Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Capitoline Museum

Wednesday October 8th

Today we spent 5 hours in the Capitoline Museum. Five hours is a very long time to spend in a museum, even if its filled with amazing sculptures that are thousands of years old. I'll keep this post rather short because it was a very repetitious day going from room to room looking at very cool sculptures. My absolute favorite was of the Dying Gallic Trumpeter, this sculpture was originally made in the Hellenistic (Greek) and the Romans loved it so much they had to copy this piece. It is absolutely amazing, at this point in art history the artists not only made sculptures of the idealized victors of war and battle but we see them sculpting this dying gallic trumpeter, he is clearly the loser and he is not of the Greek army. I just thinks its a wonderful sculpture and the tribute to the enemy is fantastic. I love the Hellenistic era of art so much, there are loads of different sculptures being made that break the norm. After a long day in the museum we went to an Irish pub for dinner (this one was much better than the one in Taormina) and had beef in Guiness, thats right beef soaked in Guiness and mashed potatoes on top. This my friends was heaven after eating nothing but pasta and pizza. Whilst taking Italian we have learned that the word for enough is basta, I find it quite amusing to say basta pasta because we have all had enough pasta to last a lifetime. Well enough of that, on with the pictures!
Now I'm sure everyone knows about my disdain for feet, but somehow I find sculpted feet beautiful (I think it's because they don't make them look grotesque). Anyway this is a massive foot, like a cat can curl up in the toe nail, it is a piece of Constantine the Great sculpture. Pretty cool.
The Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (the good emperor in Gladiator). The only reason this sculpture didn't get melted down is because people though for a while it was Constantine (hello Constantine never had a sick beard).
Commodus as Hercules (yes the same Commodus in Gladiator that kills his father shown above, though it is highly unlikely that happened or that Maximus killed him but whatevs). He was a really bad emperor though so the movie got that right, his memory was actually damned after he was killed (in a bathtub).
E tu Brute (bust of most likely Brutus who helped kill Julius Caesar).
The She-Wolf that Romulus and Remus were supposedly brought up by (the babies weren't added to this sculpture till way later).
Medusa head, she looks so sad (did you know she was made ugly because Poseidon raped her in the temple of Athena and Athena got pissed so she made her super ugly, just another example that life is not fair, poor Medusa).
The feet are just so cool, I think this was Athena's foot but I don't remember.
The Dying Gallic Trumpeter, so freaking cool. Look at his bleeding wound.
Full shot of him, plus Meagan in the background, his trumpet lays around him broken like he is.
Look dad he even has a mustache.
This Flavian women had crazy hair, but I liked the silhouette and the window.

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