Visiting Art

The Borghese Gallery here in Rome has one of the best collections of marble statues in the world, so they say. It also has a stunning collection of oil paintings by some of the greatest artists of their day. We tried to get in to the gallery yesterday but the tickets were sold out. The gallery only takes reservations and the viewings are only two hours long. We got reservations for this morning so we were up and out the door early to see ART at it's best.

I was a bit worried about Kaleb's attention span, not having wandered through many art museums with him in the past, but once again, he amazed me. I had the Rick Steve's self guided tour book along and we walked from room to room and read what Rick had to say on the important pieces in each room. Kaleb found the whole thing fascinating. He was so in to it that it made me even more excited to see these classic works of art. At one point we laid on our backs on a bench in the middle of a room to see the fresco painted on the ceiling and Kaleb started pointing out all the things he recognized. The painting was called "The Council of the Gods" and it depicted many of the well known Greek and Roman gods, which he knows from reading about them over the years. He was able to name several of the the gods, which made me feel quite ignorant. It delights Kaleb greatly when he discovers he knows something I don't know, so today was a good day for him. But as he'll soon realize, it doesn't take much to trump his mother.

As we were leaving the gallery, we saw a small flock of parrots in the gardens just outside. That gave us all a thrill as we stopped in our tracks to watch them. We could only guess how they got there and our theory was that Borgeshe (the cardinal that owned the palacial house and art collection we had just toured), also had an aviary, so we surmised that some of the parrots escaped and started their only colony like the parrots of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. We may be all wet, but we often write our own script as to how something came to be, so it was fun working on that one. And the birds were beautiful and nothing we expected to see in Italy, of all places.

We took the subway over to Vatican City (see photo of Kaleb posing as a statue in front of St. Peter's Basilica) and once we saw how long the line was we just sat in the square and soaked up some Vitamin D. I think I fell asleep for a few minutes while Kaleb was busy chasing after pigeons. It was downright hot sitting in the sun so it felt like a taste of summer as we sat there trying to figure out our next move. Fortunately for us, we sat there long enough until the line disappeared so we just walked on in to the church and looked around. Today was Ash Wednesday and we had intentionally missed the Pope's address to the masses (which we later saw on TV). We then went over to the Vatican Museum and the Sistene Chapel and walked until I thought I couldn't walk one more step. There is four miles of art work in that museum and we saw every last bit of it as there were no crowds and we had free run of the place. Kaleb was a bit disappointed in the Sistene Chapel as he thought the whole painting of God reaching out to Adam (otherwise known as the "pull my finger" painting), would take up the entire ceiling. The fact it was nearly lost in all the other scenes from the Bible was a real bummer to Kaleb so he complained bitterly about how his perspective and expectations of the whole thing were shaped from previous information he had about it and it just wasn't what he was expecting. I too have to say it wasn't what I was expecting to see, but it still was fascinating.

So our day was taken up by ART and a thousand questions from Kaleb about the catholic religion and I'm so impressed with myself that I survived it all. Sometimes Kaleb's questions nearly send me over the edge. As soon as I come up with one answer, he wants to know the answer to all the exceptions to the general statement I just made. So by day's end, my mind is as tired as my feet and there is nothing left but sleep.