Milano e Parma: Lo stress delle presentazione

19mar08

You should probably read the Siena entry below this one first!

We went to Parma and Milan for my Leonardo seminar, where I had to give my first presentation. Hmm, I’ll just say it was rather stressful and continue… Milan is a beautiful city but a very bustling one, and a very French one even, being more to the North. It was cold and a bit gloomy while we were there, but we saw some wonderful things, even if almost none of them had anything to do with Leonardo da Vinci. As we like to say in my seminar: “This [insert any painting, object, word, or in this case: post] is scholarly conjecture.” Let’s begin!

Parma – Tutto Coreggio, tutto il tempo

Parma, that day, was gloomy, but quiet, peaceful, and completely empty.

The Baptistery is medieval, turning towards the Gothic… that we’ll see in Milano…

The beginning of Coreggio. I have my notes for this, so I can tell you that this is the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista.

This is the Parma Duomo…and guess who painted that fresco! That’s right, Correggio! This one IS pretty cool actually.

A piazza in Parma (observe emptiness)

We also went to the Camera di San Paolo where there is a Correggio ceiling fresco that I really like but weirdly enough I didn’t upload the pictures of it. I’ll get on that but it was a pretty little building.

An oasis in the center of Parma, amongst the gloom and Correggios!…TOO BAD IT WAS RIPOSO AND WE COULDN’T EAT ANY OF THE WONDERS IN THE WINDOW. AHHHH RIPOSO I HATE YOU. Continuing on…

This is a “Temporary Art Box” as you can see. Why is there a box with art in the middle of a field? Why is it temporary? Why put art in a box in the first place? Why label it in English? The world will probably never know and we can only conjecture…BECAUSE IT WAS CLOSED FOR RIPOSO. Shocker!!!

I don’t have any pictures of the weird museum in Parma which is called the Galleria Nazionale di Parma but we did see soeme Parmignaninos, some MORE Correggios, and some Rahpaels. We went there mainly to see a Leonardo that… was not in the gallery for some unknown reason. (We could only conjecture on its whereabouts while our professor went off “finding Leonardo”…) … (I should really stop with theselame inside joke, but I can’t help persisting with them) But the museum is really weird because it’s mainly made up of a bunch of pipes and grates on which the paintings are hung. A really odd way to show Renaissance/Baroque pictures. But kind of cool… you walk on ramps everywhere…

Milan – L’ultimo Cenacolo e una presentazione stressataaa!

Then we went to Milan! Its train station is hardcore.

We went to the Pinacoteca Brera!!! Though we were all exhausted, we saw some great pictures. Per esempio… here’s a big fat list since I have my notes on me: Mantegna’s Dead Christ which is SO MUCH SMALLER than you would think it’d be, Piero della Francesca’s weird, bizarro Virgin and Child which I really am not a fan of, and Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmeus which was pretty freaking awesome and I flipped out, as I am apt to do, when I saw it.

Ha, this notebook is ridiculous. We found it in the bookstore.

HERE is MY favorite duomo!!!! It is so beautiful and gothic and high and dark and spiritual and hazy inside and is just lovely. I adore it! It’s pretty much the most non-Italian Italian church you’ll ever see, though.

The Galleria in the main piazza. Shoot, it has a particular name which I can’t remember. But it’s super awesome!

I took lots of pictures. In the ironies of Italian shopping there is a Gucci right across from a McDonald’s in this fancy galleria.

The ceiling is too pretty not to take millions of pictures of, so here is one

The inside of the Duomo– not sure if you can see it, it is a pretty dark photo on this icky Windows computer I’m typing on– but it is sooo incredible inside, hazy and huge and daunting and shooting up forever into the sky.

More of the best duomo in the land …not that I’m biased, obviously

We climbed the roof! I did this in high school but it never gets old. The marble simply disappears spiraling into the sky…

Here’s the roof where you can sit and people watch and enjoy being above the hustle and bustle of Milan.

Isn’t that one of the most incredible things you’ve ever seen? The fact that these amazing marble buildings were built so long ago boggles the mind.

Art history majors are very serious people who never, ever make fun of the art they’re seeing. Ever.

Lots of flying buttresses (teehee)

We were rather high up. As you can see.

Looking down at the Milanese piazza

GUESS WHAT’S IN THIS BUILDING!?!?

THE LAST SUPPERRRRRRRRR!!!!!! Indeed obnoxious capitals, bold and italics all necessary. Once you go through a purification chamber (! imagine) you get 15 precious minutes inside a room with Leonardo’s masterpiece. Which is nicely restored but, as we have learned over and over in my seminar, “is mostly scholarly conjecture” because who knows how it ever actually looked except for the fact that it probably looked a great deal better than it did today. But even half-ruined it’s breathtaking. Huge, flawless perspective, incredibly balanced figure groupings, and the characteristically weird details (the doorways on the side? the hands? the floor?) that Leonardo always includes. I bet somewhere in the afterlife Leo’s chuckling away at the fervent desire of scholars to…guess(see, I didn’t say conjecture! God, this joke is probably ancient at this point), what exactly is going on in his works. REGARDLESS, seeing this painting in person was a once in a lifetime, amazing experience. I could see the blue embroidery detail on the tablecloth, the feet under the table… things I never would have noticed in a slide. Amazing.

At some point in there we went to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana where I presented on Raphael’s HUGE School of Athens cartoon (prep. sketch). It was fine, but stressful. (Figured I’d throw in a summary there since I referred to it constantly throughout this post!)

OK, now I’m off to my Leonardo seminar, speaking of!

LOTS OF PICTURES and of course all my babblings about everything I saw and did in Amsterdam and London– hopefully sooner rather than later!

Baci & abbracci a tutti
Chelsea!

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