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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Pompeii and the Live Lava Lamp


There is a special showing of Pompeian art at the National Museum of Rome at the Palazzo Massimo. (I like the name, don't you?) Took the Metro up to the train station. It was about 5:30pm or 17:30 as time is kept in Italy. The train was packed and I had to insert myself into the dense crowd in the car. What is this? Tokyo? What are we? Sheep?


Live Lava Lamp

As I emerged from the station near the Piazza Repubblica, I heard an incredible sound. Thousands, possibly millions, of small birds were flying overhead, sometimes landing in the trees but mostly seeming to be thrilled with the cool evening air, the moon and the sunset. They formed huge flocks that flew up high, then swooped down and flew through each other, apparently keeping intact as they merged then separated, changing shape the whole time. The pictures don't do it justice. Clearly I'll have to learn to use the video feature on my camera because I can't resist going back to see it again. It went on for the more than half an hour that I was there.


A few minutes later Bill showed up so that we could see the Pompeii exhibit at the museo. The birds had settled down by now, it had gotten dark, but the first tale of the day from Bill was about having spoken with a colleague who has recently done work on the behavior of large flocks of birds. I wonder if this Piazza Repubblica performance helped to inspire that effort.

Update! Here is a link to the papers on flocking bird behavior and, indeed, not only were Bill's colleagues inspired by these birds, but the studies were done right here on these same incredible flocks. For those of you interested in reading the papers, here is the link: http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1667


Pompeii at the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Massimo

The people of Pompei also seemed to live joyful lives, at least as demonstrated by their wall paintings and before the volcano blew its top. The Museo has a large collection of very delicate wall paintings and several entire rooms set up so that we were able to see how they fit into a home. The small rooms were not readily accessible for photographs, but I was able to shoot other works.




(A note of thanks to the Italians for allowing photography, understandably without
flash. They also have good signage in both Italian and English - we ignorant tourists salute you! - which includes some lovely poetry relevant to the work on the walls:
"Olympian Muses, fill my heart with longing for a new song: I am eager to hear the maiden voice of girls singing a beautiful melody to the heavens."
Alcmane, fr. 3 (p. Oxy, 2387)
This was in the section on theatrical paintings.)




The museum also has its permanent collection, of course. This includes many Roman copies of Greek sculptures, some extremely beautiful. There are plenty of heads of famous Romans, funerary reliefs, and gods and godesses, even a hermaphrodite.
Incredible mosaics, using the tiniest of stones, are on display, as well as a kind of mosaic made with glass, stone, and shell. Very colorful; the different materials add a lot to the texture and way the light reflects off the work.









Interesting hairdo, don't you think?
Too bad the nose job didn't turn out well.


I bought a nine-museums-for-seven-days ticket. Maybe today I will try the Crypta Balbi or Palazzo Altemps. What a place!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

So people have noses in Rome? Jo