Accademia, Tintoretto, and Padova

Pictures are of us in Padova (except Audrey, who was taking the picture), one of the domes inside Saint Anthony's, the inside of Saint Anthony's, the outside of Saint Anthony's, the Scrovegni Chapel from the outside, and one of the Tintoretto Last Suppers we saw with Gregory Dowling.

Buon giorno tutti!

That means, “good day all!” Now, I know there wasn’t so much going on last week, but this week was pretty jam-packed and awesome, so I will get to all that in just a minute. First, answers to a few questions. As this is Italy, everything is in Italian, but many signs also have English, French, German, and sometimes Spanish on them as well. The big sport in Italy, as in most of Europe, is soccer; I haven’t actually heard much about any other sport since I’ve been here, besides keeping up with the Purdue games and the Bengals (Boiler Up and Who Dey! lately). We have had a lot of homework lately, quite a bit of reading, plus weekly essays, but our professors gave us this weekend off, with no essay due next week, so that’s pretty nice. The swine flu doesn’t seem to be as big a deal here as it seems to be in the U.S., though there are places where you can get the vaccine. Someone asked if I have been sick, and actually I had a pretty bad cold last week, but I’m all good now, no big deal. Onto the events of the past week!

Monday we went as a class to the Accademia, which is a really fantastic art museum, with some world famous masterpieces that were absolutely gorgeous. The best part of the entire tour, however, was getting to see Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” which apparently is only very rarely displayed, even though it is one of the most famous and well-known works of art in the world. It was amazing to see because it is very small, not much bigger than a piece of computer paper, and is really more just a page torn from da Vinci’s notebook than a true piece of art. The picture is in the center of the page, but above and below it was writing in da Vinci’s famous “mirror writing”, where he wrote backwards across the page so that nobody could steal his notes. I almost can’t even describe what it was like to see it, though, because it was so simple, almost like da Vinci was doodling while writing his notes; there was a sense of being very close to the artist, like just taking a peak into his personal notebook and seeing what was scribbled in there. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Tuesday we had a guest speaker come, Gregory Dowling from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He is actually British, but moved to Venice a number of years ago and he is an expert in paintings by Tintoretto, an artist particularly famous in Venice. Tintoretto painted at least seven different versions of the Last Supper and Professor Dowling took us around to three of them at three different churches and explained about each one. It was a great tour, especially because he would stop and point out things as we were walking across the city, little details about places and things that were really cool but that you would never know unless you lived in Venice for some time. One of my favorite things that he pointed out was a church that was used in one of the Indiana Jones films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think.

Wednesday was by far the best day of this week, though. We took a class trip with our professor Dino Felluga to Padova (Padua in English), a nearby town. It was an absolutely fantastic day. We went in the basilica there, Basilica di Sant’Antonio, the basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, which was stunning. And massive. There were domes in there so high that the tops of them were completely lost in shadow. The body of Saint Anthony is actually entombed there and you can walk around and touch his tomb, which was a very powerful moment. There was also a priest in there who you can go to and get a blessing from, which Lizzie, Audrey, and I did. He was very nice and told us that he only spoke a little English, so he gave us a blessing in Italian.

After the basilica and a very nice lunch sitting outside at this great Italian restaurant, we went to see the Scrovegni Chapel, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing in Italy. An artist named Giotto painted the entire inside of this chapel with scenes from the life of Mary, the life of Jesus, and a Last Judgment that covers an entire wall. Plus, on the walls underneath the scenes from the lives of Mary and Jesus, he painted virtues on one side of the chapel and vices on the other, and around these he painted what looks like carved marble, but is really just painted to look 3-D.

The best part, or my favorite part anyway, is the ceiling, which is this amazingly bright blue, with stars painted on it, as well as more paintings of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. I also love that in the scene where the Wise Men come to see baby Jesus, over the manger there is a bright fireball in the sky, which experts say is the first time Halley’s Comet was ever depicted in a painting. The chapel was so gorgeous and magnificently detailed that I felt the entire trip overseas was worth it just for an opportunity to see it and be in there, even for a limited time. Only twenty-five people are allowed in at a time, and only for fifteen minutes, as a way to get the most people through and still protect the frescoes. Also, we had to leave all of our bags at the gift shop outside of the chapel, I think so that they could be sure that we wouldn’t bring a camera inside. I did buy a book with all of the frescoes in it at the gift shop, though, so I have pictures, even if I didn’t actually take any.

After the chapel, we spent a brief bit of time in the museum there, which was really cool and had, among other things, an Egyptian sarcophagus, a very tiny mummy, we think it may have been a cat, and a coffin that had in it the bones not only of a man but of a horse as well, which was not something you see every day. Then, after the museum, it was off to the University of Padua, where we got to see the anatomy theater where they used to do dissections in front of groups of medical students. Apparently, Galileo also lectured at the university and may even have attended a lecture in that same anatomy theater. After the university there was just time to stop for pizza and then it was back on the train and back to Venice.

After Dino left us at the train station to go back to his house, the ten of us had to literally sprint from one vaporetto stop to get to our vaporetto stop to get back to San Servolo. This is a pretty regular thing around here, but this was intense: Shannon actually nearly knocked this couple down the stairs as she ran past them. However, we all made the vaporetto about one minute before it pulled away. Not having to wait another hour for the next vaporetto to the island was the icing on the cake of an honestly fantastic day.

Overall, this has been a really great week, definitely busy, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Now, I’m just looking forward to Halloween, because even though it’s not as big of a deal here as it is in the U.S., it’s still one of my favorite holidays. We have a few things planned to do for it, but more about that another day. For now, it’s getting late here, so I’ll say buona notte (which means “good night”) and until next time, keep leaving comments, they’re fantastic!

Ciao,

Maria : )