Find my album of pictures on Imgur by clicking here.
Note that the commentary for each image is right below the image. Click each image at the top to navigate. Hopefully this is easier for you as well, as it is way easier to make an external link than to embed images with commentary here.
I mentioned in earlier posts about how the process for getting things done in Italy is sometimes painfully slow. As an American it is annoying to wait for my student card for almost 3 weeks, as I need it for discounts and eating at the cafeteria. Various other things have taken a long time to process due to Italians being slow. However, the words of my branding teacher should really be taken seriously. The Italian way is slower than the American way, and speed is actually being forced on Italy, eroding their past way of life. As someone who has grown up in America, of course the initial reaction is, "So? They're slow and you need to speed up to get things done. The more you get done the more accomplished you are at the end of your life." I think that is a good point against the classic Italian way of life; if you move slowly your whole life you will end up getting a lot less done.
However, living in Italy for months shouldn't simply mean occupying my apartment for that amount of time. It should give me ample time to live how Italians really live. The point I am trying to make: Who is to say that the American pace is the correct pace? My professor brought up how there is added stress and less free time in this lifestyle. Well, what is more important? Is it important to have many accolades at the end of your life, or to have relaxed and maximized your free time in balance with your work? I think that's a question we all ask ourselves, consciously or not. People that know me might know what my answer to that question might be. Perhaps if you seek free time and a more relaxed lifestyle, your best option is to move to a country like Italy.
Personally, I have been bugging everyone at NABA for my card nearly every day. I have been doing my part in putting the pressure on people I don't think are working quickly enough. But what if, instead, I were to slow down with them? I am trying to adopt the Italian lifestyle for these months, and this seems to be a primary aspect of life here. Of course there are times to be quick: Homework, catching the train, etc. But if I slow down and accept things as they come, perhaps I can try the relaxed life people here seem to have. It is something to work towards, I think. I'll start by letting my student card come to me.
Those are some of thoughts I've been having pertaining to Italian and American differences. I see it as my job to give the Italian way a chance, and I'll be observing others to see how else they differ. I know they also wear puffy jackets and generally have short hair. I'll keep working on that.
I also had my first cooking class today. It wasn't as hands-on as you would hope. We made tomato sauce, but there were only about 8 preparation areas and about 25 people, so we did not get to cook. No one did, really. They showed everyone how to cut up the tomatoes, collected them, and made a big pot without student help. We did not make the noodles or meat that came along with the meal when it was ready. At least it tasted good, and we received a cookbook that I can hopefully use to recite the recipe at home.
Today we told ourselves we would walk to the next museum, but we ended up wandering around the city and running out of time. I don't regret any of it because we have a lot of city to see. My goal here is to become acquainted with the city of Milan like a resident of the city would, beyond other goals of seeing Italy. Anybody that goes on vacation can stop by Milan, see the Duomo, then stop by Rome, check out the Colosseum, go to Venice and check out the carnival, and be back home in a week. I have the fortune of spending 4 months with my home in a single Italian city, and I think seeing as much of my own city is something that will offer me more in the long run. Of course I will be going to other places in Europe during my stay, but I don't want to neglect Milan. I want to cherish an aspect of my trip that separates it from an average vacation: the length of stay. So, here is some more of Milan!
The first 4 pictures are of a small church we found down our canal, far from the center of the city. It's interesting to see how a church practicing the same religion from about the same time period looks when it has less financial backing. The art can still be found on the walls, but they cannot afford as much for restoration. The art is sparse and faded away at many places. The bricks are the same, with just a smaller floor space. There is no gold paint to be found. Very interesting to me, the juxtaposition of the rich chapels to the more modest chapels.
The next picture is from the Italian version of Best Buy, Media World! Virtually the same as a Best Buy inside, but more condensed and with lower ceilings.
The next 3 are of probably the nicest McDonald's I've ever been in. I got a milkshake and it tasted different, as everything here does. It tastes a bit more like chocolate pudding, but still not like pudding. Difficult to explain. Check out their mats-- that is the McDonald's ad campaign in this city. These minimalist posters of McD products can be found EVERYWHERE, on buses, billboards, bus stops, etc. I took my placemat, I think it is an interesting difference between Italy and America. You would never see that sort of campaign here, it doesn't appeal to Americans well. The next two are just of a piazza, to show off how your average square looks outside the city center. For a long while we were walking down Via Giorgio Washington! I don't think it is pictured here, but that's where we got McDonald's. A street in Milan is named after Washington, pretty funny. Then next picture is of a sign telling us the rules of driving down that road. Try to figure it out! Seems just as confusing as in New York. And the last is of a gas station. Gas is even cheaper here!! ...oh wait, that's euros.
Today we didn't have much to do, so we rode to the Duomo at the center of the city and wandered around.
A couple blocks from the Duomo we found an antique looking church with its doors open. This was the San Babila, in the Piazza della Babila. Most churches are named after a specific saint, and most squares that include churches are named after the churches. Pictured is what appear to be relics, though I honestly couldn't tell what each one was. The appearance (old, strange looking items presented in luxurious gold frames) is what gives me the impression. A pamphlet at the entrance tells me that Saint Babila was the 13th Bishop of Antioch from around 238 AD, who was executed trying to stop a murderous emperor from entering a sacred church.
One of the nicer roads we came upon. Note the 'no parking 0 - 24' sign, a bit different than we see in America. Down this road were a few fashion shops and apparently residence.
We also came across a dog park.
For dinner I had half a pizza frutti di mare: a seafood pizza. According to Matt, it had crab, shrimp, and salmon on it. It was DELICIOUS. If you like seafood and visit Italy, this is something to try.
I also got something important today, my Metro pass! NABA helped me fill out the application, but I was nonetheless nervous to turn it in. I had to bring it to the ATM (Azienda Transporti Milanesi) Office in the Duomo station with money to receive the pass. I was afraid they wouldn't speak English (always a big worry over here), but there was someone on staff who spoke it. The card is good for riding the Metro anywhere around the city as much as you want for a month at a time. The month starts Feb. 1st, so I cannot use it until then. I guess you pay full price per each calendar month, not just once a month. So I have a few days until it kicks in. I also got an official Milano city case for my phone, which has been bare. Out of the possible cases here, I thought this was the best idea. Oh and I got a Milano shirt, its rather stylish and I'm sure a picture will end up on here eventually. I'm feeling more at home in the city by the day!
Tomorrow we will likely go to the Saturday morning outside market thing again, and perhaps a museum. We're going down a list of museums in a 'Milano Museo' pamphlet we picked up, and number 3 is back in the Castello Sforzesco. Thanks for reading!
Today I had my final new class called branding. We talked about branding in packaging a good bit, so I was nervous for what this class might entail (since that branding lecture was very boring). The teacher, Alessandro Baici, was an interesting character. He is another professor who speaks English fairly well, only asking about words occasionally. He is expressive and opinionated. He also seems to have a bit of a warped idea of how Italian culture relates to American culture...
He started off asking us, surprisingly enough, to be punctual. All but one of our previous professors had come at least 5 minutes late to class, and class didn't start very soon after. We were trying to buy football tickets just before class, and thus were about 2 minutes late. In other classes this wouldn't have even been caught by the teacher, who was not yet in the room, but I suppose this teacher is different. It's not difficult to be on time, at least. Oh, and over half of the class did not show up. It has been that way for almost every class, so I think something is wrong with the student lists they were given.
Anyway, he goes on to ask what we think of Italy in comparison to our home countries. Allie was the first to chime in. She said, "Everything here is more relaxed." "What do you mean? Elaborate," the teacher replied. She struggled to find what she meant, landing on the fact that people don't answer their emails here. See, we've been wrestling with the fact that nobody answers you digitally for days at a time, ever since we were accepted to NABA. I think that if I were to offer a comment about how Italy is different than America, I would have focused on the positives instead of a negative; that Italy has better food, for example. It is a bit offensive to our Italian professor for the very first class, after all. But it is also a glaring difference between our countries. Well, I believe that set him off. He went on a rant about how decades ago, Italy used to be even more 'relaxed'. The thing was, he looked back at those times fondly. He said that people used to have time to think about responses when they got a letter, instead of rushing out a reply. Now foreign countries like America gained a faster rhythm and have been forcing it onto Italy. People used to have down time, after 5 and every weekend Italians had free time to do whatever they wanted. This was a much less stressful lifestyle. Now they work late into the night and even on weekends sometimes!
From my experience with the workforce here, I could not disagree much more. Nobody is in a hurry to get us anything; we still do not have our student cards after a week, and everyone generally does not want to deal with us. After 5 every office closes down and no one can be reached. On Sunday EVERYTHING is closed, moreso than in America. I am not sure which region he is talking about, but this area is still much more relaxed on doing their services than what I am used to. I can see how perhaps it might be faster than what he is used to, so maybe that is why he holds that opinion. Of course, I did not say any of this to him and I do not plan to.
So, clearly he was a bit upset. He did not raise his voice or anything, but the tangent he decided to follow tells me that. He also went on to complain about how exchange students always eat in class, which is extremely disrespectful. He said it has been scientifically proven that if you are eating while trying to pay attention to something, you are gaining less information. "If you go to the cinema and eat popcorn and soda, that is fine, but this is not the cinema where you go to relax and shut off. This is where you need to pay attention." I found that scientific tidbit very hard to believe; if any information is lost it is a minuscule amount, less than what is lost when I look down at my shoes or at the clock. I also found the cinema part a bit offensive, since I try to pay close attention to the films I watch and pick up on themes and messages. Film is an art form just like any other and I wish he would have spoke of it as one. Trying to see it from his perspective: I can see that watching someone eat in class might be annoying or distracting, and of course I will refrain from eating because he said that. And maybe Italy has different ideas about what movies are made for, more focused on simple stories that hold your attention than those in America. Of course those are popular in America, but I don't think they should classify all of Filmography. America is the motherland of film and we have many films that have more to offer than even a lecture. I will need to get used to accepting opinions I hear and disagree with as aspects of a different culture. I don't want to be close-minded, but I felt like some of his opinions were from his own close-mindedness. I will stay open to what he has to say.
Those unpleasant talks out of the way, he went into the components of branding and held my interest for a good while. He talked about all the different types of marketing, specifically direct marketing. He talked about how Internet shopping evolved from direct marketing and how ad mediums work together to make campaigns. He talked about how good brands hold their own brand strategy that gives their product an angle. For example, Pepsi's brand strategy in the 80s was to mock Coca-Cola directly and put its brand above Coke in the minds of the youth. Everything clearly had a lot to do with branding and I felt like I learned a good bit. Of course 3 hours is a long time for a lecture and it got more difficult near the end. Nonetheless the class was far more interesting than packaging and I hope it only improves. I hope that Alessandro does not continue to complain about American ideals and I hope that I can come to accept his Italian ideals. It just seemed strange because all my other professors were not like this This man specifically is more upset about modernization and advancement into the digital age than the others.
We will stay here in Milan this weekend, perhaps going to a museum or two. We originally were trying to plan a trip to Pisa, but now a trip to Tuscany (a region that includes Florence and Pisa) has been mentioned by Student Services. We will refrain from planning a trip to those cities until we know some more. Alessandro at Student Services says he has not yet started planning it. So where our next trip will be, I do not know. Planning train tickets are difficult and must be done ahead of time, so hopefully we get planning soon. Thanks for reading!
Yesterday I went to another museum, the Museo Diocesano. I did not enjoy this museum as much, and thus will not go into as much detail about it. I was unable to learn as much because this museum was only in Italian. This museum spanned from about the 1200s (with some stragglers) up until present time. The place was fairly big and not very well organized. Many times we would hit a dead end at the end of an exhibit and need to turn back, while other times we had 3 directions to go; 2 would be deads ends and one would continue, but with no indicators. We wandered a bit. Additionally, it was not sorted chronologically at all. We started at paintings from the 1700s (not pictured), went to a single installation of a man in the 1930s, then suddenly we were in the 1200s, and the hallway next door was the 2000s. The rooms were lit with spotlights, so it was hard to catch flat artworks without a glare. All in all, strange decisions were made.
1) From the church next to the museum, a lion protecting the entrance. There are tons of them around the city, and there was one in my Verona video, but I think they look interesting so I included another.
2) This was the art style of the artist from the 1930s. He scribbled, scratched, and crosshatched his depictions, adding just tiny splashes of colors. Certain ones looked very interesting. The component that was interesting to me was the subject matter: biblical stories. I'm starting to see that this is a very Italian and not very American subject matter. This is near to their hearts, most all Italians must grow up around these churches learning the stories. This one (you may have figured out) is of a young David playing his harp for King Saul.
3, 4) from the same collection as 2, I especially enjoyed the way the individual lines came together to make this mass of a man. I believe it was Elijah? I'm not sure. However more line work went into this than most of his other pieces.
5, 6) Obligatory illuminated manuscripts. Slightly less interesting than the ones found in the other museum, I believe these were in a giant songbook. The 6th pic shows how a medieval hymn might be written. These pages were very big, probably just under the size of a newspaper.
7) I thought this one was kinda funny, it caught my eye. From sometime in the 1600s I believe? That reminds me, this museum was also not a fan of putting dates on artwork. Many I had to guess. This is clearly renaissance or later, but it did not tell me dates. But look at those buff babies!
8, 9) A very cool, very large painting I want in my room. THIS ONE I'm pretty sure is from 1600s. It depicts an army of dead being reawakens by a female diety figure on the top right, and being commanded to sack a poor city. The skeletons are attacking with torches and lighting people on fire. Perhaps this is a depiction of Revelations, when the dead will rise? Is the female figure an angel of death, or a horseman? Your guess is as good as mine. The painting was the size of a wall.
Not quite as cool as the last one. This museum wasn't a city-funded museum, so perhaps that has something to do with it.
As for my classes: My first class today was visualization and layout design, run by Guido. He ended up being my professor who spoke English the best. He only asked about one word (flatness?) and paused for only short periods of time. He seemed more German than Italian, but what do I know. His name was Guido after all. This class is about drawing, but more specifically, I believe it will be about composition setup. We started off talking about a scene with two students talking in a courtyard. He asked about how the viewpoint can be altered to give off different 'emotions'. For example, bringing the viewpoint far far out away to show the whole empty courtyard would instill a sense of loneliness. Showing the viewpoint of watching the two from inside a window would give the sense that you are spying on a secret conversation, etc etc. His class was fun and I look forward to it next week. I have to draw two scenes creatively for homework: A job interview and a homeless man under a bridge.
My second class was Italian Design History with Massimo Matignoni. He was in my Verona video starring as our tour guide. He seems very, very knowledge about Italy and its culture. He has taken a liking to me after we talked several times on the Verona trip. I believe he knows me as the huge Beatles fan that wants to go to Liverpool. I'm glad to talk to him about my trips because he can offer me ideas of where to go specifically inside a city. He used a powerpoint to show us Italian Icons of art; that is, any product that is distinctly from Italy. A few different cars, plastic furniture, mopeds, and strange form-over-function furniture pieces were shown. He begged us for questions and clearly wanted a discussion in class. Hopefully discussion will soon pick up. Several times in class he commented on and asked me about the Beatles: pretty much any time something from the 60s was mentioned. "These chairs were shown in advertisements to reflect a laid-back, care-free lifestyle. Like the Beatles! You could listen to... ah, what's a good Beatles album Austin?... Sgt. Pepper? Haha yes! Listen to it in these chairs!" That sort of thing. He's cheery and knowledgeable (he writes books, and articles for Italian Vogue). Though drawing was more entertaining, Massimo is probably my favorite teacher.
Italian was like class on Monday. The teacher figured out that we had taken Italian previously and asked us about it (in full Italian of course). I originally thought she may speak English very well when she did, but now I am beginning to think she barely speaks it at all. She can comprehend it well enough, but she has avoiding English so much it is suspicious. What a mysterious individual.
That's all for now! Branding is tomorrow at 2pm (8am EST). I don't think it can top my classes today, which were much better than Monday. I just hope the professor can speak English.
Today was quite a day. My first day of classes in Italy. I didn't know what to expect, besides that they would likely be easier than my normal classes. I think it will be easiest to go class by class.
We got to our first class at 9am, right on time. At about 9:30 we started, due to the teacher starting late and then waiting for more students to arrive. There were only about 7 of us in a class of 20 people. I still don't really know what happened to those people. The class was Editorial Graphic Design, a 3 hour class taught by Paolo Borrelli ("call me Paolo"). He was rather nervous, and told us many times that his English was terrible. Despite this, he spoke better English than my landlord Simone. He was terrible. Oh yea, to start class he brought a bag of mice for our computers. the computers didn't have mice.
He is a nice man who seemed eager to be corrected in his English. He wanted to get better. Nonetheless the lesson was fairly painful. We were taught things that were painfully obviously to students 3 years into their major, yet we were also asked about specific Italian art movements that we were supposed to know. There is a disparity in knowledge for sure. He looked up about 10 words online throughout the class which he did not know in English. Floodgates, plausible, fairies. Random words like that. He also wrote words on my paper (I sat front-most) and asked how to pronounce them: "Seymour"? "Thriller"?
His lesson was rather bizarre as well. The part at the end I remember best was kind of abstract, as you might guess from a European art class. Paraphrasing:
"Imagine you are making a design for a cold drink. The important word is cold. So you should ask yourself, 'what does cold mean to me?' 'how would cold apply to my senses?' If you could hear cold, what would it sound like? High or low? If you could feel cold, would it be rough or smooth? I think smooth. However, cold is a zigzag line!"
That sort of thing. Explaining a new kind of brainstorming method. It did not have a ton to do with editorial design, but I suppose he found it important enough to explain first. It was a bit stressful working through English with the guy.
The next class was Packaging with Luca Ferreccio, another 3 hour class. This one was worse. Dryer than burnt toast in the Milan canals during winter, he simply read. He had a prezzi presentation up, and clearly spoke even less English than the last teacher. To compensate, he had a packet of notes he read off of that I'm fairly sure were full sentences. I think he just read our whole lesson to us, and we not very good at responding. At one point he was asked how the coffee vending machines worked, and he did not understand what that meant exactly. This class will be very stressful, I can tell already. He gave us lists upon lists of things pertaining to packaging. He started with a list about 'aspects of Packaging' I think we will learn about. I started writing after #5 because I didn't know the list would be so long...
6) Number of colors on a given product
7) Diecuts (left unexplained)
8) Different techniques on different packages with similar designs
9) Package design must be able to expand over other mediums (web, poster)
10) Packagaing can relate to other components of graphic design; i.e. editorial design.
Then he listed what packaging is for...
- Defense/ protection of contents
- Transport/ containment of contents
- Communicate what the contents is
- Function: helps the content be used (ex. shampoo that is made to dispense the shampoo)
Then he listed possible tasks when creating/ editing packaging:
- Create a new product
- Extend brand
- Restyle brand
- Create a special edition product
- Restructure the package
- Change packaging material
THEN he listed the method of creating packaging......
1) Kickoff- a meeting in which you choose who does what
2) Analyze the market
3) Personality, positioning
4) Creativity
5) Production, control during a print run
6) Continuity
If any of those points confuse you, especially in the last list, then you are in the same boat as me. I really hope this class gets more interesting. Oh, and our homework is to make a moodboard for a company. That will be interesting to figure out.
Lastly was our Italian 101 class. Could you believe this was the least stressful class? 95% of the class was in Italian. The teacher, who introduced herself only as Giulianna (I think? Something like that?), was very articulate. I could understand her Italian fairly easily, and she barely had an accent. I view my first Italian 101 class (which was almost laughably easy to us) as an introduction to this class, which will be more difficult. We only learned a handful of things in my first Italian class; so little that I still cannot hold a conversation. This class will most likely be different. And we got to impress her by knowing some things already! She was impressed we said 'qui' (here!) when she called attendance.
So those are my impressions so far.
I have 3 other new classes this week to experience, as well as a second Italian class. Tomorrow I have off and will be going to another museum. Wednesday I will be back with more class info for you, and maybe I'll be back a bit tomorrow for a museum review. Stay tuned, thanks for reading!
Today we went to our first museum, Il Museo Archeologico. According to the museum map we came across, it's the museum with generally the oldest artifacts. The map lists the museums, oddly enough, in chronological order. Because of this, I think we will try to see them chronologically. The reason this was my first choice is because I find the older the history, the more interesting it is to me. That is part of the reason I opted to come to Italy, rather than go do a semester in Gettysburg and explore the civil war (Note: That wasn't actually an option.)
So we took the subway and wandered a bit until we found this Museum, housed inside the San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. This is a part-church part-nunnery that came to house the museum sometime after being damaged in a World War II bombing. Walking in the door, there were a few artifacts (about 20) outside the actual museum. Sorry the formatting is off here, Blogger has very strange formatting issues when you want to make multiple columns of photos. I actually went in and manually added tables to each grouping of photos. This in turn pushed the sidebar navigation to the bottom of the page. Sorry about that. I've spent far too much time on this post as it is.
Remember, you can click the images to enlarge them.
The first two images are of some sort of water bearer. The last three are of a sarcophagus for a rich man. (Note: everything in the outside portion was from about 100 BC to 200 AD).
Here's some very interesting Roman type from the first century AD. It was difficult to capture on camera, but the serifs felt implied - soft- rather than purposeful. When you step back, the serifs are prominent and make for a fantastic looking paragraph. But close up, the serifs almost look like the etcher happened to turn their tool as they made the next line. It gave me the vibe that serifs were influenced by the form they originally appeared on: a marble or clay medium etched by a stylus. Look at the third picture especially and see if you can tell what I mean.
The rest are also sarcophagi with funerary imagery. The first was on a coffin for a couple. The second a third depict griffins, which I thought was cool. The last two are of Zeus, transformed into an eagle, bringing a boy to heaven who he found worthy (symbolizing triumph over death, an escape from death). What was interesting to me was how they knew it was Zeus - above him to the right is a quiver full of lightning bolts, a signature belonging of Zeus. Look at those bolts. Pretty cool.
Next we walked into the actual Monastery. Because it was under reconstruction (EVERYTHING in the city is for Expo 2015), this part was free to see. The art here was from a much different time period as you can tell - Namely the 15th and 16th centuries.
All the walls here were covered in paintings. In each alcove (of which there were about 12), a story from the Bible was told. Noah's Ark caught my eye, of course, and so I have the most pictures from that alcove. This is respectively the left, center, and right of the alcove. Also interesting to note is how they labeled the paintings. Rather than have the viewer stare at the art unknowingly, they attempted to bring some background to each piece with these transparent stands (simulating how someone in the 15th century would come into the monastery with knowledge of these stories). They kept the stands simple to not pull attention away from the art.
That's my shoutout to Professor Flaherty, who devoted a week or two of our Art History class to the issues of curating a piece without taking away from its original context. Digressing...
Details of the Noah's Ark alcove. Above the three paintings is something else I recognized from Flaherty's class (The last two images). Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would be the Saint of the church holding up the building (in which these paintings are housed) and offering it to Jesus. My initial thought is that it was the man who put money behind the church, but the halo throws me off that idea.
More imagery from the church. The black and white image was from the candelabras in between the alcoves, in which there were many more drawings. I found this place exciting because I could recognize many of the stories without labels due to my upbringings as a Christian. Pictured is Mary leaving Bethlehem with Jesus, The Garden of Eden with strange human-faced serpent Satan, and the Binding of Isaac with an angel stopping Abraham's hand.
A panorama of the room. The alcoves are behind those brown barriers, and on the left is the ornate organ. I liked the organ because the door flaps reminded me of a gigantic triptych.
Next I'll show a wooden model of how Milan used to look. I've paired it with a map I found in the Metro subway, which may be difficult to see. Basically, they know exactly where the city walls were back in the times of the Roman Empire, and overlaid it with the current city. I can see where I live and where I visited in relation to the old city. In the metro map, the red line indicates the old city walls. The Duomo (built much later) is pictured for reference. I live JUST off the bottom of the map. The same setup can be seen in the wood model.
Here I found an interesting read about why they find it important to explore old Milan. Basically, they say that ancient cities were founded based on the idea that there is good land inhabited by happy spirits, and bad land to be avoided inhabited by evil spirits. Milan was found in about the 5th century BC if I recall, and back then the pagans that made it believed it to be on good land. It had its own unique spirit with its own unique... spirits. It's important to try to keep the city's unique spirit. I wished the sign went on to talk about WHAT exactly that spirit was - what spirits the pagans found in the land of Milano. Maybe they don't know that exactly.
The monastery where the museum was housed, in a diagram and out a window.
I will let the video speak for itself. The thing was scarier in real life than in the video, trust me. It was really quiet there.
More artifacts from later on in the museum, mostly from Ancient Greeks, but also leading up into the 6th century AD.
A satyr on a Greek krater. Go ahead and say that out loud. They didn't change the design much for Phil in Disney's Hercules.
Here is what I believe was the oldest thing in the museum, a figure dug up in Milan from the 5th century BC. Must have been made from the pagans that made the city. Also included in the picture is my old man hat.
Note that I said much less about the last few pictures because this part of the Museum was wholly in Italian. The first few parts had mostly Italian but some paragraphs of English, but they gave up the the last 3 rooms and relied on one language entirely.
Lastly, we left the museum and walked into the monastery from another door. Yet another painting filled room followed. However, instead of alcoves filled with biblical stories, this room had alcoves filled with the stories of saints. There were either 6 or 8 alcoves in this room. I did not recognize the names of any of the saints except for John the Baptist. And Jesus, who strangely got his own alcove. It is possible that Jesus got his own because he was martyred like the rest and fit into their triptych structure. Each alcove had a left, center, and right side. The left was the 'beginning' of the saint- whether their birth (In John's case), or a life event that turned them to sainthood (I recall a female saint whose town seemed to be burning behind her). The center showed the saint's greatest achievement. Jesus' showed him rising from the grave. John's showed him baptising Jesus (The last 2 pictures. Note the dove that symbolizes purity of Jesus in the sky and God on the ceiling above the painting). For future reference, Jesus is Gesu in Italian.
And then we left. I will CERTAINLY not be doing such an in-depth look at every museum I visit, but this was the first and I haven't started school yet so I thought I could afford the time. Now it's almost like you've gone through the museum with me! For future museums I will post pictures in imgur albums like I have in the past. As I said, this one will probably be one of the most interesting to me as it is one of the oldest, showcasing the Roman Empire. Tell me what you think of my commentary in the comments!
