La Dolce Vita

Been doing some major sightseeing, mostly by walking everywhere. I think you get a better feel of a place by walking and seeing what the locals are up to. Plus, I like burnishing my map-reading skills. Google maps you say? Pah!, we’ll see how good that is when you get led through the Tiber rather than across a bridge. I’m staying in the historic centre so everything I wish to see is within half an hour’s walk at my snail pace. The most astonishing sight? Easy. Walking down a narrow alley, turning right and coming slap-bang across the Trevi Fountain. It’s so unexpected and incredible. It’s exactly how I felt when I came out of the train station in Venice and in front of me, water as far as the eye could see. Extremely cool.

I walked to the incredibly badly signposted Vatican. In fact, the whole of Rome could do with better signage. I was astounded by the first thing I saw, the sphere in the Vatican courtyard. What is that unholy thing doing here, I asked myself. Answer came none, but it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I did a total swerve around it; I can’t believe people were taking their pictures there, totally oblivious. I wouldn’t approach that thing without a flask of holy water while liberally festooned with garlic bulbs. Cripes, not a good start. The museum itself was pretty good although there is a fair amount of what I call ‘indifferent art’ bulking up the good stuff. Stand outs? The Carta Geografica paintings by Ignazio Danti and the amazing ceiling that stretches out in a perfect illustration of the effect of perspective. Incredible. I also really liked the tapestries based on Raffaelo’s cartoons (check them out, the cartoons are in London at the V&A. Take a torch :-)). I think they are some of his best works and the competition with Michelangelo seems to have brought out the best in him.

But, where’s the beef? The Sistine Chapel. This was approached down the dingiest passageways and stairs I saw in the whole Vatican but it only made the contrast to the works even more outstanding. That Michelangelo, eh? What a lad. I walked into this room and my mouth dropped open despite the fact that I’ve seen a gazillion pictures of the works. I was first stunned into silence and then I just had to smile. The superlative talent that went into that room is never going to be equalled in one spot anywhere else on this planet, never, ever. And it’s not just Michelangelo; the other finished works in the room by Perugino, Botticelli, Roselli, Ghirlandaio and Pinturrichio are just as wonderful. I never expected that. I only expected the ceiling. Imagine him standing there with very limited ability to zoom in or out to check perspective, painting that ceiling and feuding with the pope in his spare time, for four years. Ten minutes of craning my neck to look at the ceiling did my back in. Stupendous. It did make me think though. Are crowds going to shuffle through a museum in 500 years’ time, looking in wonder at Damien Hirst’s spot paintings or Rachel Whiteread’s houses, or Tracey Emin’s unmade bed? Will we have a human race that has become so infantilised, it will walk through rooms looking at neon signs and primary-coloured polka dots, and be awestruck? I hope not. Of course Tracey & Damien etc are excellent artists in that they perfectly reflect the debased state of our society. A society from which the ineffable and the sublime have been removed will produce exactly what we see now, so I greatly admire them for getting the joke and reflecting us back to ourselves. Damn shame though, just the same. Too much man, not enough God, and the end result? A very, small, insignificant speck of dust that is not the image of anything.

As if to emphasise that, the room adjacent to the gallery was showing a great collection of miniature oil lamps and random pieces of bronze. From the sublime to the ridiculous. I had to laugh as I looked at this tat. Have you ever been in a museum and thought to yourself, ‘what a load of old tat!’ It happens to me all the time. Note to museums – just because it’s old, it doesn’t mean it’s good. Put that rubbish in a provincial car boot sale and no one would touch it. And it’s not because they’re ignorant. It’s because they know tat when they see it and aren’t too pretentious to call it what it is. There’s a good reason that stuff wasn’t put in a pharaoh’s tomb; it’s ye olde ancient egyptian poundland artifact 🙂 So, all in all, a pretty good day. Plus, I got to see a copy of the Pieta which is my second favourite sculpture after the Nike of Samothrace (this week, anyway). The Sistine Chapel. You’ve got to see it at least once before you die, and then go out and do just one superlative thing so we can tell you passed this way.

Photos: Pieta by Michelangelo; Carta Geografica ceiling, Vatican; Resurrected Christ by Rafaello; View of Basilica San Pietro from the Vatican.

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