Wouldn’t you love to make this kind of discovery? From 1894, the discovery of a marble statue of Antinous near Delphi. Wow!
la statua di Antinoo scoperta a Delfi durante la campagna di scavo nel 1894
A true confession from a former, rabid art historian
Hi Janis, I’m disappointed we didn’t get a chance to meet up again before our trips to the US! I hope you are well again. I am happy to say I am almost well. The 2nd round of antibiotics and nebulizer did the trick.
I’ve been wanting to share a couple of things from my Paris trip that only you will understand! You know how we are always saying that “things aren’t like they used to be” in the art world in Italy. You can’t just pop in at the Medici Chapel and expect to find it open and empty like it would have been in the olden days! We are ancient!
And you know how we are always saying that we don’t like going to special exhibitions nowadays because you have to fight the crowds to get close to a painting. It is too much work and it ruins the experience.
So, in that vein, I have a couple of things:
First, I can spend an entire vacation without going into an art museum at all nowadays! I think that not only do I dislike the two items above, but I am just tired of art museums in general and my interests have evolved. I have to face the fact that I’m no longer a devoted student of art.
So, on one of our first days in Paris, staying well out of the center of the city and relying on the Metro, but the Metro was on strike…we decided to walk to the Pompidou Center. I haven’t been there in 30 years. My son has never been there. We had a lovely walk through a fascinating section of Paris and, when we arrived at the Pompidou, we joined a small group of people waiting to enter. We got inside, I looked around, and every fiber in my being said “leave!” There is all of Paris to experience and I don’t feel like getting lost in this big, modern building looking at art I really couldn’t care less about. My son was only too happy to leave. He was drug into so many art museums as a child that his right arm is longer than his left, or so we joke.
We were in Paris for 10 days and the one Metro line that you could count on working was the #1, which goes East to West, stopping at the Louvre. We rode that line almost every day and many a time we got off at the Louvre, the center of the city.
We walked by the pyramid almost daily, and even though the museum was always open, we decided not to go in and save our complete Louvre experience for the 17th, when we had Leonardo tickets.
So the days go by and we are planning to see the Louvre on the 17th. We depart Paris on the 19th.
We arrive at the Louvre about 11 a.m. on the 17th, even though our tickets were for 1 pm. I notice immediately that the usual line to enter the pyramid is not there and there is a pretty good sized group of people in the area, but it is helter scelter. I find a Louvre official and show him my Leonardo ticket on my phone. He scoffs. I’m confused. Then it becomes clear, on the 17th of January (my birthday and Michelle Obama’s too, btw!) the Louvre employees decided to join the strike. No one is getting into the museum!
I am in shock. This was one scenario I didn’t see coming. We planned our entire trip around this exhibition.
And yet, another part of me was just fine with this outcome. We gathered ourselves up and headed to the Left Bank where I treated us to a delicious birthday lunch at Les Deux Magots! It was perfect.
I hasten to add that during the 10 days I was in Paris I did attend 2 special art exhibitions: Toulouse Lautrec at the Grand Palais and Degas at the Opera at the Musee d’ Orsay. Both exhibitions were very crowded (in January for god’s sake!) and not enjoyable from that standpoint. I had been dreading the Leonardo show because I assumed it would be even more crowded.
So, what did I learn? I learned that I have made my last plan around a special art exhibition. Those days are officially over for me. Yes, I will always look at art. But, no more blockbusters unless I get a personal invitation to visit privately when the museum is closed to the public. And, while that used to happen in my life, that ain’t gonna happen again in this lifetime!
Only a fellow (sister?) art historian can understand the greatness of this tale!!
Ciao for now, sister, Lauretta
Edgar Degas at the Opera, exhibition at Musee d’Orsay, Paris
There was a wonderful exhibition on Edgar Degas at the Musee d’Orsay when I was there recently. Here are some of the works that caught my eye:
I had a copy of the print below hanging in my childhood bedroom. I know and love this beautiful work as well as I know my own hands.
Below, I wonder…little dreamers? And, if so, dreaming of being a ballerina or a painter?
Florence, February 1956
This old photo dates to the famous snowstorm in Florence of February, 1956. Shot near Ponte Santa Trinita.
Carnevale a Firenze
In ancient times, the Carnevale of Florence was among the most brilliant and noisy on the Italian peninsula. From the Medici times forward, members of the same noble families wore the same kind of masks and went through the city until all hours, singing and carrying so many torches it was “as if it were full day.”
The carriages courses had not yet been invented, but the revelry and the noise that was made in the streets in those days made Florence the most carefree and gay city in the world.
Carnival goers would go to the Mercato Nuovo (where the silk merchants and drapery shops were located) with flasks, and also to the Mercato Vecchio, between ferrivecchi and pannilani sellers. The young of all the leading families all took part in this gazzarra of the ball, going around disguised in creative ways and playing pranks on the unsuspecting.
More than anything, however, they tried to throw big balls into the shops so that the merchants were forced to close and send their workers out to have fun too. As long as the matter remained within these limits, people enjoyed at it, especially when in the Old Market they were throwing a ball into the workshop of a iron smith, bringing down pans, tripods and jugs, with a deafening noise.
But, over time, the revelry became excessive and caused riots. When the young nobles threw out balloons that had been soaked in mota, they ruined the fabrics and drapes of the merchants, creating great economic damages.
Hence, quarrels arose and the people objected. If the nobles were creating such problems, the plebs wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine. The commoners used bunches of rags that were drenched in pools and rivulets. These filthy bundles dirtied everything. Violence ensued in retribution.
After hundreds of arrests, the Eight of Guardia and Balìa issued a ban ordering, with the threat of severe penalties, that no one could get out with the ball before 10 pm and before the trumpets of the City had gone on the streets playing the trumpets to warn the merchants.
(Taken from Old Florence by Giuseppe Conti).
A Parisian miscellany, including The Bataclan Theater and
I’ve got so many great pictures from my trip to Paris in January of 2020, and some of them don’t fit neat categories. So, here, at random, are some of them:
Shots taken from the terrace above the Galleries Lafayette
The Place de la Bastille:
These plaques are all around Paris, marking key places of WWII. I hope I am not the only person who stops to notice them.
A wallpaper store with absolutely gorgeous wallpapers!
The doorways, oh, the beautiful doorways of Paris…
But, I’ve never seen a boar as the key motif! Would love to know the genesis of this!
But, then again the motif below is a bat. Weird!
I love seeing the architects and sculptors signatures inscribed in the stone on the facades of beautiful buildings.
What the flower?
I’d never hear of the Bataclan until the hideous terrorist attack a few years back. It is quite a theater.
Winter is a great time to view the architecture.
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Another WWII plaque:
Daydreaming of spring flowers
During the late winter/early spring of 2017, I lived for a couple of months on Via Stufa near San Lorenzo. My 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment was lovely and had this view out the soggiorno windows:
Plus, the ceiling of my soggiorno was also quite beautiful. It was a dreamy atmosphere that spring!
Teeter-totters in NYC!
The Rodin Museum, Paris
What a glorious place in Paris!
What a glorious winter afternoon! January 2020. So glad I came to Paris, despite the record breaking long strikes of the Metro system and other things.
What a glorious city!
The Gates of Hell:
The Burghers of Calais:
The Musée Rodin was opened in 1919, primarily dedicated to the works of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It has two sites: the Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds in central Paris, as well as just outside Paris at Rodin’s old home, the Villa des Brillants at Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine. The collection includes 6,600 sculptures, 8,000 drawings, 8,000 old photographs and 7,000 objets d’art. The museum receives 700,000 visitors annually.
From 1908, while living in the Villa des Brillants, Rodin used the Hôtel Biron as his workshop. He subsequently donated his entire collection of sculptures – along with paintings that he owned by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to the French State on the condition that they turn the buildings into a museum dedicated to his works.
The Musée Rodin contains most of Rodin’s significant creations. Many of his sculptures are displayed in the museum’s extensive garden. The museum includes a room dedicated to the works of Camille Claudel and one of her two castings of The Mature Age.
The gardens around the museum building contain many of the famous sculptures in natural settings. Behind the museum building are a small lake and casual restaurant. Additionally, the nearby Métro stop, Varenne, features some of Rodin’s sculptures on the platform.
The amazing door-knocks of Paris
Pictures of a random selection taken in one afternoon in the Rive Gauche:
The serpent above is my all-time favorite.
get back, lauretta! 
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