An Exciting Week!

Hello, all!

So this was quite a week!  Monday was a relatively normal day up until dinner, which was in our Program Director's apartment!  Professor Doll (the Program Director) made us a delicious "red soup" (i.e. all the ingredients were red, like red onion, red pepper, etc.) and his wife, Sharona (no singing, please), made us a Middle Eastern salad.  Dinner was not only delicious, but very fun.  We all talked and played with the three Doll children (they got very into a game of tag where one of the program girls was always "it"), and just generally got to know each other and our professors better.

So after that, we had a relatively normal Tuesday, until we were informed at lunch that that night at dinner we were invited to wear masks and join in on a karaoke night to celebrate Mardi Gras!  That afternoon, we all prepared masks to wear that night, and especially considering that there were really not many art materials, we created some really impressive works of art!  But that might just have been the result of about least 16 art majors...  :)

When we got to the restaurant, our Italian host Mauro was thrilled with our masks, and even more thrilled when he managed to convince a number of us to sing English karaoke!  At the end of the night, he even facilitated a mini dance party and some of his Italian customers joined in!  Our art history professor said the next day that he was really happy with that night; I believe he called it "truly wholesome fun."

Wednesday was the only really normal day all week, because we actually didn't have classes Thursday because we went to Arezzo and Siena.  We went walking everywhere, and we definitely felt it by the end of the day!  At Arezzo we saw Piero della Francesca's Legend of the Holy Cross, which was a fantastic, beautiful, complicated fresco depicting the Catholic legend about the cross on which Jesus was crucified.  It is beautifully painted, and completely original in its use of the space.

We then booked it in our vans to Siena and traipsed up a huge hill to Il Campo, the piazza in front of the Sienese town hall, which is an absolutely gorgeous building.  While there we saw the chamber where the Council of Nine would meet about town matters, and frescoed there is an Allegory of Good and Bad Government.  It's not a particularly beautifully painted fresco, but it's very interesting in composition and in its statement about government.  From there we went to see the outside of the Siena Duomo (it's a little expensive to enter as a tourist).  This is one of the most beautiful buildings I've yet seen here in Italy.  The façade of the building is fantastic and gorgeous and complex in both its construction and in its theological statements.

After that we headed to an Olivetan Benedictine monastery to see Sodoma and Signorelli's Scenes from the Life of Saint Benedict.  The monastery was absolutely beautiful, set up in the hills outside of Siena and with the most gorgeous view ever.  It's all hills and trees and rivers and exposed clay hills and valleys...  Truly a gorgeous sight. The actual monastery itself was beautiful; the church was beautiful and the frescoes truly masterpieces, and the monastery itself is architecturally beautiful.  Once we had completely exhausted the Scenes from the Life of Saint Benedict, we headed back up toward our vans, admiring the beautiful view the whole time.

The drive down to the autostrada (highway) was amazing.  We managed to leave the monastery not too long before sunset, and the view from the ridge of a string of hills just past the monastery overlooking vineyards and olive orchards (and even a castle!) was stunning.

Friday was our excursion to Florence (Firenze in Italiano).  We woke up pretty early in order to leave our monastero by 7:15am, and get to our train by 7:45.  However, we'd accidentally been given tickets for the train at 8:05am, so we had to wait a while longer than we anticipated.  It took over 2 hours for us to get to Florence, and then it was a mad dash to another monastery.  This monastery, however, has been converted into a museum, the Museo San Marco.  The Museo San Marco holds one of the largest collections of works by the early Renaissance painter Fra Angelico (the Angelic Brother, a friar who was supposed to be so spiritual that his paintings were themselves infused with some of his spirituality).  These frescoes don't have the more technical aspects of some of the later Renaissance painters (like anatomically correct bodies and perfect perspective), but they are theologically interesting (for example, a painting in a monk's cell that visually describes the ways in which Jesus was abused just before his crucifixion) and even moving.  His painting of Christ's crucifixion in the Chapter House of the monastery is interesting, as he gives the saints faces particular attention, and they are quite beautiful and convey quite a bit of emotion.

From the Museo San Marco, we walked down the street to the Palazzo di Medici, or the Medici palace.  Many of you may have heard of the Medici family, as they were a very prominent, very wealthy Florentine family during the Renaissance, and very powerful as well.  In their family chapel is a gorgeous fresco depicting the Journey of the Magi to the birth of Christ (which is over the altar), and is quite a work!  Almost every inch of the fresco is covered in animals, complicated landscape, and a mass of people processing with the three kings, some of which bear strikingly suspicious resemblances to various important Florentine citizens of the day.

After breaking for lunch in front of the gargantuan and beautifully ornate Florentine Duomo (check out the picture!), we headed to yet another monastery (you people getting how important all this Catholic stuff is? ;) )to view another frescoed Chapel, the Brancacci Chapel with its frescoed Life of Saint Peter.  While this fresco cycle doesn't flow chronologically, the painter was really emphasizing different parts of Peter's life and making a significant and well-thought-out theological comment.

After that, we headed to the Chiesa Santa Trinita' (Church of the Holy Trinity), to look at the Sasseti family chapel.  Below scenes from the life of Saint Francis is a gorgeous Nativity with the Sasseti's frescoed on either side worshipping the baby Jesus.  In fact, Mr and Mrs Sasseti are buried there in the chapel on either side.

Completely exhausted, we headed back to the train station for our 2 hour 45 minute train ride back to Orvieto.

So you can, I hope, understand how hectic this week was!  :)  And perhaps you'll forgive me for being a tad delinquent about posting an update for all of you...

Ciao! E buon pomeriggio!