Art in Rome

On the street

The guy outside the Coliseum who spray paints pictures of the Coliseum.  Cardboard boxes under his padded knees, mask over his mouth, same playlist going daily (Mary says), spray spray spray.  The crowd gathers.  He works works works.  He dries the painting with a can that sprays fire.  He holds it up to the crowd.  They clap.  They walk away.  Alternate ending: Daniel gives kids money not for painting but for the show (Monday).  Alternate ending (Tuesday): a man standing with a woman buys the new painting.  Sebastian says, "He paid for all of us."

Dancers on Via Cavour.  What we called breakdancing when I was in middle school.  But this seems more gymnastics.  One guy puts his head to the pavement, his body upside down, his arms supporting him at ninety degree angles.  But then he lifts his arms and spins -- spins -- around on that head.  His shirt falls a little and you see his totally muscled core.  The next guy does his walk, walk around the area to warm up, and then does a number that is one from the Olympics on that beam, where the gymnast holds onto the handles on the beam and swings his/her entire body around and around.  He is supported by only his hands on the pavement.  Hannah watches.  Watches.

At the Vatican

"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?
"This must be the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Nope."
Sebastian: Who decides what's famous and the best?  I mean, all these painting are good.  I could never do any of them.  But then we walk around looking for which painting is the DaVinci or the Caravaggio, when maybe that's not the one we actually liked the best ourselves, but now we know what to look for and what we're supposed to like.

Sebastian: It's funny that humans collect things other humans made and then put them in a place for humans to look at.  Like a little obsessed with ourselves.

Mary: You're going too fast.  I just want to look and take my time.  (Yesterday she said that she has been looking forward to so many things that she finds herself not enjoying the present but instead thinking about what's next, and she doesn't like that she's doing this.  Oh, honey, you're more self-aware than most of us.  Today she took at least thirty more minutes in the pinacoteca of the Vatican than the rest of us.  No rush, Mary girl.  Way to go.

What I noticed this time: the beauty and space of the building itself; the glorious rooms; the high ceilings; a red wall; the courtyards; the elegance of the rooms and of the buildings; the stairs as artwork and not just tough ascension to the museum.
Did I really not appreciate these before?  I was likely bee-lining it to get to Stanze di Rafael and the Sistine Chapel and Laocoon.  Or is it that I pay more attention to houses now?

What else I noticed: so many scenes are of struggle, violence, murder, death.  Perhaps I noticed this more this time around because I had little people with me, and I wondered how they were processing the martyrdom of St. Someone or the Crucifixion of St. Someone or the bodies in agony on the Last Judgement.  Sure, Laocoon and his sons are getting strangled by snakes sent by Minerva, but at least they know this story as a myth and we've talked about it so many times before.

At Santa Maria del Populo

me: Connor, which Caravaggio do you like better?
Connor: The one in the middle.
me: Huh.  That one's not a Caravaggio.  His are the ones on the sides.
Connor: I like the middle one.  I like the other ones, but I like the middle one best.  It's bright, and I like the colors.
me: I'll see who painted it.  Annibale Carraci.  (Really, Maureen, who cares who made it?)
Sebastian: See...people think they have to see the Caravaggio, but maybe that's not what they would like the most on their own.

Lush

After Villa Borghese races (Connor got the record) and go-carts and lunch by the Pantheon, Mary wants to go to a store she spotted earlier in the day: bath bombs galore.  I don't want to go.  My feet are tired, and I'm grumpy.  Hannah comes, too.  They endure my tired, grumpy mood.  We walk far, far down Via Cavour, almost all the way to Piazza del Populo.  Basins of water are just beyond the door.  An exhibit is starting.  "Parla l'Italiano? l'inglese? espanol?"  The artist will speak whatever language you need.  She runs the water and swirls a ball of what looks like colored chalk.  The water swirls, changes color.  The audience watches, mesmerized.  They put their hands in the purple tinted bubbly water.  Scents of lavender.

It's not spraypaints of the Coliseum this time.  It's bathbombs at Lush.  An attraction, a show, a sale.

Aventine Hill

Mary insisted on getting up this morning and going to the keyhole on the Aventine Hill.  I didn't want to go.  In June 2004 I rented an apartment on the Aventine Hill for a month while I took a Latin course with Reginald Foster.  Mornings I walked or ran and then sat on the veranda after watering the flowers.  Afternoons I went to class.  One morning on a walk, I noticed folks looking through a door, so, once they walked away, I walked up to the door, too.  Put my eye up to the hole there: magical gardens, green, and then, St. Peter's dome in the distance.  Magical.  Precious.

This year we saw the keyhole described in a guidebook.  Mary wanted to go.  Hannah, too.  6:45am we're up and navigating the roads from our hotel to the Aventine.  No phone.  I'm tired of my phone and of looking down instead of looking up and of getting lost even when I use my phone.  We snag a paper map from the hotel lobby and Mary finds our way.

Mary looks.  Mary lifts up Hannah so Hannah can see through the keyhole.  I look.

It's even more magical this time around.

Any time we see St. Peter's dome later on -- from a park, from the Vatican -- Mary says, But I liked it most when it was framed all by itself in the keyhole.