Skip to main content

Roma, day Four



We went shopping, and I spent way too much money on a coat and I will be eating nothing but porridge and soup till my next loan check comes in March because of it. But the Italian fashion is really intoxicating--they design with great freedom and individuality--and I was actually practicing a great deal of restraint. I bought some gifts for various people and Chaeli bought a blue dress. We also stopped off at a gallery in the Barberini Palace. I didn't mention that the first night in Rome we stumbled into this palace and happily rambled about on its grounds (it's in the middle of the city and the gates were wide open).



The gallery was not that impressive, except that it was in a way-cool building with way-cool marble stairs and ornate painted ceilings. I think someone should make a coffee table book of the floors and ceilings of Rome. They are among the more impressive aspects of the city's impressiveness. There was one painting in the gallery that was familiar (of course, I have no photo, but I will find an image online if I can) called "Sacred and Profane Love," by Giovanni Baglioni. It is a picture of an angel of light and a demon of great ugliness interacting with a regular person. We went to dinner that night and I had some kind of spaghetti-ish thing with mussels and it was yummy. We also drew pictures of what we thought angels looked like for real, and now I want to have an art exhibit with all sorts of depictions of angels in all manner of mediums from lots of different artists. The only requirement is that no chubby babies are allowed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can someone please explain why my Quicktime isn't working? Anyone with prophetic awareness of my little Atlas, none so old but recently behaving so?
8 comments
Read more
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
6 comments
Read more
Kathryn, do NOT be jealous of me going to the opera. It was weird. They were wearing these bulky animal costumes and clonking boots which might have been okay except that their footsteps drowned out the sound of the orchestra (Oh look! A band!). The plot was supposed to be about the circle of life or something deep, but it really seemed to be more about animals getting it on. It was an opera, though, so plot really shouldn't matter as long as the music is good. It wasn't. I mean, it wasn't BAD - but most of the singing was monotonous, the orchestration was unremarkable, and I hope to heaven no one from the production reads this. It would be so disheartening! They were all skillful - I just wasn't interested in the piece itself. But then, I have only ever seen very classical sorts of pieces. The Marriage of Figaro. Samson and Delilah. And I was listening to Puccini before leaving the house! What do you do? But then again, I was distracted by my seating companion. Five so...
10 comments
Read more