and palace (owned, unsurprisingly, by the Barberini family) is made up of paintings with a scattering of antiquities. The earliest paintings in the collection were fascinating religious works dating to the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. It's not too common to see such early pieces, and the collection was well developed through the Mannerists in a way that made it a very good, small scale way of seeing how painting changed in Italy (almost all the works were Italian, with one wall of excellent 17th century Dutch portraits mixed in for no apparent reason), going from a style that was pretty much indistinguishable (to the inexpert eye) from the Byzantine tradition to the post-Renaissance realistic style. In particular, there were a couple of wonderful Filippo Lippi paintings that really seemed like a transition in and of themselves, which was fascinating to see. Unfortunately, no photography allowed, and the next museum that we went to had SO many paintings that I'm having a little trouble sorting it out in my mind. However, there were some other highlights. There were two very fine Caravaggio's - I think my favorites so far - one of Narcissus gazing at a shadowy reflection of himself, and one of Judith actively involved in the activity of cutting off the head of Holofernes, arterial spray and all. There was a neat Fortune Teller image, in which one of the fortune tellers was mugging the guy while he had his fortune told. One of the rooms had no paintings at all, instead just a few couches where you could lie and stare up at the very elaborately painted ceiling, which had a lot of different allegorical scenes on it, though the one that stood out to me was of an older man eating the arm of a baby, which it turned out was an allegory of time. There was also a VERY beautiful and oddly 19th century style image of the penitent Magdelene, I felt like I could really feel her pain, and an image of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, which at the time seemed unusual to me, but I then saw two more very much like it at the next museum, so I guess it's not so unusual after all. There was a St. Jerome I liked a lot, which stood out to me mostly because for some reason he was wearing glasses. And there were two El Greco's, which didn't appeal to me any more than any other El Greco I've ever seen. Three different representations of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine seemed like an odd focus to me. All were pretty, but I don't know the story, and it always seems odd to me when I see paintings of it. I mean, it's an infant, putting a ring on an adult woman, and it's called a marriage...I don't really get it...Oh, and there was a lovely portrait of a woman done by Raphael, that once again reminded me that I was clearly born in the wrong century, as regards my body type and it's sexual appeal.

From there, we walked over to the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj (pronounced Pamphili). This gallery has the unusual feature of being a part of a home that is still inhabited by the family. One of their relatives was Pope Innocent X, and they've clearly been Roman high society for a very long time; at some point they intermarried with a British family, so they now are largely educated in England, with the odd result that the audio guide (which was provided free of charge - I'm not generally willing to pay for them) was narrated by a member of the family, which was interesting. I think I have a crush on his voice. Anyway, the Gallery was not in the part of the Palazzo that the family lives in, and was divided in to two sections. The first was rooms of the house, decorated as they would have been in different time periods. According to the guide, one of the late 19th century inhabitants felt that there was value in maintaining the appearance of the rooms from different periods, and as a result there are several small rooms made up with wonderful furniture and textiles from the past, and all of the rooms on public display range from kinda old (19th century) to very old (17th century). The "Velvet Room" was particularly striking; a large room meant for entertaining, the walls are covered in rich dark red cut velvet. One of the sitting rooms had 18th century tapestry panels representing the zodiacs that were absurd as only things from the Rococo period can be, and another room was arranged as a throne room. The reasoning for this is that the Pope was free to visit whomever he wished, and it was considered essential to have a throne room in which he could sit, because he was so important that no family could receive him: instead, he had to establish himself in the throne room, and then he would receive the family even in their own home! (and I'm not talking about the Pope who was related to them, this was true of any pope). The family also had an interesting chapel, where apparently it is a note of their distinction in the highest circles that they actually have two entire corpse, both supposedly of saints (the narrator acknowledged that to modern sensabilities, this is a bit odd and macabre).

After the public rooms, there was the gallery. Oh, the gallery. Intentionally laid out as rooms of paintings used to be before the modern era of careful labeling and individual space for each image, the painting gallery was basically four long hallways (plus two more rooms) in which every inch of available space had a painting. The paintings were laid out to compliment each other, and each was labeled with only the painters names. Those deemed most important and/or interesting often had their own audio guide entries, but for the most part it was for the keen-eyed observer to catch the name, and draw on their knowledge of art to provide the details. Photography was once again not allowed, and for once I think that was a blessing in disguise; given the lighting and the space constraints, I would have given myself fits trying to get good pictures of some of the paintings higher up on the walls.

The whole was an amazing collection that was really rather overwhelming to take in. There was a little bookshop just before it, and I contemplated buying the guide that listed all the paintings, artists and names before I proceeded; in retrospect, this would have been a good plan, and I ended up buying the guide at the end and doing another quick run through of the whole just so I could mark down which I had liked, as the only books of the collection listed only a few works, and skipped a number of my personal favorites. Standouts, in my opinion, start with the most obvious: a portrait of Pope Innocent X, executed by Velazquez, that was as fine a portrait by him as I have seen, and the family member narrator owned that it is pretty much the finest and best known piece in the collection. But that doesn't mean there weren't plenty of other very fine pieces. There was an Annunciation by Filippo Lippi (not his best work that I've seen), an interesting little Quentin Messys image of two heads tucked away in a corner; a fine Rembrandt studio work up near the ceiling. As a whole, the collection was almost entirely Italian and a smattering of Dutch and Flemish works. It was interesting to me because in it I could see collecting the way I collect art: those who were buying clearly had favorite artists, and they tended to have many images by these famous artists. The difference was that mine are Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and Wayne Reynolds, whereas these were Annibale Carrachi's, Jan Brueghels, Guercinos, and other famous painters (I'm sure I've butchered spelling, sorry). There were a couple of Carravaggios, though their best was unfortunately only a copy (the original is on loan for an exhibit in Genoa), and a Titian that completely failed to catch my eye. There was a fine Raphael copy, and another Raphael original, and a few Veronese's that I didn't think were terribly impressive. A lot caught my eye while I was there, though now that I'm not there, it's surprisingly hard to call them to mind, probably because taken as a whole it was such an overwhelming way to see a collection. However, there was a lot of fine religious art, with a few images of the Holy Family that I particularly liked. There was a little private worship piece by Parmigianino which had originally been double sided, and both sides were very pretty in pale pastel colors that made it resemble something 17th century and French more than 16th century and Italian. There were I think two versions of Judith and the Head of Holofernes that I liked, though I didn't catch the artist on either, and there was a funny painting by Pieter Brueghel that depicted a (made up) naval battle outside of Naples. There were a couple of dark scenes of battle that I also liked, and a painting of a young St. John the Baptist with a scroll written in Latin on his staff. (I'm trying to note them down, because the books I bought there have reproductions of so few of the ones that I liked.) There was one odd image which depicted a woman picking a flea out of her clothing by candle light - the artist is apparently unknown and is just called "The Master of the Candle," because all of his works share the feature of being dark scenes illuminated by a single candle. There was a large painting of a family group enjoying a concert that seemed very much in the Dutch style but was by an Italian, and a whole lot of lovely but not terribly memorable landscapes. All in all, it was very overwhelming but worth the visit none-the-less.

From there, we went to get a late lunch/very early dinner at Babington's Tea House, where we spent a fortune, ate more delicious scones, and I enjoyed a black tea scented with rose that was really very pleasant, and which I intend to buy some of. We deliberately decided not to buy anything to take home with us, thus forcing ourselves to go again (oh, tragedy!) - it's a pity it costs so much, I'd go every day!

And now we're back in the room, and it's early, and I'm exhausted, so no night walk for me today. Oh well, the worst that happens is I don't end up doing one - that's what almost always happens with my planned-for night walks. No thought yet on what we'll do tomorrow. For now, I'm gonna write some post-cards. :)