Alzofon Art Institute

Museum Notes

This Page Dedicated to Sven ! - - Bon Voyage !

First Day in Rome, or...Travel Is a Painful Ordeal

---

Interpretation of notes (read counter-clockwise)

Musei E Monumenti Comunali - "Musei Capitolini

warm black

very soft transitions

ivory black + white, value 5

Canvas Coarse Woven

4-1-93 (date)

Edges never crisp! -- Soft focus -- Of course edges varied

Warm black, value 9-10

Valesquez

Max says it looks like he could just talk right to you.

rough wet, dragged brush stroke at edge. Ran the direction of edge.

graded tone: raw umber + white, value 5 plus and minus 1/2 step value.

Possibly hardest edge (intersection of collar & background)

Mustache ivory black, value 9-10

Venetian red + white

Transcript from notebook

---

4-1-93 -- Travel was like hell.
Seems inevitable, I suppose. In about 16 hours we saw the sun set twice. We were packed into the 747 like sardines. I sat in an aisle seat in the middle section. I thought it would be a good idea to get a little drunk on the flight to help me sleep; I slept about 5 hours (in agony -- legs aching). When I awoke, the stewardesses were preparing for the breakfast so I forced myself to stay awake. I felt a little drunk still, so anyway, I ate, didn't feel right, and kept feeling worse. By the time the plane landed (two hours behind schedule, so we missed our flight to Rome) I was really badly off. But I never barfed. I found an odd tasting medicine at Heathrow which seemed to help.

We were put on the next plane to Rome and arrived at 9 PM, Rome time. My internal clock from California said it was 11 am. Max tried to call our hotel. The phone seemed not to work. Worked fine, though -- the line was just busy the whole time. After an excruciating delay at the airport, we got on the train for Rome -- about 20 minutes away.

The station we arrived at was desolate. It was about 10 PM by then. The hotel phone was still busy. We had to buy a new kind of phone card for city phones. The place we bought the card was a surprisingly clean, bright "bar," if you could call it that. I had been noticing that all Italians were good looking. The men are very sexy, the women lovely, graceful. The men talk to each other! They go and go and go.

It took another long, long time to figure out how to do the taxi, but that came together at 10:45 or so. No one answered the door at the hotel. The taxi driver took us to a couple of establishments before one could take us.

This is my 2nd night in that hotel - Hotel Arenula - 00186 Roma - Via S. Maria De'Calderari, (Largo Argentina - Via Arenula) - Tel. 06/6896188.

---

Everywhere you look there are details -- old things. It almost makes me sick (ill) trying to fathom the labor and skills that were necessary for this quantity of work. It also makes me angry and resentful that more effort is not given to California to make it pleasant. Why isn't art supported more here -- home? [a later note: Italy is being wrecked like everything else. California just doesn't have any major civilizations to preserve.]

I guess it was too expensive. We'll be moving on to something cheaper in the morning. But I must say it was good to have a private bath, and breakfast in the AM. Good for jet lag days. Today, we got up at 5:45, though I was awake since 2:30. We walked and walked. We saw the Forum and Pantheon.We spent a long time in Musei Capitolini. We changed money, got a new place (ordeal), ate once, saw plaza after plaza, gawked, ooh'd and ah'd until I couldn't take it anymore.

---

More Notes:

Early Titian

Michelangelo Sculpture

Rubens

Leonardo da Vinci

Bouguereau at the Haggin

---

You are within the museum notes of the Idea Library

---

Also in the Idea Library:

Explanatory Comments

Study Collection

Proposals

This page last updated: July 2, 1996