Diciannovesimo Giorno - Etruscian Museum and Palazzo Altemps

We were finally able to go the Etruscian and it was pretty interesting. Basically there were a thousands of bowls and urns and plates in pottery and bronze. It was amazing how vivid the imagery on each piece was and how bright the colors still were. These pieces are millions of years old, they are older than roman things because the etruscians came before the romans. There was a lot of images of sphinx's, hercules, Pan, and centaurs(these are mythical creatures that have the torso of a man and legs of a horse, this came from people looking at horseback riders and thinking that they looked like they were part of the horse.) I noticed there was alot of similarities between egyptian art and etruscian art. I also found out that Pan is supposedly the ancient symbol for the devil, in ancient times satrys, (half man - half goat), were considered evil creatures. The jewelry was just as intricate as the pots. It was amazing how ornate they could make tiny pieces of jewerly. I also realized that in general everything in history is inter-connected in some way. It's so interesting to see how everything builds on top of eachother and takes things from eachother and makes it their own. It is all sort of the same and in-turn we are all sort of the same. People really need to realize that more often and it's funny how going to a museum that is dedicated to an ancient extinct civilization made me think about that. This experience really is opening my eyes to more than just religion and art and culture.

In the afternoon I went to palazzo altemps, which is a museum in an old palazzo with a bunch of statues of gods and goddesses and other famous figures. Here are a few things I gleamed from the experience:

• Nymphs followed around dionysus and drank wine etc. with him, they were the original groupies!


• In ancient times, helmets were made with eyes on them so that battle enemies would be fooled and shoot at the helmet and not the real face.


• The image of god the father developed from the image of Zeus


• statues weren't made plainly. Alot of them actually were painted ! ( we found gold specks on one of the statues)


• All palazzo's had their own chapels in there with intricate depictions of flowers and angels.


• The flower is a modified symbol of the sun


• Capricorn is the symbol of the family of Palazzo Altemps because it was all over the chapel and almost every wall painting etc.


• The couples Isis and Horace, as well as Apollo and Artemis are symbols of Mary and Jesus