Popes, Pomp, and Circumstance

Friday, September 14, 2012. Could there be a better day than today? It is hard to imagine. Today was Vatican Day. I had 9:00 AM  tickets for the Vatican Museum, and managed to be at the Vatican, checked in, and ticketed by about 8:45. Anyone who knows me is not surprised by this. At the Vatican, one gets extra points for promptness, so I was in the Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery) by 8:50.

The Vatican Pinacoteca is room upon room of paintings with the recurring themes of joyful birth in a manger/bloody death on a cross. However, the last painting before leaving the picture gallery is Wenzell Peter’s “Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden”. An ethnologist in the 1800’s, Peters portrayed over 240 species of animals in this painting, each with its own personality, expression, and behavior. It is an incredible painting, haunting, complex, and one that I spent about half an hour studying.

For no good reason, I had decided not to speak to anyone else today, and by 10 AM had said nothing more than “Café Americano, per favore” “Gracia” and “Buon Giorno”. However, during my second breakfast, I met a woman from Croatia who needed an (emotional) lift, and so we talked about Rome, Catholics, and Life. I had lunch with a traveling couple from Canada, then waited in line for St. Peter’s Cupola with a couple from Holland. They were bemusing. The husband had spent a week in Las Vegas, and now feels himself to be an expert on all things American. He just didn’t want to believe an alternative view to gambling, neon lights, huge meals, and prostitutes. I invite him to Big Sky, and we will see if he ever accepts the invitation. His wife would, for sure, but he thinks that those musical fountains in Las Vegas pretty much define the US of A.

Today was a most excellent day to spend with popes, past and present. It was raining cats and dogs in the morning. I was wearing my raincoat, thanks to my husband, yet every 6 feet was asked by a vendor if I wanted to buy either 1) an umbrella, or 2) a poncho. Heads up, fella! I'm wearing a hooded raincoat! Thanks to Rick Steves for the accurate tour guide info. His advice got me out of the rain and into the museum with little fuss

The Vatican Museum is set up for crowds, which is a good thing, because crowds are what it gets.
Most of the crowds come in tour groups of 20 to 30 persons, some larger. Tour guides, waving various colored umbrellas, roses, fans, wooden shoes, plastic daisies, and walking sticks trailing scarves,  rush from site to site.  

Their gaggle of tourists cluster close, and block the views of artwork for everyone else.  After a frantic minute at a site, the group scurries on.  Tours are two hours long, and there is a lot of information and real estate that they need to cover in that time!  The tour guides reminded me of motherly sows, with their brace of suckling piglets sticking close to Mother Pig, rushing through this gorgeous space.

Disclaimer: I will admit that, when I wanted to know something about a piece of art, I’d find an English-speaking tour guide/group, and linger on the edges. I figured that this was about the same as stealing Internet. Victimless, if not really legal.

Note to any tourist: if you must have a tour guide, pay the extra euros and choose a group of no more than four tourists. At least, you'll have some control over the pace of the tour.  Ask for a tour guide who is a native English speaker.  I heard quite a few tour guides whose heavily-accented English was practically unintelligible. If you want to hear the names and coronation dates of every pope and cardinal, there is also the option of the Vatican's "rent a priest" tours. Tourists in these groups started out looking fresh, but by the end, appeared dazed and stunned.

The Vatican Museum is a series of separate museums strung together, such as the Pinacoteca, Egyptian, Greek, Tapestry, Modern Art, etc.  I loved the wing of Egyptian treasures. Here, there are mummies, sarcophagi, and treasures from tombs. The Egyptian wing included letters written in cuneiform on thick clay tablets about the size of a cell phone. These were then sealed in envelopes of clay, into which the address was pressed with a stylus. Who’d imagine that Egyptians would have a postal system? I’d love to know to whom these letters were addressed, and what they said.

The Round Room intrigued me.  Ancient Romans took Greek ideas, and sculpted/shaped them into their own use. The mosaic floor, once in a Roman bath, is a spectacular series of water gods and goddesses along with sea monsters, emerging from the sea. This floor captivated me, and I walked bent low around the large rotunda, examining the craftsmanship of it. Escher probably got his inspiration from the design of the edging. Imagining the artists cutting and gluing the tiny tiles for the teeth of the sea monsters, the eyes of the mermaids, gave me intense appreciation for their talents.

In this room is my favorite all-time sculpture, Hercules. This bronze statue was unearthed in 1884 right by my apartment, where it had been buried after being struck by lightning. Hercules is 12 feet tall, with a gnarled club, the skin of a beast draped over his arm, and a later-added stupid fig leaf covering his groin. He has the best butt of any male sculpture in Rome.  You can take that to the bank, because by day 5 of my visit, I am an expert on this particular minutiae.

There are many wonderful human statues in the Vatican collection. They include toga-draped women holding (oh, you name it) doves, apples, scepters, flaming torches, cups, harps, asps, small dogs…about the only thing they aren’t holding is a Starbuck’s coffee.

Then, there are the statues of men. Men do not hold things (except occasional weapons). They point. They point North (to heaven), Left (to summon help), Right (to summon the wife to put down that damn dove and get them a coffee), and South (for sweet iced tea).

On fig leaves: When originally sculpted, the men were manly from all planes. Somewhere along the way, the popes decided that fig leaves were more acceptable than the sculptor's view of the dangly bits. The papal solution was fig leaves. Fig leaves? Really? When celebrating the beauty of the human body, why do we need fig leaves blown in ala a Forrest-Gump feather-a-thon? There they stick, one per man, unnaturally glued to body parts that, on their own, are as natural as apples, doves, and all of those exposed breasts?   The papal fig leaves look ridiculous, and to my mind, ruin the integrity of the statues.  I had several rants today.  This is one of them.

Let’s go to the tapestry and map area of the Vatican. This is a quarter-mile-long stretch of opulence that used to be apartment rooms for the Popes. There are tapestries that, if sold, would feed a small nation. Maps that, if sold, might end the suffering in Haiti. Mosaic floors that, if sold, would educate millions in the slums of India. It was excesses like these that inspired Martin Luther to leave the Roman Catholic Church in order to found his own religion. The treasures are interesting and appalling.

I got to the Vatican at 9 AM opening.   By 2 AM, I’d had two breakfast breaks, two lunch breaks, met couples from Vancouver and Holland, and generated enough righteous cynicism to earn myself a heretic burning at the stake. Time for the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel was the disappointment of my life. After following signs, reading interminable tour-book descriptions, and avoiding myriad suckling tour groups, I am finally in the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel of my guidebooks…of every tourist who ever traveled to Rome…of my dreams. I trip in, to the chorus of gendarmes screaming “Quiet!!!!!” No Fotos!!!” The chapel is high, long, dark. Banks of long windows, high overhead, emit dim, diffused light. The figures on the ceiling are dark, indistinct, muddy, without detail. I thought, “Why do people get so excited about this Sistine Chapel?”

I slump dejectedly on a bench along the wall, and fish out my Rick Steves info to see if he has any insight into why so much fuss has been made about a shadowed and indistinguishable ceiling. Maybe I’d just go have a cappuccino and call it a day.

Then I looked up. While the light from the high windows is still filtered and pale, my eyes have adjusted to this light.  I realize that Michelangelo painted IN this light, and FOR this light. The images lift from their backgrounds. I see the frescos as Michelangelo painted them, fresh and vibrant. Bodies captured both reserved and in action, nurturing, cruel, puzzled, astonished, grieving, human. Images that suck me in, colors that will not release me, movement and stillness insisting that I see Michelangelo's vision of our common humanity. I am astonished.

I begin to weep. At first I do not even realize that I am crying. Another woman, also weeping, hugs me. Where did she come from? I am lost, I am found. My tears came from a deep place that I cannot name.

This masterpiece captures all of Life’s dreams, tragedies, efforts, loves, disappointments. This is not a religious work. This is a human masterpiece. I move from side to side in the room, and leave only when I fear that my neck will break off from looking up. I am moved, transported, and forever changed..

Even a flawed Church that nurtures and provides opportunity for such a genius deserves to be accepted and thanked.

Is there a graceful segue out of the chapel? I don’t think so. I am exhausted, and it is 3:30 PM.  After stumbling out of the Sistine Chapel, I rest a little, then find the line for the Cupola to St. Peter’s Dome. An elevator, a bunch of narrow steps, and we are high inside the dome of St. Peter’s. More steps, and we are outside on the Cupola, with a panorama of Rome.

For readers who have been in the Wisconsin State Capitol and its dome, the St. Peter’s Dome would be familiar.  This may sound appalling, but forgive me, Michelangelo, Wisconsin's dome is a close second to yours. St. Peter’s and Wisconsin’s domes both present mosaics, height, marble, more mosaics, filtered light, even more marble, and narrow, claustrophobic passages. The St. Peter’s Cupola, however, provides a panoramic view of Rome that clearly defines the Seven Hills of Rome, the Tiber River, the Vatican Grotto, Trastevere.  This view is slightly more impressive than the view down State Street and up Bascom hill. Rome has more domes, fewer Badgers t-shirt shops.

After the Dome, I descend into St Peter’s Basilica itself. St. Peter, “The Fisher of Men”, was a humble, down-to-earth, easy-to-talk-to, saint-in-waiting. He was crucified upside-down within this church space, possibly buried here, and now has the most impressive cathedral on earth named after him. Go figure.

With statues 20 feet high, and an altar 7 stories tall, St. Peter’s Basilica is designed to impress. Impress it does, with gold, marble, frescos, mosaics, sculptures. This church was funded by Catholics who were coerced by the Church to pay “indulgences” so that they would get into heaven despite their sins.  I am a cynic  The Basilica is just a bit too over the top for my taste.

After the Vatican Museum, St. Peter’s Dome, and the Basilica, I went to St. Peter’s Square. I thought that I would see if Rick Steves’ hoards of pickpockets and/or gypsies came to accost me. The square is mostly deserted, though, as the Vatican is now closed.  But I was struck by how the square is divided into hundreds of wooden “corrals”, like cattle yards.

When the Pope decides to come outside his quarters, he confronts his faithful, corralled into these wooden, beige cattle pens, which are locked with iron bars. He walks up stairs that are reserved only for him, guarded by a young boy dressed as a clown, and then he looks down into his stockyard. What does that feel like? I wonder if he ever wishes that he could have a few drinks with his faithful, connect, watch a Packers game, tell or hear a stupid joke, and laugh. Maybe have a buddy walk on those stairs with him.

I took the wrong bus home, far past my stop, but managed to find my way home without too much angst. After a shower and clean-up, dinner was at “Ristorante Da Pancrazio”, about 40 steps from my front door.  Some ruins of the Theater of Pompey were discovered inside this restaurant during basement excavation, and are still displayed here. A severed stone head of Caesar, some column pieces, mosaic rubble, are jumbled into an alcove as one goes downstairs to the walls of the ancient theater. The whole restaurant vibrates with the past.

The Ristorante Da Pancrazio is a lucky find. The paintings on the walls are from 1890. The ceiling is all high timbers, dark and comforting. Tables are warmed with good-quality, gold tablecloths and napkins, My waiter is patient, un-patronizing, helpful. Dinner is linguini with shrimp & rocket, eggplant parmesan, a simple salad, wonderful breadsticks, and wine.

I eat, drink wine, think about my day. I am content.  I take my time. The more wine I drink, the more content I become. Two women dine nearby. Both are tour guides. They tell me that they dump their tour groups at a nearby tourist-y restaurant, and then come here for an authentic, and reasonably-priced, meal. When they leave, one sends another glass of wine to my table.

I weave my 40 steps to my front door. Sleep will be blissful tonight.