The Vatican: I heart art?!

45 euro for our ticket and guided tourrrr ?! Ugh.

'Oh...? You're with the french girls? Sorry, 35 and we skip the line.'

And by the way I will prove to be a really awesome tour guide, knowledgable, well spoken, and funny. And I'll make you fall in love with Michaelangelo and the ideas behind his art.

Just to clarify, the Vatican is the world's smallest sovereign state, so it technically counts as another country on this trip. This puts my tally at 14... not that I'm counting or anything ;) ps if the count intrigues you, just wait for what comes after I'm done with Italy...

Ok, so the Vatican. Most important part is its culmination in the Sistine chapel, which Michaelangelo (hereunto referred to as M) was commissioned to paint, even though he was a sculptor and had never painted a day before in his life. He'll learn by running his hands along other famous painters and efresco artists/paintings (I don't really know what that is... anybody care to wikipedia?) and cuz he's a frickin genious.

Although the first two scenes he paints are not perfect, because he is painting a ceiling while laying on his back and forgets to see the sizing from ground level. From then on he decides to stick to what he is good at, which is bodies, which he knows absolutely perfectly from, in his youth, helping a coroner dissect them.

Interesting fact: M was kind of a loser, and never really met women. So he can paint women's faces, but not their bodies, and hence many of the women have stalky, muscly, masculine forms. But Raphael has been taught to be a painter, and died of syphilis, so, ummm, could paint beautiful slender female figures, and they say that once he took this skill and tried to paint like M, he really became talented and could have been extremely successful, except he died at a young age.

That's not really important except that his uncle and the Pope had commissioned M to paint to destroy his reputation. That didn't work. Even when the Pope shatters M's cheeckbone and M retaliates by painting god's arse and subsequently fleeing... But M was begged to return because as the Pope and uncle went up to the ceiling to destroy the painting it was too beautiful and they eventually bribed M to continue painting.

M does cool stuff like defy what is Catholically (and other religions-lly) inherent to the bible... Like paint the drunkenss of Noah, or Adam taking the apple instead of Eve, or woman already being present as God creates man, or painting a 'cut' through the brain & heart - the 2 parts of the body where it was believe the soul was kept and should never be cut - but that's only seen through a sort-of illusion.

And finally, he paints Jesus as a muscular, clean shaven, short, blonde, healthy young man who is angry. Now even the little Jewish moi knows that's not how he is typically portrayed...

The Vatican museum has all sorts of cool art & sculptures to give clues as to why.

In brief, and this is really difficult to explain without being there, M took bits and pieces of other sculptures which he found 'perfect' and put them all together to make the perfect Jesus. The face of perfection he had used to paint the 'David'. There is a sculpture of a torso, missing it's 4 limbs which M thought was perfection, and used for Christ's body. Then he used memories of 2 arms from other sources which he merely 'turns' and adjusts the muscle tones according to how he imagined they'd be positioned according to the muscle tones on the torso. Fascinatingly, the arm to this torso statue was found in 1908 and reunited with its body in 1958, after archaeologists? proved it was the correct match. Wait, the fascinating part is not that - it's that the arm was identical in size, shape, and position to the one M had painted. He knew how the arm had to be positioned from the ribs and shoulder curves of the torso. Daaaaamn kid.

When the Sistine chapel is complete, M invites Pope to stand on a purple stone to look at the completed masterpiece.

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A later Pope asked M if he'd also like to paint the back wall, and he readily agreed. He paints the last judgement, and ones eyes are always pulled back to Christ in the middle where he is painted with 2 other figures. At Christ's right foot is St. ? who was burned alive. At Christ's left foot, St. Bartholemieu ? who was skinned alive, is painted holding his skin, with his fist up to Christ, saying he deserves to be in heaven. But, if you look closely, the face of the old man holding the skin is not the same face of the skin. So, M is saying people can change?! Orrrr, it looks like Christ is about to smack St. B in the face. And the skin looks very similar to the only ever? painting of M. Remember how the Pope was awful to M? Is this M's retaliation to say that the Catholic-church is two-faced? Would that explain why M was so eager to paint the back wall, despite the fact that he didn't enjoy painting as much as sculpting?

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Apologies if that's not entirely clear - I think I might be missing a thought or two as well.

There is so much more I could say about the ideas expressed in some of the famous art pieces in the Vatican museum, but it's too much for my thumbs and this little iPhone. I would go back and pay almost anything in a heartbeat to hear the story again. If any of the following piques your interest, please ask when I get home:

(or go and clarify the story and bring it home to meeee!)

- the story of the only statue M attached his name to

- why the statue of Mary holding Jesus has the ages all mixed up (Mary is too young for a 33 yr-old Christ)

- how Christ and Judas were painted from the same model in da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'

- The painting Raphael did with M in it

- how Dante was a genius and painted aerial maps of Italy before we had planes

--> thank you, and good night...