A Crazy Friday in Rome



My sketch of Bernini's David Sculpture

Yesterday we began our Friday with a trip to see the museum at Villa Borghese, where we had a two hour time slot to explore its treasures. It is crazy that this was a person's home who collected all these paintings and scultpures. While I would I enjoyed more time there to work on more sketching, the two hours we had allowed to us, I was able to comfortably see everything in the museum and even do a couple quick sketches. My favorites here were the Apollo and Dafne sculpture, the Ratto di Proserpina sculpture, the David sculpture, and the Caravaggio paintings. The Apollo and Dafne sculpture is so beautifully carved especially how Dafne is caught transforming into a tree and the look on Apollo's face as he is holding her, yet seems to no longer be seeing her as a woman, but as a tree. I also love how Bernini managed to scuplt the David with so much movement in the body language and facial features to show how he is just beginning his attack on Goliath.

Kelton, Ciera, Corinne and I about to start our crazy bike ride

We then left the museum and then went to explore the surrounding grounds and grab a quick lunch. Once we had eaten and had a ton of fun people watching, we then set out to look for a place to rent one of the four person bikes that we had been seeing. Eventually we found it and we took off. Now everyone else you see on the bikes are taking a leasurly ride through the park, just taking in the sites, but not us...We are peddling as fast as possible since we want to see as much of the park as possible in our hour rental time. This is one of the most fun things that we have done all summer - for the entire hour we were constantly laughing, even to the point that we were crying. We went all over the park, including places that would probably not be considered normally places that people on these bikes would go (specifically when we went "off roading"). On one occasion when we were off roading we got stuck in the deep, lose gravel and Kelton got out to give us a push to start us, but once we got going we could not stop to let him back in so he was running next to us trying to jump into the moving bike...it was so funnny! And eventually we were able to stop to let him in, and then moments later when we were moving again we then hit a huge bump to then look back behind us to see Corinne's water bottle that had fallen out of the basket in the front. We had definately run it over, and when I went to get it we had dented the metal bottle super badly (but it still worked to hold water!) and we could even see the tire tracks on it! Once we had stopped laughing from this too, we then took off again to continue exploring the park.



Local architect creating this painting just for me!

Our good luck then continued when we returned the bike to find the museum where the traveling Andy Warhol exhibit was located. So we went inside to then see so many famous works of art, including many from Andy Warhol, Duchamp's urnal, a Mondrian painting, a Monet, and a couple Van Gogh paintings. It was amazing to be able to see so many famous pieces, all in one place! After this Kelton and I decided to enjoy the nice weather we were having and walk home while the others stayed to do some shopping. Later in the evening Clay and I decided to make a trip out to see all the artwork inside Piazza Navona, but we were not prepared for what we found. Most paintings you find there are mass reproduced, and can find the same exact images at many different stands there. However there are a couple people that you can tell do their artwork themselves and that ther are originals. We found one of those stands in a husband and wife team who are architects that at night they create and sell paintings for fun. They have amazing art pieces, and while I was looking through their works, the woman asked me to name a building and she would paint it in front of me. So I said the Pantheon, and in a matter of moments she painted me the Pantheon. It was crazy! She starts with a paint roller to lay down a layer base paint colors, and then uses a large paint brush to add a little more detail, and then completes the painting by using a metal tool to remove some of the paint to add the defining details of the composition. It was unbelievable that she was able to do this so quickly, so well, and all of it from memory. After purchasing this incredible piece of work, Clay and I walked home to then on our way be given a free coke zero in a piazza we were passing through. This was the perfect end to another amazing day here in Rome.