Last week was Settimana Bianca, white week, or ski week for My Girl. But with all of the ski resorts closed in spite of a very snowy winter, we stayed in town and did what we could. My girl had the week off school while boy's school was still in session. They don't have ski week. They traditionally have school trips at this time, but they couldn't happen this year with all of the travel restrictions. Even though we are in a yellow zone, travel in between regions is not allowed, with exceptions for work, emergencies etc. International school trips are completely out of the question.
Even the oranges know it's Valentine's day
The week started on Valentine's day. With John in California for tax season I thought we would try to have some fun anyway. My girl made little cookie bags for her friends at school filled with Batticuori, chocolate heart shaped cookies. On Saturday we went to SAID, a chocolate shop and kitchen to see what we could find. It's a family-owned local shop that has been in the San Lorenzo neighborhood since 1923, but there are also locations in London and Dubai. They opened as "Zurich" because of their partnership with a Swiss manufacturer. The Fascists pressured them to change their name, so they became Società Anonima Industria Dolciumi, Anonymous Confectionery Industry Company, SAID. Everything we tried was exceptionally good.
Salted caramel truffles, dark chocolate hearts, dark chocolate truffles, orange truffles, and frutti di bosco truffles (like raspberry)
Since John was not at home he sent his minions to do his bidding. In this case John sent them to "borrow" some money from my wallet to buy flowers from one of the local flower stands. They went to a little place a couple blocks away that Jack remembered from his walk home from school. They were incredibly pleased with themselves and their adventure. It was so much fun to see them beam and to be remembered. It still makes me smile.
I thought it would make for a more interesting week at home if we had a purpose. What would we do if we were tourists on vacation for a week? A lot of people wish they could have a week in Rome right now. My Girl is great with museums etc. if there is a reason behind it. So this week is all about mosaics. We first pinned down a mosaics class for Friday then planned to go see mosaics around town so that we could get an appreciation for what it is all about.
Our first stop was Palazzo Massimo. In spite of this being one of the major museums in town I had not heard of it. Only two of the four floors were open, but it was still enough to really enjoy the visit. The first floor was filled with ancient busts and statues and a couple of calendars.
My Girl was fascinated by the busts of the Roman women and their hairstyles. In the notes below the busts they made comments about the different styles and the women who popularized them. Some of the women depicted have been identified by their distinctive hairstyles. Maybe we'll try them out. The sculpture is detailed enough that you can pretty much tell what is happening in the parts that haven't broken off. Probably enough to try to duplicate it at home.
Two Ancient Greek bronze sculptures were particularly interesting. The Romans idealized the Greeks and borrowed heavily from their art and culture. After conquering Greece they just "borrowed" the objects themselves. This life sized boxer is incredibly detailed and realistic, including cauliflower ears and copper to color the cuts, scrapes, and drops of blood.
This Hellenistic Prince was discovered near the boxer and is also incredible. Bronze statuary in Ancient Greece was not terribly rare, but surviving examples are, since the metal is easily melted down and reused. The workmanship the on sculptures are amazing, but I also really loved the patina on the metal. These sculptures may have been buried by the Romans to protect them from the invading Goths, preserving them for today.
Our main purpose in coming to this particular museum was to see the Roman mosaics. These were originally part of the floors and walls of villas. It is amazing to see the intricacy of the work. Most of the stone bits are roughly 1/4 inch squares. But at times the central image is made of pieces many times smaller. The detail is amazing. There are many different styles and images, colorful geometrics, black and white animal and human figures, monsters and creatures, flowers and fruit. In these particular mosaics the colors came from different colors of stone quarried in different parts of the empire. More colors were a show of wealth and power. You had to be able to access and perhaps control an area to be able to get colors unique to the areas. In addition to the multicolored stones, the Romans also used colored glass for their mosaics.
So many monsters and creatures. It seemed like they would put a serpents tail or wings on anything to create some new monster, like the hippocampus. I knew the word from brain anatomy, but it is also a winged horse with a fish or sea serpent tail. The fish tailed bull is a taurokampoi, a creature from the Etruscans. There were similar hybrid sea creatures with leopards, lions, and goats. You learn something new every day.
After soaking in the Ancient Roman styles we went to look at slightly more recent work at churches around town, Santa Pudenziana, Santa Prassede, and Santa Maria Maggiore. Santa Pudenziana was our first stop. It is rather small and very old, a second century bath house on top of a first century house that was converted to a church in the 4th century. Legends say that a it was the house of St Pudens, a man referred to in Paul's letters in the Bible (2 Timothy 4:21). A Medieval tower was added around the 12th century. So many layers. The church has been remodeled many times through the centuries. Unfortunately some of most interesting features, like the ceiling and parts of the apse mosaic. were destroyed in a 16th century remodel. The front doors are many steps down from the current street level since the street was raised in the 19th century to improve access to the more important Santa Maria Maggiore just up the street.
The facade is quite impressive, interesting, and different from the typically Baroque facades on so many churches. But we really came to see the mosaic inside. It is one of the earliest church mosaics in Rome dating from 390 AD. What is so interesting about it is how the style bridges the naturalism of the classical style and the more abstract Byzantine style that came later. Unfortunately, the lower part of the mosaic was lost in the 16th century remodel. So sad. Such a gem of art history. I love that you can see the winged swimming? flying? creatures above that we saw in the ancient mosaics. In my readings I found that these are symbols of saints. The winged bull represents St Luke and the eagle, St John. I'm not sure how they got from ancient mythology to Christian saints, but there it is.
After seeing so many amazing examples of mosaics we were excited to try it out ourselves. I found a class at Studio Cassio in the Monti neighborhood. There were a couple other options, but I liked this one because it is a working mosaic studio, not just a tourist craft shop. Lorenzo Cassio worked as the head of the Vatican mosaic shop for many years and founded the studio in the 19th century. His children continued his work and the shop is still in the family. They continue to make and restore mosaics in Rome and around the world. In fact, they worked on the ancient mosaics at the museum we went to. When we arrived they were working on a large new mosaic for a church in Bari, on the east coast of Italy. They create the mosaic in pieces then install them puzzle-like on site.
The desks where we worked were originally from the Vatican mosaic shop. (more here) They were old and rustic and I loved them. Our teacher showed us bits of old Roman mosaic in stone and Roman glass compared to modern glass. The gold-covered Roman glass was beautiful and textured. The modern glass was smooth and sleek, pretty, but much less interesting. We talked about the Vatican mosaics. When I first saw them I thought they were paintings. In fact they were made to replace paintings of the same design since the mosaics are much more durable than a painting on wood or canvas. In order to get the detail the mosaic shop used over 25000 different colors of glass. There are only 300 commercially available to the studio today. The square of yellowish glass in the photo is from the Vatican. You can identify it from the stamp on the surface. The brooch and the face are micro mosaics made from filaments of glass roughly the diameter of a toothpick set on end to create an incredibly detailed image.
We chose our patterns and got to work. We had eight colors to choose from. Each color comes from a different place. The red is from Verona and the yellow from Sienna. The white, of course, is from Carrera. We worked by setting our tessere onto the paper patterns. My Girl chose a geometric pattern we had seen as a border on the floors at the museum. I chose a peacock head because I like the black and white figurative images.
Roman mosaics are made with lines and "worms", not a grid pattern, so the tessere need to be cut into the right shape to turn the corners. If the line gets too wide you divide the worm into two, saving the triangle of the worm end for artistic emphasis. When we were finished the board filled with mortar type stuff was pressed onto the top. The board is more like a tray with gently sloped inside edges. It is quiet meticulous work, but we really enjoyed it. Just for fun we walked home through the neighborhood and passed the Colosseum before catching the bus home. It was a beautiful almost spring afternoon.
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