Man, just look at this place. All the most famous Renaisance artists worked
in some manner on this
church (2 out of 4 Ninja Turtles... not too shabby). The plan and dome
was designed by Bramante and
finished up by Michelangelo. The solid wood altar below here is Bernini's.
The top of this photo shows a better example of
the lettering I was talking about.
Those letters are as large as a 6 foot tall person.
The
raised seat of the Pope.
The
basillica is filled with satues and tombs of former Popes.
Here's
another. These Catholics apparently love leaving bodies laying about.
Another
cool thing is the relics that supposedly reside here. In the center of
this cross-shaped
church are 4 corners like this one. Each has a statue representing the
relic that is housed above it.
On this corner is St. Theresa holding the Shroud of Turin. And above in
that balcony is - you guessed
it - the Shroud itself. Not sure how they get to it, though. There must
be a really long ladder somewhere...
The statue of St. Longinus by Bernini. He's the
guy who pierced Christ's side
with a spear (Longinus, not Bernini). And supposedly above him resides
the spear
itself. And it's a good thing too. If Hitler had gotten his greasy hands
on it we'd all be
speaking German right now.
This
church is 210 meters in length and 137 meters in width. For those of you
counting at home , that's
689 feet long. Over 2 football
fields fit inside this thing. Doesn't look like it, does it? But John
Elway
couldn't throw a pass more than halfway through this place. Ok, maybe
if he had one of those Nerf rocket thingies...
But
the dome is an astounding 136 meters (446 ft) tall, making it by far the
largest in Europe.
And
that's just the structure. The Basillica is teeming with detail. See that
painting? It's not really a
painting. It used to be, but after a century or so of candle smoke was
destroying it, they remade it
as a mosaic. That painting is actually thousands and thousands of bits
of tile. How stupid is that!?
(By the way that lady on the right should be getting The Ring any day
now...)
And
here's what Carl most wanted to see: Michelangelo's Peita. His first and
greatest sculpture
(Michelangelo's, not Carl's. Carl's first and greatest sculpture involved
Play-Doh).
The expression of this piece is absolutely astounding up close. With one
hand the
Virgin clutches her son close while the other pushes him away, giving
him to the world.
Mike
caught some flak for this one though... he pissed off all the other artists
of the time by
doing this so well. Then Raphael's uncle "sabotaged" his career
as a sculptor by getting the
Pope to make him paint a small nearby chapel. It effectively took him
out of the sculpting
business as he was lying on his back for the next 15 or however-many years.
Next
up on the tour was the Vatican Museums. I swear to god, these guys have
so
much crap they don't know what to do with it all.
One of the oldest examples of Greek sculpture is The
Laocoon. This guy
figured out that the Trojan Horse was a trap, but before he could warn
anyone
Posideon sent a couple sea-snakes to take him and his sons out.
Sucks to be them.
