Rome via Brooklyn

447 words, 2 minutes read time.

Today we began at the Museo Altemps. It was mostly empty so we got it all to ourselves which was really cool. There are so many museums in Rome, it makes sense that some would be overlooked, but I’m so grateful to Professor Yarrow for including this one as well. She also pointed out that there used to be a gift shop, but keeping it open and manned didn’t make sense because of the lack of visitors.

This bust of Antinous was particularly interesting because he is a gay icon. He had a relationship with emperor Hadrian, though he was unfortunately killed. Professor Yarrow speculated it may have been because he was getting too old for Hadrian. It was nice that Hadrian still deified him. All hail Lucy- I mean Antinous.

I saw this fresco at the top of a wall and it striked me because I feel like I haven’t seen a figure painted in that color. Reflecting on this made me realize that I have seen this when they wanted to emulate a marble sculpture through painting. We see a lot of pseudo marble elements on fresco made to look 3D and real. This picture below of the fresco wreath, corinthian column and statuette is a great example.

I really like the Caryatid women that stand in for columns. They look so powerful holding up the columns. I also noticed these guys on the way home. I’ve been seeing them throughout the entire trip.

After the museum we made our way to the pantheon! I learned a lot about it in art history so I was so excited to finally see it. “Completed by the emperor Hadrian c. AD 125, the Pantheon has now stood for almost 1,890 years… The building owes its survival partly to the fact that it was converted into a church in AD 608 (St Mary of the Martyrs) but even more to the extraordinary strength and stability of its construction.” It’s interesting that christianity chose what to preserve if it wanted to reuse it. Anyways, the pantheon was just as breathtaking as I expected; the oculus, the coffers, the geometrical marble flooring and the monolith columns. I wore my sparkly eyeshadow as a sparkly gift to all the gods.

We later dinner at a place Professor Yarrow recommended and it was so good!! She keeps making great recommendations, the 100 flavor gelato place we went to earlier in the day was also great, though it was hard to choose from so many options.