The Vatican

From Athens, we flew to Rome before heading up to Tuscany. In Rome, there was only one place on the itinerary, The Vatican.

The Vatican Museum

We missed going to the Vatican Museum last time we were in Rome. I actually found the Vatican Museum itself more interesting than the Sistine Chapel. There are a lot of rooms, which contain magnificent frescoes as well as artwork, including tapestries, maps, paintings and sculptures. There is a set of rooms with some of Raphael's best frescoes (the Raphael Rooms). He was invited to the Vatican at the age of 24 and died at 37. I am continually amazed at how early in their lives some of the Renaissance artists were recognised at the highest levels. He was asked to wipe out the frescoes done by previous notable artists and redo the set of rooms (done by the Pope as his predecessor who had commissioned the old frescoes was particularly hated). The subject matter of one of them is interesting. 'The School of Athens' has a decidedly unreligious theme for a room in the Vatican Palace. It is about Philosophy and has figures such as Plato/Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid/Archimedes and Raphael himself.

Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum rooms. It is disappointingly noisy with lots of guides talking to their groups and people generally chatting about the artwork in very unhushed tones. It is interesting that even the untrained eye can see the differences between the various artists' work. Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Genesis are full of very muscular, semi-naked, well defined people. Boticelli's work also has quite a lot of depth but the people have flowing robes. Other works are more 2D. You get quite a crick in the neck looking up at the ceiling.

St Peter's Basilica & Michelangelo's Pieta

I loved Michelangelo's Pieta the last time I was in St Peter's Basilica 12 years ago and wanted to see it again. It is still my favourite piece of artwork. Even after seeing David in Accademia, I would say that though David is awesome to behold, with phenomenal detail in his anatomy (muscles, tendons, veins), furrowed brow and charisma, the Pieta is much more personal, with Mary's serene face, Jesus's limp body (how marble can appear limp I will never know) and details like Jesus's fingers caught in the folds of Mary's dress. It is unbelievable that Michelangelo created this piece when he was 21-23 years old.

The story of how Michelangelo was invited to Rome is very funny. He carved a statue of a sleeping Cupid and passed it off as a Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it discovered that it was a fake but was so impressed with it that he found out who the artist was and invited him to Rome to work for him.