Jamie's Journal Extract 1

Aurelia
Shirley and Michael Webb-Speight
Tue 5 Sep 2006 13:37

Italy

Jamie Webb-Speight

September 2006

 

Vatican Museums

 

The Aurelia crew waited impatiently in a line that spread forever down a crooked pavement.  The street was teeming with people, all of them desperate to see the treasures concealed behind the towering walls.  The sun beat down upon everyone’s faces, challenging them against the unbearable heat.  The beggars were sitting down on the sidewalk, making a living out of shame. The twitter of a bird was almost indistinguishable through the thick woods of noise from the crowd; all of them desperate to get inside to the coolness of the building.

 

The first treasures we saw were in the Egyptian rooms.  The atmosphere was completely different from that outside; it was filled with silence.  Our family was ecstatic when we saw an unwrapped mummy whose appearance is too gruesome to put down on paper. It took ones breath away, and even the littlest one, Christopher, stayed quiet.  We were all hushed as we moved from one exhibit to another. I think my favorite was the gold figure of the cat god (I think its name was Bast), who was upright and ready for action.

 

The Aurelia family next approached a room that had a giant black bowl propped on six black lion feet, and highlighted in gold.  On the lining of the room there were statues of heroes doing their bidding; the marble gleaming in the sun.

 

Another couple of rooms had elaborate designs of angels and animals dancing about on the ceilings and walls; their stories as clear as water in a glass.

 

We also went to the map room which had maps painted onto the bare walls.  I saw a map of Italy and many other countries, all painted over two hundred years ago.  Our family also went to the tapestry room that what looked like carpets hanging on the walls.  The tapestries looked as if they had been woven to tell of times long ago, and the wool itself seemed to tell you amazing events despite its comfortable life in the museum.

 

A couple of amazing rooms later we found ourselves in a room full of animals of every kind. I  had four favourites: the pig and her piglets were so amazing; the crocodile with his shiny scales and many toothed grin; the dog whose muscles bulged out at you, telling you he ought to be a great hunter; and last but not least the wild cats who were carved with great skill. They were one of my favourites without question.

 

At last we reached the Sistine Chapel.  There were curtains of paint that had stars on a dark blue sky and lighter shades of blue just where the sun would shine on it through the windows.  There were lots of people painted on the walls and they could have strolled out of the paintings and could have been mistaken for real people except that they would have been missing a few things …..Clothes wise….

 

High above us in the middle of the ceiling there was God making Adam, with his little angels crowded around in a bunch.  Either side stretching along the whole ceiling are some major panels telling the story of Genesis from the Bible.  Adam and Eve are in the garden, Noah and his Arc, God creating heaven and earth, light and darkness. Surrounding all of this there are the seers (the Prophets and the Sibyls) that are heavily robed and thinking through millions of things, occasionally reading some script or other. Above each window are painted the Ancestors of Christ, all with a baby in the picture. 

 

I remember craning my neck and getting a sore back from trying to take it all in.  Michelangelo had made the ceiling seem as though there were really carvings and solid pillars with the paintings in between.  It seemed as if the people were actually sitting on solid pillars.  Of course it was all made in a fresco over 500 years ago. We weren’t allowed to talk or take photos, but many people were.  This made the guards really cross!

 

The Last Judgment painted on the end wall was just as breath taking. There was the demon boatman that looked as though he was scaring the dead human bodies into the water near the bottom of the picture. There are people floating up to the top of the fresco, presumably towards heaven. There in the centre of this miracle was Jesus, holding up both hands as a gesture to the good, and to banish the evil.  It was this miracle of understanding that Michelangelo had painted.

 

Later we went to the souvenir shop. I caught sight of a gold chain with a golden Egyptian cat dangling below, just like the one we had seen earlier…an exact copy; except for the fact that it was a necklace, but it was beautiful all the same.  Mum bought it for me and I was ecstatic.  We had pasta for lunch at the Vatican café, and left for the long tired journey back to our hotel.

 

Michelangelo

Michelangelo was 32 when he started work on the Sistine Chapel.  He was asked by Pope Julius II to do it.  His Holiness said that he would pay Michelangelo 500 gold florins to do the fresco on the ceiling.  Michelangelo protested that “painting is not my trade!” as he thought of himself as a sculptor.  However in the end he agreed, finding no escape from the power of the pope.  Immediately he was paid the 500 gold florins and he employed 5 apprentices; four of whom he knew, and one he didn’t.  Before long he decided that he needed to do all the work himself to get it perfect, and so he dismissed his assistants. He made his own scaffolding, because the other one would have had to leave holes in the plaster of the ceiling.  He designed it to not touch the ceiling, but instead to lean against the walls of the chapel so he wouldn’t wreck the paint.  The more people that went on the scaffolding the stronger and safer it became. 

 

Fresco Work

Frescos are made with a lot of sand and plaster.  Michelangelo learned the art of fresco in the studio of Ghirlandaio.  He made cartoons of the frescos before he did the plastering.  He was taught to avoid sand taken from near the sea, and mixed it with lime that should be old.  The walls that Michelangelo was painting on had to be sound, otherwise if the wall crumbled then his fresco would go with it.

The plaster needed to be mixed with as little water as possible, and mixed until it had the consistency of butter.  Michelangelo then had to apply plaster to the wall with a trowel to make a smooth surface.  Then he applied a thin layer of mineral with a light brush.  When the plaster had dried a bit, Michelangelo held the cartoon against the wall and with a smooth ivory stick he would poke holes through the cartoon and into the plaster around the outlines of the figures.  Before Michelangelo took the cartoon away he rubbed charcoal over the holes.  Then he removed the cartoon and was left with little black dots in the plaster.  Connecting the dots with red ochre gave Michelangelo outlines of the figures.  When the plaster had dried he dusted the charcoal off with a feather.  After this he applied the paint.

In Irving Stone’s biography of Michelangelo, “The Agony and the Ecstasy” he describes the process as follows;

“You must remember that fresh plaster changes its consistency.  In the morning you have to keep your colours liquid so that you don’t choke up its pores.  Towards sundown they have to be kept liquid because the plaster will absorb less.  The best time for painting is in the middle of the day” *

Colours came from the apothecary, which is like a chemist shop, in wall nut sized pigments.  Michelangelo ground the pigment with a mortar and pestle for at least two hours before using them.  There are over seven natural colours; Black chalk, mineral green, red ochre, terre verde ( a different green), umber green,  lapis lazuli (blue), and Sangiovani white.

Cennino Cennini was a writer living at the end of the 14th century, who explained how to prepare and use some of the basic colours.  Ultramarine Blue he says “is a noble colour, beautiful, perfect above all others.  If you want good stone, take the one most full of blue.  Pound it in a covered bronze mortar so it does not fly away in dust; then put it again in your covered mortar and grind without water; then take a covered sieve like the ones used by druggists to prepare spices; the more finely you grind the more blue comes fine.  Then finally take from the druggist 6 ounces of turpentine, 3 ounces of mastic, 3 ounces of new wax for each pound of lapis lazuli; put all these things in a new tub and make them melt together.”**

 

The paint is applied with brushes.  Michelangelo was taught to make brushes by taking bristles from a white pig and binding about 450g to a large stick.

 

Michelangelo spent four years on his back, painting the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, and when he finished it he was 36.

 

 

Michelangelo; Sculptor

 

While we were in Italy we saw some of Michelangelo’s most important sculpture works.  This included the “Pieta” at St Peter’s Basilica, which is a sculpture of Mary holding the dead Jesus. I think that this piece of work is truly sad – not violent, but sad.  It is a mother holding her dead son in her arms; she is grieving but not crying.  It is an image of someone truly alone in the world.

 

We also saw the “David” in Florence. 

David is from the legend of David and Goliath.  David represents courage and pride in himself.  He was a shepherd who defeated the giant Goliath and became king of Israel.  It is a huge statue made from Carrara marble. Michelangelo thought that Carrara marble was special because it was so pure and white.

I think the David is wonderful because I can’t tear my eyes away from him. So big, so perfect; he looks like he is about to leap over the glass barricade and walk from the room.  Michelangelo always thought really hard when he sculptured stone – every single muscle, every hair, every tiny detail is there.  He did thousands of drawings of people going by in the street, and he combined all the drawings of the people together to create his marvelous sculpture.