Rome, the Eternal City

Thursday, October 15, 2015

On the train from Rome to Venice.

Well, yesterday was incredible.  Even overwhelming.  It would take a booklet to describe the day and put in all the photos I would like to share.  So, some choices, sort of random, to share some of the day.

We began this Wednesday at 8:00 with a walk to the church of Saint Peter in Vincoli, slightly off of the usual tourist route, but which contains a masterpiece, Michelangelo’s Moses.  This apparently was Michelangelo’s favorite of his sculptures!  It is set in a mixture of quite lesser sculptures:

It is remarkable:

We then had a study session in the forecourt of the church, looking at parallels between St. Peter and Moses.

We left by bus for the Vatican, and on the bus read some Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad) which is hilarious, about Michelangelo.  We also read (in translation) a sonnet by Michelangelo.  We arrived at the Vatican Museum where the crowds were unbelievable.  We did not have to wait hours to get in as those not on organized tours did.

The museum is overwhelming.  Miles of corridors, all lined with the most incredible art.  Enormous crowds of people made it hard to really appreciate some of it.  The best I can do is to sample some of what we saw.  Photographs were allowed everywhere but in the Sistine Chapel, where there was another crowd so large that it was hard to appreciate what was there.

So, as an example, here is an entire hall of busts:

And there are fabulous pieces.  Here’s Cicero:

And here’s Sabina, wife of Hadrian, with big hair:

Here is a Roman statue called La Ocoon, discovered during the life of Michelangelo, which he used as an example of anatomical sculpture.  It is magnificent:

In another gallery was this Roman mosaic floor with a bust of Athena:

There is a giant hall of tapestries of such beauty and opulence it is hard to imagine. Here is a detail from a Brussels tapestry of 1524 showing the massacre of the innocents:

The buildings are remarkable.  Here’s the ceiling of one of the galleries:

And there are wonderful paintings on the walls of the galleries.  Here’s a Moses:

It would take a lifetime to appreciate all that is here.  After a hurried lunch, we traveled to the building which houses both the Israeli embassy to Italy and the Israeli embassy to the Holy See.  We had an audience with Ambassador Dr. Zion Efrony, the Israeli representative to the Holy See, who spoke to us about the important issues he faces, with an emphasis on the history of the Church and the Jews.  Prominent in his discussion is the recent 50^th anniversary of Nostre Aetate, the revolutionary Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.  (Of course Haim has a copy of most of the declaration in our reader.)  Ambassador Efrony took questions, and they ranged from the Papal recognition of Palestine to the fact that the embassy of the Holy See is in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv.  Security at the embassy was tight, and only one camera (not mine) was allowed in.

We then returned to the Vatican, where Haim had arranged something truly extraordinary.  Our group had a private tour of the Vatican Library.  We were split into two groups and two of the Vatican’s librarians took us through.  They had pulled from their archives some of their extraordinary holdings and had set them up in a special exhibit just for us.  The library is quite beautiful:

The holdings must be amazing.  I’ll show just a couple of the things they brought out for us.  A Qu’ran written in Hebrew from about 1400:

An illuminated halachic code from 1435, this illumination showing ritual slaughtering:

The library closed at 6:00 PM and we were still going and had to be hurried out.  Exhausted, we returned to the hotel via St. Peter's Square, and went out for a lovely dinner.