Category Archives: Rome

While traveling in Dublin last week I walked onto the campus of Trinity College and was taken aback when I saw a very familiar sculpture sitting on raised platform in the school’s main courtyard. It was one of the well-known Sphere within a Sphere, or Sfera con Sfera, sculptures by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, considered one of the greatest contemporary Italian sculptors.

I had an instant flash back to the Cortile della Pigna at the Vatican where another version of this same sculpture is also on display. Though I knew other versions existed, for example, in front of the UN headquarters in New York, I had not heard of the one in Dublin. Having retuned home and done a bit more digging I’ve learned that there are in fact something like twelve other Sfera con Sfera sculptures scattered across the globe. Remarkably, almost half are in the United States. Including Dublin, the UN, and the Vatican, other versions can be found in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C, Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, de Young Museum, San Francisco, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone, University of California, Berkeley, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran.
 
While the two examples I have seen personally, in the Vatican and Trinity College, appear to be very similar in design (though Trinity’s is significantly smaller), many of the spheres appear quite different. However, all of them share some common features. They are all made of bronze and they have all been treated and polished in such a way as to give the bronze a gold appearance. In each, this smooth surface gives way to a view of the interior of the sphere; a world of a very different quality than its shining exterior. Suddenly we are peering into a complicated mesh of cogs or what some describe as the inner workings of a clock, piano keys, or the intricate components of an alien machine (our Trinity guide described it as looking akin to the Death Star from Star Wars or a Zombie Pac-Man, which, one must admit, it does). It will not surprise most that before becoming a sculptor, Pomodoro studied geometry. In fact, in many of his works we are confronted with seemingly simple shapes that then yield to much more complicated worlds within.
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Technorati Tags: Arnaldo Pomodoro, Contemporary Art, Dublin, Sphere within a Sphere, Trinity College, Vatican

We have been loving all the new Pope business in Rome. I love the little tidbits we catch about Pope Francis I and his choices in these pivotal first days of his Pontificate. For example, his choice to have a more modest fisherman’s ring (plated in gold rather than made 100% of the expensive metal) and cross necklace (his is made of lead). My favorite snippet was that after being elected, Francesco, though he had the right to stay in his new home at the Vatican, declined and chose to return to his hotel room with the other Cardinals. All three choices express his extreme humbleness. I mean, I think it would have been hard for me to give up my first night’s stay in the Vatican apartments. And that got me thinking about other premises over which new Popes once gained ownership upon their election, namely, the Castel Sant’Angelo.
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Technorati Tags: Castel Sant'Angelo, Italy, Pope, Rome, Rome History, Vatican

There are so many things in Italy that cannot be captured on film, in a picture, a book, by a poem, ode or interpretative dance. The Sistine Ceiling is one of them. Well, let’s be honest, it’s the one. The number of oversized books and posters with endless reproductions and diagrams dedicated to this one space still cannot even begin to communicate the feeling you experience when you’re physically standing in that room looking up at Michelangelo’s love-hate relationship with fresco painting. Many others, who worked their entire lives on painting (and did nothing else), didn’t come anywhere close to this masterpiece. Not even compared to the ceiling closest to the entrance wall of the chapel, where Mich is still figuring things out and is, perhaps, a hair short of his normal state of perfection.
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Technorati Tags: Instagram, Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel

We made a quick trip to the Eternal City this past week and took our favorite walk from the Borghese Gallery through the Borghese gardens towards Piazza del Popolo. As we were approaching, the most incredible sunset began unfolding before our eyes. Michelangelo’s enormous Dome was hovering on the horizon with the orange sun blazing behind it. It was almost too good to be true. The view from above the piazza, looking out over most of the enormous city is already one of the best in Rome, but with the blazing pink and orange sky, it was nothing less than breathtaking.

Technorati Tags: Italy, photography, Rome & Pompeii