WARNING: ART NERD POST!!!

Its true, so brace yourself and strap in for some good old fashioned nerdiness in relation to the art world. But first a little normal news. This week has been pretty uneventful, just going to class and doing some minor exploring. I took the Italian exam that I mentioned in my previous post. And I have only one thing to say about that darned thing...

MY CHEST!!!

Ehhmm, sorry. It went pretty well. The hardest part was writing the composition (side note: being so immersed in Italian is REALLY messing with my English spelling/speaking ability. I just had to go back and rewrite the word composition in its English spelling). We could write about a friend of ours, so Joey, there is now an Italian professor who knows all about you. The hardest part about writing the composition was I couldn't use all the words I needed (i.e. drums, quarter baron, victory boxes)

And for the oral examination, Aresniy and I talked with Paolo about how rather than studying the night before, we watched some tv and drank wine. Later the subject moved on to calcio (soccer). So the long and short of it is that the exam was dominated and now we're moving on to round two...the semester course. So at the very least I can say this: Parlo piu italiano di prima.

But now for the art nerd part of this post. This Tuesday I went to La Acadamia di'Brera to see their advertised Caravaggio exhibit. Unfortunately, they didn't have student discounts unless you were from Europe, so I ended up paying 10 euro to get in (I feel like it was some type of discrimination. My bad that I was born on the wrong continent. Cripes) But luckily it turned out to be totally worth 10 euro. I went with my friend Anja from Germany, so I got to play docent to some extent. We spent a little while wandering around rooms of medieval and Byzantine icons, which was pretty cool. I mentioned to Anja that if all else failed, medieval artists only needed to follow this simple formuala:

1 Madonna
1 Child (creepy man/baby of course)
Then select one of the following hosts (and if necessary combine the two):
Saints
Angels
Bling (gold leaf preferred)

And voila, you have a religious medieval masterpiece.

Then we turned the corner and I ran into a painting straight out of Art 212.



Andrea Mantegna's Dead Christ.

I was so filled with incredible art nerd joy I think I scared Anja. But it was amazing. It had been one of my favorite paintings in Art 212 and I had just randomly
stumbled across it. Awesome.

After spending what Anja thought was an inordinate amount of time in front of the Dead Christ, we continued on through the museum. I was surrounded by names such as Della Francesca, Rubens, Barberini, and many other names that probably don't mean anything to the great majority of you dear readers (But the following posts are filled with lots of not art history! So don't stop reading! Please!) I also got to see a few random pieces by Raphael and El Greco. And of course we finally came to the Caravaggio exhibit...

Which consisted of four paintings.

What the devil?

I was really puzzled for several minutes. Where was this giant tour-de-force of Caravaggioness? I talked to one of the real docents and found out that they had been able to temporarily get two more paintings, and it was a very exciting opportunity. (Wait, you mean there are only two more paintings than usual? And this merits posters all over Milan?) I realize that I sound unbelievably whiny right now, but I had been expecting to wander around at least two rooms of one of my favorite painters, and instead was faced with only four paintings. *sigh* In all fairness though, they were spectacular works and were not disappointing in and of themselves at all. I'm really happy to have any chance to see anything by Caravaggio, so I left the museum with my mind blown from the sheer amount of great art I had been lucky enough to see.

Okay, I got some of my art nerd out now. Thanks for bearing with me. My next post will contain such exciting things as...a lake, planning, hopes unfulfilled, and a visitor.


Man...the suspense I leave you all with.