Rome via Brooklyn

521 words, 3 minutes read time.

On the walk to the museum, I decided that I really like all the small cars, and there was one parked the long way and it was still tiny and fit perfectly which was funny. I wonder if people here constantly feel small compared to all of their surroundings. I certainly did next to the ruins, the staircase to the museums, then again next to the colossal statues. Also something I noticed was every single representation of a baby looked a little bit strange, as if the artist has never seen a baby before and is just taking a guess. It was the same with some animals, but I would say that babies are more common. Sometimes the babies were pretty large in scale, but because they are small in relation to their lifespan I’ll put this thought in this paragraph.

For huge things, I noticed that Romans really like to illustrate violence up close. Their battles and gruesome ways of killing on a huge canvas.A particularly memorable one was of someone getting trampled to death by a startled horse. But many beheadings and overall deaths in general are going on too. Mazzy, Jessica and I stayed longer to look at the art, and in the special exhibit there were huge paintings, one in particular by Titian had sketches on the back, which was a huge treat. Another huge treat was late night snacks and drinks we had with Professor Yarrow, where we talked about huge adventure plans and things that made huge impacts on us. After typing huge a couple of times it looks wrong to me so now I’m going to move on.

The boy extracting the thorn made an impact on me. Maybe because it was a pretty small statue in a room of large ones, maybe because of how captivating it is to look at someone doing a simple task, but I really loved that sculpture. “ Among the best known works in the galleries upstairs are the five ancient bronzes donated by Sixtus IV which started the municipal collections off in 1471: the capitoline wolf, a colossal head of constantius II, a colossal hand holding a globe, the Camillus and the Boy extracting a thorn from his foot”. When I read that among the other works of art, I appreciate how this sculpture is in this group and it makes me feel happy, even though the fact that Romans like voyeurism so much is a tiny bit unsettling, but that gives these types of intimate moments. One thing that was weird was a sculpture of a woman who was originally wearing a cloak, but the restored version had her naked, and that might be the type of thing that we simply weren’t meant to see, so i think there has to be a delicate balance.

I wouldn’t describe anything as just average, in any meaning of the word, by size or by impression. I also did not think of NYC much today, except for when visiting churches I thought about how I hope that religious catholic people get to experience the churches here, because they are incredible.