Vatican Museum

5 March


Behold the glory of one of the greatest art museums in the world! 4 miles of corridors make up the entire Vatican museum but the real trick is finding all the good stuff. I think on whole we were in the museum for about 4 hours and I even had time to sit down and draw for a bit, which tourists seem to love looking at for some bizarre reason.

We kind of started backwards by going to the Pinacoteca first, which houses all the pre-modern paintings. This is a pic of Saint Sebastian getting shot with arrows (as usual).

So the largest portion of the museum consists of sculptures. Thousands of them. You could literally die from overexposure to sculpture if you stayed long enough. I sifted through my pictures to find the best ones just for my blog readers. You're very welcome.

The super-duper famous Laocoon, an original Greek statue. The story goes that Laocoon was a prophet in Troy during the Trojan War. He warned everyone not to let the horse in because it would bring about their demise. No one listened to him and furious at his warning attempt, the gods sent snakes to kill him and his two sons. Nothing beats Greek mythology.

Chances are you've actually probably seen this torso before without realizing. A large portion of Italian artists (Michelangelo, Raffael, etc...) used this hunk of stone as a model for paintings and other sculptures.

I literally know nothing about this one.

"The School of Athens" by Raffael. If you look hard enough, you can see the likenesses of Raffael's contemporaries, including Michelangelo and Da Vinci, in some of the faces.

One of the few pieces I liked in the Modern Art Gallery, which is placed right before the Sistine Chapel for some bizarre reason. I don't have the name of this piece but I can tell you that it's the work of Salvador Dali, and there's not even a melting clock anywhere. 

The Sistine Chapel! I was expecting some sort of insightful experience while I was inside but unfortunately the combined effect of hundreds of chattering people and guards shouting "No talking! No photo!" kind of killed the mood. Michelangelo pulled out all the stops on the ceiling though.

Couldn't pass up the chance to toss this in here. After all, this is usually the first thing that comes to mind whenever anyone thinks of the Vatican. I regret that it's kind of blurry though.

So.... yeah. I'm still a month behind on posts. Sorry.