Venice, More Art, Angels and Architecture

As may have become clear, I do enjoy a good art gallery, and as well as the modern art galleries Venice also has the Galleria Accademia, where they keep all the renaissance art (and later - it covers the 14th to 18th Centuries) .

One of the first rooms you go into is in what used to be the refectory of the Scuola Grande della Carità, which is a 14th C building, and has an amazing wooden ceiling covered in cherubim. Apparently, no two faces are the same.. 

Angel Ceiling, Galleria Dell'Accademia

The gallery's collection is arranged broadly chronological, so you start with 14th and 15th Century religious art - lots of lovely Renaissance Angels and the occasional dragon.

Quite a lot of the rooms were closed when I visited, so I didn't get to see a lot of the later stuff, but I did very much enjoy the room with a series of paintings of 'The Miracles of the True Cross', by Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini,  and Mansueti.

'Miracolo della Croce caduta nel canale di San Lorenzo'- Gentile Bellini, 1500

They show meticulous pictures of Venice in the late 1400's. (Theoretically involving miracles attributable to a relic of the true cross, but really more about the people and the scenery!)

Detail from Carpaccio's 'Miracle of the Cross at the Ponte di Rialto' (1496)

There are gondolas and gondoliers and  posh Venetians, and pictures of the Rialto and on St Mark's

 'Processione in piazza San Marco' Gentile Bellin, 1496

 It's fascinating to see so many little details of Venice in 1500! 

After leaving the gallery, I found another relic of Renaissance Venice, the Scala Contarini del Bovolo, a beautiful, delicate, external spiral staircase.

It was built in around 1400, and is just lovely. 

You can climb the tower, and there are views out across Venice from the top.

The un-named (but sneaky) architect of the tower made the arches smaller on each level as the tower goes up, to make it look taller than it really is!

This was my last full day, so I then spent some time just wandering around and enjoying the sights.

..and the traghetto, and the canals.

I admired the beautifully decorated gondolas 'parked' outside the guesthouse I was staying at, and generally drank in the atmosphere.

It  was all rather nice.

The following morning I had a little time to wander around again before catching the boat back to the airport to fly home.

It was a lovely sunny morning, which made it harder to leave, but at least the trip across the lagoon was pleasant!

Venice, Or: What I did on my Holidays, part the first.

I've always wanted to visit Venice, and decided that this would be the year I did so, so I have just returned after 6 days there. 

I loved it.  

I was staying in a convent guesthouse which was basic but very central, less than 5 minutes walk from St Mark's Square and less than 10 from the Rialto Bridge. I took the boat from the airport to Venice, rather than the bus, which meant approaching across the lagoon and along the Grand Canal, which is definitely an interesting way to arrive!  And I saw my first gondola within minutes! 

The first evening I had time to go out and explore a little, visiting St Mark's Square, as it gradually emptied, and walking along the quay, admiring the moored gondolas and the views across the Lagoon.

The following morning I made an early start and explored further on foot, to see the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs), with an early morning gondola, then walked as far as the Arsenal (where they used to to build, and moor, warships, in the 12th to 16th Centuries.

 I didn't go in, I think some of the buildings are still military, and it was too early for the Navel Museum to be open.

 After walking back to St Mark's Square I decided to visit the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace).

It's pretty impressive: Most of the current building was built in the 15th and 16th Centuries, (Apparently there has been a building there since the 9th Century, but the Palace had a habit of major fires so they have had to rebuild it quite a lot)

Giant's Staircase

In some respects it reminded me a little of Versailles, in that it is never knowingly underblinged. Still, I suppose if you have Tintoretto and Veronese and Palladio hanging around with nothing better to do you might as well get them to do a bit of home decor!

Sala del Senato 

 While I was visiting they were having a Hieronymus Bosch exhibition at the Doge's Palace, and I decided to go. I'm glad I did, because the exhibition includes some of the major rooms in the Palace which it would have been a shame to miss. 

There were only 3 actual Bosch's, the rest of the exhibition related to those who influenced or were influenced by him. 

Detail from 'The Hermit Saints', Bosch

But the details on the pictures they do have were very .... interesting.  The guy had a very odd imagination!

The visit to the Doge's Palace also includes the chance to cross the Bridge of Sighs (which is, as you might expect, much less attractive on the inside)

After visiting the palace, I spent the afternoon exploring, including crossing the Grand Canal by traghetto (the poor man's gondola - for just €2 you can be ferried across the Grand Canal by a pair of gondoliers, although admittedly there are no gilded or carved decorations on the boats, and the gondoliers don't wear their trademark straw hats!

Traghetto

 Having wandered far enough to reach the railway station and the Scalzi bridge, visiting several churches along the way, including Chiesa degli Scalzi, where there was an Easter display of Murano Glass, including these rather appealing wine goblets! 

After which I took  the advice of my guidebook and taking the vaperetto (water bus) line 1, which goes all the way down the Grand Canal to San Marco, giving you the chance to admire all the canal-side palaces. Which is nice.

What I did On My Holidays - Part the Fifth - Naples Fiend-meet

After booking my holiday, it occurred to me that Sorrento and Naples are not too far from Rome, where my friend Nathalie lives, and when I got in touch with her it turned out that she was free on Monday, so we were able to arrange to meet up.  Nathalie generously agreed to come to Naples, and as Monday was my last full day, and I had a very early flight home on Tuesday morning, I'd booked a hotel in Naples for Monday night, so I travelled from Sorrento and checked in there, and Nathalie travelled from Rome, and we met in the lobby.

The weather had broken overnight - I was woken at 2 a.m. by a tremendous thunder storm - I thought for a moment the hotel was falling down around me! the rain lowered the temperature, which was nice, and it also meant it was a little clearer, although not by as much as I would have expected.

We set out to explore Naples - we started with the cathedral of San Gennero, as it turned out it was the day for the annual miracle, when some vials of St. Gennero's blood are brought out of the bank-vault in which they are normally kept, and the dried blood inside 'miraculously' liquefies. As a result, the church was very full, overflowing with nuns, and men in cassocks, and local dignitaries; we saw the tail-end of the procession going to the Church, but didn't wait for the miracle itself (although I gather this took place as advertised!)

'Dissillusion' (Pic from museum website)

We also visited the Cappella Sansevero, which houses a very famous sculpture of the 'Veiled Christ'. Unfortunately they have a very strongly enforced 'no photography' rule - however, the sculpture is incredible - really gives the impression of a body covered with a veil, through which details such as the wounds on the hands and feet can clearly be seen. The veil itself has delicate carved lace along the edges.

The sculpture is in the centre of the chapel, which also contains a number of other statues all having allegorical meanings, and with many references to freemasonry. To me, the most impressive is the statue depicting  disillusion, which has intricately carved stone netting!

Below the main chapel,  is a smaller chamber which contains two 'Anatomical Machines' which consist of two human skeletons, male and female, showing all the veins and arteries, and at least some of the internal organs. These were made in the 1760s, and no-one is entirely sure how they managed to do it. One theory is that it was done by injecting something, but according to the reading I've done since, it's now believed that the circulatory systems were made using wire, and plaster and beeswax, but it is still an incredible achievement - not least as it displays a much more accurate depiction of the circulatory system than was thought to be current at that time! The two bodies are looking somewhat the worse for wear, but very interesting, in a slightly gruesome way.

We went to the church and cloister of San Chiara, which features a cloister with majolica tiled pillars and seats. Most of the tiles features either daily scenes of trading or hunting, or of imaginative scenes of coaches drawn by lions, or peacocks, or sea monsters. Inexplicably, the scene in which the lions turn on their grooms and devour them, illustrating why cats are not suitable for this kind of work, is omitted.

We could only find one scene which related to the life of the convent, showing a nun feeding cats - two of which we identified as Bengals...

The church also has a small museum, in which none of the exhibits are labelled, so you find yourself looking at a mummified leg in a gilded case wondering who it (is supposed to have) belonged to.

We also visited a number of other churches, and we tried quite hard to visit Castel Nuovo, but unfortunately it was closed. It has a pretty impressive gateway, though!

We did, however, manage to find a nice restaurant where we ate pizza and drank beer, and later, we had coffee at Gambrinus, which is the oldest coffee shop in Naples, and still serves excellent coffee!

We were also unable to return to the archaeological museum, as that, too, is closed on Mondays. We did however, pass through the Galleria Umberto I, which is a huge shopping area, built in the 1880s, and featuring lots of angels, and glass ceilings and plasterwork. As shopping centres go, its pretty impressive.

There were a few more churches, and admired some .. interesting.. pieces of sculpture. I personally have no problems with Artemis of Ephesus or with one-legged Sphinxes as part of a tomb in a christian church, but I'm curious to know how they came to be approved, and what they were deemed to symbolise to make them acceptable for such a place!

We also spent a sensible amount of time sitting drinking granita and chatting, and simply wandering around, looking at streets and graffiti and stalls selling crib-figures, (and some figures *not* suitable for cribs, such as statues of Berlusconi and of various other celebrities and politicians.)

I really enjoyed the day - spending it with a friend made a wonderful finale to my holiday! (Although I did realise, when i got back to my hotel, that I had forgotten to give Nathalie the jar of home-made bramble jelly I brought all the way to Italy for her...

And then on Tuesday, I got up very early in the morning, and caught my flight home.

What I Did On My Holidays - Part the Fourth - Villa Poppeae

After visiting the museum, I was on the circumvesuviana train back to Sorrento and decided, on impulse, to get off at Torre Annunziata, where I had seen that there is another Roman Villa, which was engulfed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD.

I am so glad that I did. The Villa Poppaea Oplontis is amazing, and it was virtually empty - there were only 4 or 5 other visitors there so I was able to have most of the rooms to myself a lot of the time.

The villa is very complete, and the wall-paintings are incredibly well preserved. It's thought that the villa belonged to the family of Poppea (murdered wife of the Emperor Nero), and that it was empty and undergoing renovations after damage caused in the 62AD earthquake, at the time of the eruption.

The villa was large, with gardens and a swimming pool outside, and this, together with some of the decoration of the gardens and courtyard walls has survived.

You can also still see the plainer decoration on the pillars, and the walls of the corridors and the courtyards.

And wooden shutters have survived in places. The archaeologists have also been able to identify some of the trees and plants which were growing in and around the villa, and so the appropriate fruit-trees have been replanted.

But I have to admit that it is the paintings which I like best, and found most intriguing and memorable. seeing how bright the colours are, it's hard to realise that they were painted over 1,900 years ago.

I'm so very glad I did decide to get off the train, and go to look at the Villa.

(More pictures in my Flickr set here)

What I Did On My Holidays - Part the Third - more Roman Remains

Visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum was fascinating, but many of the paintings and mosaics, as well as other artifacts such as glass, silver, and household items have been removed, and are now in the Museo Archeologico Natzionale in Naples, so I decided to take a day-trip into the city to visit the museum.

It's housed in an imposing building, (originally built as a university) and includes a vast 'Great Hall of The Sundial' which holds an ancient statue of Atlas, carrying the globe which is itself carved with depictions of the zodiac. (The sundial in question is set into the floor, and lit by a hole in one corner of the hall, and is, as far as I could make out, designed to show mid day at different seasons, rather than to measure the hours each day.

Alexander the Great - Mosaic from the 'House of the Faun', Pompeii (detail)

Quite a few sections of the museum are closed, including, to my regret, the section holding the 'Farnese gems' (mainly cameos) and some of the Pompeii paintings, but I was able to see the mosaics from Pompeii, which are extraordinary. I think that the mosaic showing the battle between Alexander the Great, and King Darius is probably the most famous, and it is utterly amazing, but the others are pretty impressive, too.

Octopus vs. Lobster (detail of mosaic from the House of The Faun, Pompeii)

I liked the seafood mosaic, and little details of several of the others - this spiky-toothed hippo, for example, and the cat, lurking below a birdbath.

There are also mosaic-decorated pillars, more cats, another guard-dog mosaic.
Another room worth visiting is the 'Gabinetto segreto' (secret room). This is not so much secret as segregated - it contains lots of erotic art - originally, in the early 19th Century, the room was closed, and only those who were "of mature age and well known morality" were granted permits to view the "infamous monuments of heathen licentiousness".

It was then open during the Garibaldi period, and closed under the fascist regime, until 1967! Now it is open again, although there is a sign outside in four or five languages warning it may not be suitable for younger visitors..
Some of the artworks, such as the 'Venus in a golden bikini' are quite unexceptional.
Others, however, such as the statue of Pan with a she-goat, are more startling, to modern eyes!  There are also paintings taken from one of the lupanares (brothels) in Pompeii, with paintings showing different acts and positions, and various Herms, votive offerings (how often do you see a cupboard entirely full of penises?) and paintings, mosaics and statues leaving nothing to the imagination!

After which it was quite soothing to go and look at charming, if at times confusing, paintings from Pompeii - a cupid with a pair of shoes, for instance.

Portrait of the baker, Terentius Neo, and his wife

They also have selections of decorative silver, found at Pompeii (it survived intact having been stored in a chest, padded with blankets, possibly because the house was in the process of being reconstructed following the earthquake of  62AD. More amazingly, there are also glass items, and even papyrii which, despite the fact that they are seriously burned, archaeologists have succeeded in reading!

As well as the Pompeian art, there are also lots of sculptures, some of which were also found in Pompeii or Herculaneum
This lady -> is one of five statues found at Herculaneum, and still pristine.

One of the most famous sculptures in the museum is the 'Farnese Bull', which used to stand in Rome.

It is colossal. 

And while I can't approve of celebrating the habit of tying ladies to enraged bulls, (even if they have been misbehaving) you have to admire the craftsmanship involved!

As you do with the other sculptures.

(the dog, incidentally, is part of a table leg. He is one of the 3-heads of a dog emerging from the stomach of the sea-monster, Scylla, attacking Ulysses' sailors. But you probably knew that.)

all in all, it's a fascinating museum, and I'm very glad that I had the time and opportunity to go.