Giorno Tre, Seconda Parte: the Capitoline Museum

Emperor Marcus Aurelius rides his horse to the Capitoline Museum.

Sometimes when I am visiting a city, there is a specific museum that I want to see that is not one of the major sights. In Rome, that was the Capitoline Museum.

The Capitoline Museum is the world's first public museum. It was created in 1471 by the donation of Pope Sixtus IV of four ancient bronzes from the pope's private collection to the citizens of the City of Rome. You also may known Pope Sixtus IV as the one who started the construction of the Sistine Chapel. He did not hire Michelangelo to paint it. That was another pope. Julius II, in 1502. (The word "Sistine" in "Sistine Chapel" is just the adjective form of the name "Sixtus." Sixtus's Chapel.)

The museum has grown considerably since then. It is still primarily (but not exclusively) a museum for ancient statuary, whether stone or bronze. The museum also can be difficult to find. It is up a hill (the Capitoline Hill, one of those seven hills upon which Rome was built), behind the Victor Emmanuel, and not well-marked. Which kept the crowds down.

In the courtyard of the museum are various fragments of statues from ancient times. I believe these fragments from a colossal statue of the Emperor Constantine.

I know it's not politically correct anymore to use geography based terminology, but I remember that people used to refer to "the Roman nose." That, my friends, is the very definition of a "Roman nose" on Constantine.

And here's Constantine's Roman hand. Apparently he had amazingly long fingers, from the look of the proportion of the fingers relative to the palm.

And here's an artsy shot of Emperor Marcus Aurelius astride his horse that is located outside the museum, framed by the museum's doors.

But this is not the original. It's a replica. The original was one of the four bronzes donated by Pope Sixtus IV to the people of Rome. It's inside, tucked safely away from the elements.

This one looks a little too intact to be an original from ancient Rome.

But I snapped a photo of it due to its sheer creepiness.

On the second floor of the museum, called the first floor in true European fashion, is a large room containing three of the four original Pope Sixtus IV donations. Including:

The original bronze of Emperor Marcus Aurelius on his horse. Weirdly enough, the one in the inside looks far more weather-beaten that the one outside in the elements.

And this is another of the original donations from the pope. A bronze casting of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, the legendary twin founders of Rome.

I've seen copies of this elsewhere. I'm not sure why the whole "suckled by a she-wolf" thing is so important to the legend of the legendary Romulus and Remus, but I'm not in the business of crafting the details of legends. I just report them as I hear them.

We'll come back to that room in a bit.

I photographed that one because, among all the athletic statuary, this one is the most intact. He's only missing his hands. That's a pretty good survival rate for body parts over two millennia.

This one is the personification of Teddy Roosevelt's dictum "speak softly and carry a big stick."

That is one huge stick. Barbed, too. It would not end well if you were clubbed by a barbed stick like that.

One the other hand, man's best friend:

Now here's an athlete in a bad state. One arm missing. No hands on the other. On a tree trunk. None of that can be comfortable.

A lot of the statuary fragments in the Capitoline are staged so that you can envisage what the statue actually looked like when it was whole. This must be a charioteer and his horse. His headless horse. Although in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the headless horseman. Remind me again, it was the horseman who was headless, right? It wasn't about a man on a headless horse, correct?

We're back to the room that is the core of the museum. This is a lion attacking a horse.

The horse does not appear to be enjoying the situation. Perhaps this is how he ended up a headless horse, no?

And this is one of the major pieces in the museum. Again, it was part of Pope Sixtus IV's original donation.

Boy pulling a thorn from his foot. For some reason, this reminds me of a Smiths/Morrissey song.

Let's look at the whole room.

And here I am.

I forgot to smile. The other selfies I took in here with me smiling look even worse.

And here's Emperor Constantine. In fragments.

Is this a funerary urn? Or just a firkin?

Either way, with the puppies on the corners, I want one.

This one definitely is funereal:

Has to be a sarcophagus. Has to be.

I think this is from the top of some ancient statue:

This riderless horse looks like it once had a rider.

A rider who was violently taken away from it.

This is an actual working functional chariot car:

It was found on the remains of some rich ancient Roman's estate. It's the real deal. Fully functional.

There was a section of the museum dedicated to pottery.

It looked good, but pottery is not my thing.

There also is a collection of tapestries in the museum. These cannot date back to Roman times because there is no way organic material could have survived this long. But this depicts a Roman looking scene.

This giant tapestry reminds me of Raphael's "School of Athens." Only this depicts Roman rulers giving the thumbs up/thumbs down to an ancient gladiator. (The gladiator on the right already was decapitated. The one on the left apparently is begging for his life. Not as peaceful as the collection of philosophers in "School of Athens.")

This is a giant room lined with tapestries, in case you need some ideas on decorating with massive tapestries.

This next one I really liked for the expression on the faces of the animals in the scene above the sarcophagus or storage chest or whatever.

The sheep looks amazingly surprised to find a tiger on its spine.

There also is a small collection of paintings. Again, as I have noted, painting does not photograph well. Sculpture does. Painting does not. But given I know nothing about the fine arts, I am always amazed when I go into a room full of paintings and one sticks out to me as being of way superior to quality to the others and that one is the one painted by one of the acknowledged masters. That was the case with this one below:

It is by Caravaggio. This is his St. John the Baptist. It jumped out at me because it was luminescent and almost three-dimensional.

And after walking through the area of paintings, my tour of the museum was complete.

Time to exit the museum and move on to my next destination for the day.

Once I figure out where that is going to be. Do I go north or do I go east southeast?