I'm Not Meaning This to be Profane or Disrespectful...

but we saw us a lot of Jesus today. Saw us a lot of Mary and John the Baptist too. I had been wondering when I was going to be seeing lots of Jesus on this trip. There was lots of Jesus at the Vatican, but there was a lot of Roman stuff too. Today we were at the Uffizi Gallery and there were rooms and rooms of him, mostly sitting in his mom's lap and often being adored by the Magi, who apparently adored him at many times in many different places, including several parts of Italy, which was kind of surprising. Those Magi were the most adoring people I ever saw.

Because I had been studiously avoiding any advance information about what I was going to be seeing today, I lacked some basic knowledge that might have been helpful, including who John the Baptist was, who the Magi were, and what annunciation means. I was able to figure out basically what the significance of JTB was, but I didn't realize the Magi were the same 3 people doing the adoring over and over again, and the phrasing does not make it clear whether the magi are adoring or being adored. And annunciation had to be related to announce and as an antonym to denunciation. But I have since learned that this wasn't just any old announcement; it was the announcement of Jesus to his virgin (and therefore probably pretty surprised) mother to be.

Enough heresy, maybe. The Uffizi (I think I've also spelled it Ufizzi and Uffizzi in this blog and I was so wrong) Gallery houses many great Italian works of art (Primarily Italian, they've got a few Rembrandts and some other notable Flemish and Spanish artists as well), mostly paintings. This is a place that was really built up as a kind of temple of art and it's, well, it's a museum. I'm not going to go into depth on much of it. There are some wonderful paintings there. For me, the absolute highlight was Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. This painting is almost as famous as the Mona Lisa, but unlike Mona, which is small and you can't get close to it, there's no letdown here. It is a huge and stunningly beautiful work. Even if you set aside the groundbreaking subject matter and composition, which set it totally apart from everything else I've seen here, it's wondrous. Venus herself is achingly beautiful and she has a serenity that centers your vision on her, even as the zephyr blows from the left and her hair and the water and the cloth that's destined to enwrap her flow to the right with the wind. And the shell sets her off perfectly. I don't think it's been restored, which usually means brightened, so the colors are not extremely vivid, but so what. Just incredible.

The rest of the museum was fine, a cool unfinished DaVinci (Adoration of the Magi!) and a Michelangelo, and a couple of really good Raphael's and Titian's (the links are just my favorites- there are others). But it was a bit of a letdown after Botticelli, and I have to say that the way the gallery labels their rooms is a bit deceptive. The Leonardo room has about 10 paintings, only 3 of which are Leonardo, and the Michelangelo room has about 8 paintings and 1 Michelangelo.

Our feet had had it by then, so we came home for a while. More later.