Rome Part 2

This is one of the first marbles in the Capitoline Museum. It was really well preserved, great details in what they were wearing. There were several others, a few soldiers... Every little piece of the armor was as fresh looking as if it had been carved yesterday.



This has to be the best fountain ever. EVER.



The Dying Gaul. You can't see all of it in my picture, but it's near a window and hard to get a good angle on without back lighting it. It's a really, really sad scene- he's dying from a wound in his side and was apparently carved after conquering the Gauls. What really got to me about it was seeing how graceful the statue was- how much it broke your heart to see- I felt like they had so much respect for their enemies.



This is probably the worst looking picture I've taken all trip- but one of the ones I like the most. Saturday night after we'd seen Saint Theresa in Ecstasy, The Capitoline, the ruins of the Forum, the Colosseum- Kayla and I (she's one of my seven roommates) wanted to go see the Opera in Rome. Turns out there was one near our hotel, sort of down the block, past the Basilica that used to be Diocletian's Baths; it was in an old church (which we hadn't expected) with a mosaic apse (the curved, arched bit over the altar) done by.... A Pre-Raphaelite. We're sitting there a few minutes before the Opera started staring at it, just boggling, wondering how old it is. At intermission we got up to wonder around and found some fliers on the church... It's a bit hard to see, since it was so dark, but at the top (the orange bit) is a vision of heaven, hovering over Christ on a chair made of angels, with five open windows beside him, each with one of the four arch angels standing in front of it... The empty one on Christ's right is where Lucifer was supposed to be, which is supposed to be a message to all the church goers about how even the mighty can fall... Below that is a row of angels separating the heavens from the waters (it looked like this game we used to play in elementary school with parachutes)... And below that is five groups of people meant to represent the five parts of the church... Apparently there were some famous faces hidden in the crowd of people, since the artist was using contemporary famous models as was popular. There's supposed to be J. P. Morgan and Abe Lincoln. In a few weeks when we go back to Rome I'm going to try and get better pics.