Friday March 9th - PalermoI was hoping that today would be better than the others, and it was for the most part. We started out at a museum, and saw a lot of religious art, statues, and the huge "triumph of death" painting. Then...to the puppet museum!! This was one of my favorite places, actually. It has the largest collection of puppets in the world, and it was so inspiring...and now I'm thinking that I'm going to make puppets as one of my projects. They had different kinds from different cultures, from Japanese to British to African. Here is a photo of Katy in the "Italian" room...
After the puppet museum, it was back on the bus to go to Monreale, a small town in the hills just outside Palermo. There we visited the Duomo, a church covered, literally covered - almost every square inch - in mosaics. It was quite overwhelming, but then we went to the cloister attached to the church, which was very calming. It's still an active cloister, and it had a beautiful courtyard where we stayed for a bit, but by this point it was raining and cold and windy again, so time to move on...to...the...PUPPET SHOW!!
Yes, we went to a puppet show, and it was fabulous. It was a family run business, there was one man, his son, nephew, and his son running the show. The little nephew played this piano-like intstrument, the older man was the main puppeteer who acted out all the voices and main puppets, and the other two also manipulated the puppets. These types were specifically from the Sicilian puppet tradition. They are super heavy, about 30 pounds each, and are made from carved wood and metal, and have full suits of armor. Quite impressive, and also the puppeteers throw them around the stage like they're nothing. It was such a fun show, though we didn't understand much of the Italian! We got to play with some of the puppets afterwards, and they were actually as heavy as we were told. (The puppeteers had beastly forearms).
Went to some Baroque churches this morning sculpted by Giacomo Serpotto, which were incredibly beautiful but I wasn't feeling too well, and Baroque is always a lot to take in, so I just kind of sat in the pews and stared at things. The first church had sculptures of all the virtues represented as women...justice, purity, charity, etc., there were maybe 12 of them? And his technique used plaster, so all the cloth was beautifully cloth-like. But being Baroque, it was also all very overdone and dramatic. We also went to a converted Mosque that is now a church.
After the churches, it was free time until 6pm! We got dropped off at the market, got to wander through it (I bought a blood orange that turned out to be the bloodiest blood orange I've ever seen, it was almost black, and so delicious), then I walked to the Botanical Garden with Christina and Susie. It was kind of a dreary cloudy day again, but the garden was beautiful nonetheless. It was filled with these trees, that are just
massive. How they work is they can drop down roots at any point along their branches, then when the root touches the ground, it goes back up again, forming another tree trunk, so it's like...trees within trees within trees. And you can climb on them really easily...like this!
After a few hours there, we took the bus to another side of the city to see the Capuchin Crypt. Remember my post a few weeks ago about the Capuchin crypt in Rome, with the bone designs? Well, I was expecting this one to be the same, but on a grander scale...except...it was nothing like the one in Rome. I walked in, and what it was was hallways and hallways of half-mummified corpses. The hallways were fairly narrow, and there were two rows of bodies per wall, so it also felt like they were leaning in towards you. And it was more than just monks, it was people who asked to be buried there. I felt very heavy, like I couldn't breathe, because the thing is...we're so desensitized to skeletons, especially in art school when we draw them all the time, but we're not desensitized to half-decomposed bodies. Some of them were totally skeletons, but some still had hair, and skin...and there was a perfectly preserved child who looked like she was sleeping. They used some sort of mummification process. I don't know, it was all very disturbing. The only cool part was the clothing was also preserved, and all the bodies were from the 1800s or earlier, so it was interesting to see the costumes.
I had to power walk for half an hour to get back to the hotel to sign up for my housing next year, then it was time to get on THE BOAT!
Coming down to Sicily, we drove down the coast on our bus, but going back to the mainland, we took the overnight ferry across the sea. It was a ten hour ride, with really rough seas from all the bad weather. The boat was literally rocking back and forth from the waves...I felt so seasick, so after hanging out in the lounge for a bit I went straight to bed. Then the fun part about overnight ferries is they wake you up at 5:15am! Whoo! We got kicked out at 6:45 into Naples. Except...nothing really opens until 9:30, so we had time to take a nap on the bus, get some breakfast, etc. And then...my second visit to Naples!
Sunrise from the ferry
First, we took a walk down the old Decomanus - the ancient Roman road that cuts across the city from east to west. In every city, it's generally the most "historic", since it's the oldest. This whole day we did things that I didn't get to do my first time in Naples, so I was really excited. We walked down the street where they sell all the figurines for Nativity scenes, which was just funny because they have all sorts of celebrities that you can put into your Nativity. Then we went to the Capella Sansevero, the location of the famous Veiled Christ statue, which was incredibly beautiful. Third, a church to see a Caravaggio.
Then...reason #1 why I love Naples...we came out of the church...to this:
The first sun we'd seen in...five days?? Even if it is raining in the rest of the country, or even if it's raining in Naples, it will always be sunny at some point during the day. It was a great way to end our trip, because it felt very full circle and conclusive, and it was warm again!
And then this happened again:
Naples pizza, you slay me
The last thing was a visit to the contemporary art museum, and that was that.
tuttiThe Southern Tour was a long, great, beautiful, tiring, stressful, frustrating but incredible time. We saw so many inspiring things, but most of all I think all of us couldn't wait to get back to Rome and really start to buckle down on studio work!
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