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| She's called the Veiled Virgin by Giovanni Strazza. This is what I love about how marble flows. |
"In this funeral fresco, added white paint accents the figure's heroic nudity."
I did a double take. Wait, what? Sure enough, the figure in the Greek and Roman museum exhibit fairly glowed moon-bright with all of his painted glory, he was certainly nude, and...I suppose if you looked out of the corner of your eye and squinted a bit, he did look potentially hero-esque. His abs were very chiseled, and he had a strong profile and wavy hair, but his languid reclining position sort of killed the strong hero-image for me...and I kept getting distracted by trying to imagine a situation where a naked stranger coming to my rescue wouldn't have overwhelmingly awkward overtones.
What if it really were that simple? What if all you had to do was slather yourself in white paint, run stark naked into the middle of the city and strike a pose, and passersby would stop, point, and scream, "Look! There goes a true hero!" Everybody would get all excited, and that was all it took--you and your accented heroic nudity were an instant big deal. Ross informs me that, if we replace the paint with gold, I've basically described the premise of Immortals. Nowadays, the pointing and screaming would end with a shiny pair of handcuff accenting your heroic wrists.
The Villa was an excellent adventure and very good for the beauty-loving part of my soul...although I can't think there's a part of my soul that doesn't crave lovely things. I wandered through the halls fairly in awe of the intricacy of artistry from all those thousands of years ago, some rivaling anything you could find today for their lifelike depictions of those long dead. I loved the gallery of full-sized statues--it's amazing how marble seems to flow and come alive, how the illusion of transparency comes from solid stone. There was a carved girl with a slight smile on her face, about my height, and it was easy to look at the marble and see the individual that the artist took such pains to replicate--how he delineated the individual strands and curls in her hair, curved the pattern on her drapes, and how he made the stone of her skin shine. It was lovely.
Also, we exited through the Herb Garden--130 feet of every herb known to man. I was so excited that I couldn't decide which way to go first. I assumed that the true enjoyment of such a place was through the olfactory senses, so I picked sprigs of almost everything and was perfectly happy.
3 comments:
You know what i love about this? It's real. It's genuine. It's legit. I'm using synonyms like a mad man! lol but for real though, i love that it was genuine, and yet thoroughly entertaining to read :) I found your theories on nude-hero posing to be quite fascinating :P
Was it Mark Twain who said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society"?
Anyhow, this was entertaining. I agree with Kyle.
Although ... didn't Greek people do sports naked?
I am entertained also by the juxtaposition of the naked dude you thought was odd with the veiled lady you really liked.
Statuary doesn't capture me until it becomes impossible, like this ^ or like a single statue I saw in the national gallery last visit, who had a long, sheer garment. I wanted to look at it for much longer, to puzzle out how the stone could be so soft, but my girlfriend and sister were there, and I was embarrassed by the nudity of the woman, which, I suppose, brings my comment back to topic.
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