FAT TUESDAY

Michelangelo’s David… speechless. Part of our class adventure today included going to see the original David in the Galleria dell’ Academia and it was incredible! Inside the gallery there was an overwhelming amount of 15^th century religious art that did a good job of distracting me for a few minutes before I came upon the David. After turning a corner I found myself staring down a long hallway with the pristine sculpture flooded with light at the far end. The procession to the David is the most impressive part of the entire experience. Along both sides of the hallway are Michelangelo’s incomplete sculptures, which appear as if they are attempting to break out of the rock that has imprisoned them for hundreds of years. Once I found myself at the foot of the David, there was nothing else that I cared to see in the gallery and spent the next few hours doing sketches and studies of the sculpture. I worked on a few studies of the right hand and arm because it seemed to hang in such a relaxed form. The hands are out of proportion to the rest of the body, apparently done purposely by Michelangelo, so when viewed from a distance the hands remain a prominent feature of the statue. The David stands 17 feet tall but it is difficult to understand the grand scale of the statue without seeing it in person… so far it has been one of my favorite experiences in Italy.

While we were in Rome we missed out on most of the Canivale (aka Mardi Gras) celebrations and today would be our last chance to redeem ourselves. Carnivale usually involves getting dressed up in costumes and masks, similar to Halloween, but more fun for adults. Considering that we all packed really light on this trip, no of us happened to pack a costume of any sort, but we did our best to come up with something creative. With some water color paint and permanent markers, we did a little face painting and mustache making. To celebrate Fat Tuesday in style we decided to go to a bar near our hotel called “The Fiddlers Elbow” which turned out to be a popular local hangout. They had a live band playing American cover songs, which consisted of a singer dressed as a clown, a violin player dressed as a pirate, and a drummer dressed as Jesus! I think I had my biggest culture shock while I was there because the band was playing American classic rock songs in English, but in between the sets the singer would speak in Italian. The contrast was interesting to say the least.

Mardi Gras Mustache

Clown on vocals, Pirate playing violin, and Jesus on the drums.