This past weekend was spent in Roma, with the smaller group that comprises my drawing class. Three full days of touring and, most importantly, living in that space has made me appreciate it much more than I had previously. I was exposed to a gentler, homier, more livable side, one of small canyon-like alleys and small candle-lit bars that connected me to my life here in Orvieto. There were even moments of perfect stillness and silence, solitude, only a hundred meters away from the crowded piazze full of gawkers and foreigners peddling useless trinkets and ill-gotten bags.
Don’t get me wrong – the three days were intense, a whirlwind tour of Baroque Rome. Boromini’s design of Ch. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, right next to Bernini’s Ch. Sant’ Andrea al Quirinale. Drawing on the Spanish Steps. Boromini’s San Ivo. Group drawing of a panorama of Piazza Barberini. A wonderful tour of the Vatican collection; we saw Raphael’s School of Athens in a very humid room, another Raphael that I actually really loved (I forget the name, but it was an enormous oil combining both the Transfiguration and the healing of the possessed boy), an amazing unfinished DaVinci drawing/painting that was just as good (if not better) than a finished work, the modern and contemporary collection that contained some marvelous work.
But the artistic highlight of the weekend for me was that much of it was a search across Rome for one particular artist – Caravaggio. The Madonna di Loreto at Chiesa di Sant’ Agostino showed the touching humanity of a stressed and busy Mary receiving dirty pilgrims while holding a fitful Jesus. The Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter at Ch. di Santa Maria del Popolo were incredible in the blend of monumentality and simplicity of composition and, as always, the naturalism of his figures. The Vatican museum held Caravaggio’s Deposition – the face of the central figure gently lowering Christ was one of the most compassionate faces I’ve seen.
There was, however, a Crime Against Humanity that occurred on this Caravaggio pilgrimage. Ever since I had seen the Calling of St. Matthew on the large projector screen in my darkened art history classroom last year, I had fallen in love with both the painting and the painter. Of all the art contained in Italy, I most wanted to see this painting. We stopped outside the Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, which contains the three paintings in Caravaggio’s St. Matthew cycle, and Matt gave a half hour long build up to the importance of Caravaggio and of these paintings, and then we went inside. I was horrified to find that the side chapel in which these paintings reside was under restorative work, and that there was scaffolding preventing entry. Even worse, however, was that, unlike most of the time when paintings are being restored, instead of everything being covered by an opaque curtain you could see through parts of the scaffolding. That I could make out about a fifth of the Calling was like being given a crouton and denied the rest of the sumptuous meal. Utter tragedy, as you can see here:
However, the weekend was not ruined by any means. We had a delicious pizza meal in Trastevere one night, Jake and Josh and I bought a delicious cannolo pie one morning for breakfast (yes, a connolo pie; imagine a connolo in pie form, and that’s what we ate), and for our second evening Matt bought sausage which he baked, along with pasta, beans, salad, and bread. We cooked and ate everything in the guys’ apartment; it was one of the best meals I’ve had here.
Let me tell you about the apartments, or, rather, the guys’ apartment. Incredible. It was so large and so nice, we knew as soon as we walked in that we would need to keep it secret from the girls for as long as possible. Here are some photos (sorry about the poor quality).
We walked in the door to find this: Matt and Jake and Kelsie hard at work making the apartment smell delicious. Check out those sausages in the oven:
We had satellite TV that carried essentially the BBC News and a lot of Arab porn channels. Go figure...never thought that watching "Sexy Iran" would ever be an option.
Oh wow, look at Jake trying to be macho
Jake and I shared this bedroom.
Sick bathroom. We had two of these.
The last day we had some free time in the afternoon (after seeing Michelangelo’s Moses) before we needed to catch the 5 o’clock back to Orvieto, so Erin, Jess and I went to Galleria Doria Pamphilli. We had a great time walking through the old palace, which contains a private collection that is the home to two early Caravaggios, a beautiful Giuseppe Ribera, some Caraccis and Titians, and, the highlight of the museum for me, Velasquez’s Pope Innocent X. The portrait is fantastically awing, and it felt odd to be standing in front of the actual image that Francis Bacon refused to see in person, in spit of it being the basis for one of his best themes.
I know this is a brief and not very detailed account of the weekend, but to bombard you with endless description of everything would be pointless. You simply need to be here to understand and appreciate some things. I know that’s frustrating, but it’s for the same reason that it is better to be standing in the aura and physical space of Caravaggio’s Deposition, with your feet and head hurting and your shoe untied and the floor creaking as you step up to it, than to try and pretend that you can learn everything from it by looking at a poster website’s photo that’s two shades too yellow. In many ways this website and these entries are exercises in futility; these are my experiences and I want desperately to share them with everyone I know and love in a way that they understand as I understand, but it cannot be so. These are my experiences, and I am afraid that I am able to give you only the poorest of accounts of them.
Saturday, 4 April. I hope that the above section isn’t alienating in some way, perhaps it was the rainy and foggy weather that put me into that more melancholically introspective mood. In any case, the weather has cleared up beautifully, and spring is as exciting and lush as Boticelli’s painting. Thursday Erin and Jake and I climbed up onto two enormous rocks on the cliff face to watch from a dizzying height the evening settle on the surrounding hills and valleys; we took our passagiata up the Corso Cavour, met an interesting and knowledgeable British photographer, and went on to dinner.
Yesterday was the most gorgeous day yet. Much of the first half of it I spent in relative solitude, which was refreshing. This has been the first weekend with no trips or anything for a long while, and it feels wonderful to relax. I stayed in the sun as much as possible in a park attached to San Paolo, leaving with my head cleared somewhat by prolonged and undirected observation of the landscape that dropped away from under my feet, and by the peculiar combination of laziness and energy that the sun gives. In the later afternoon I went down into Orvieto Scalo with Hilary Meakin so that we could get haircuts, which was an experience; I have, though, the best haircut of my life, and one apparently derived from a D&G style, to boot. That evening I got to videochat with my dear friend Seth and his girlfriend Emily for a bit on Skype, and then came back and watched Once with good friends.
Today was also given over to beautiful weather; after lunch some of us couldn’t resist ordering gelato and sitting on the steps of the Duomo for an indolent hour of people-watching. Upon returning, I talked with Matt about my drawing so far. I feel as though I am at that point where I need to make some crucial decisions and discoveries so that I can move above the mediocrity that I’ve attained so far. I have not talked a whole lot about the drawing class…it is intense, and for me, frustrating. I’m so unused to being limited to one medium or method of making images; even without touching color in printmaking there were a host of exciting ways to make marks and images. Now, I need to relearn how to simply push black onto white with my hand and create. 9th grade was my last formal drawing course, so this is a struggle. In addition, my own preferences are so shaped by either minimalistic leanings or conceptual meaning that to draw a realistic still life that means nothing about life or will ever be worth remembering is a huge challenge. I could be satisfied with a solitary line on a large white sheet. I get bored easily and quickly with what I am drawing, and I draw slowly and cautiously. All of these things and more are enormous inhibitors of me just making a drawing. I am at the point where, somehow, and I don’t know how, I need to turn off my head and just draw the damn thing. So the past two weeks have been a fight for me, resisting what is best for me. I hope it gets through to me soon.
Matt showed us the work of Vija Celmins, whom I’d seen before but never really knew what was behind her paintings and drawings. She does massive drawings of things like the waves in a section of sea – just waves, no horizon, no boat, just the water and the shapes it makes. She obsessively draws the photorealistic pieces over months. I don’t know how she does this, but I feel like there is something in that work that is key to me learning what I need. At the risk of getting introspective in a sappy way, I also feel like perhaps the struggle I’m going through with drawing parallels some of the internal struggles I have with my own life and my own character right now. I’d rather talk about the already finished drawings than do them, and in some ways I view everything similarly. This is wrong.
Sunday, 5 April. Today, Palm Sunday, has been eventful in some small but touching ways. I’ve begun, with a small group of other Gordon in Orvieto students, to sing along with the choir at San Giovenale. We are rehearsing for next Sunday, but today we sang along with them (learning the songs as we went), and took part in the Palm Sunday procession into the church. It was a heartfelt service, as we stood for the reading of the Passion narrative. I’m definitely looking forward to next Sunday’s festivities, and the holy rites of this week.
This afternoon has been given over to drawing, which is going better. I’m not psyching myself out so much now. I need to go now, however, because Heather, Hilary and I are going to a Brahms and Schubert concert at the local theatre here in Orvieto…should be great.
Hey, so were you affected at all by the earthquake?
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