Oh my Venice.

So as we made the long journey to Venice we stopped in the city of Civici and saw The Scrovengi chapel which is home of the absolutely breathtaking frescos by Giotto. When I first started my art history classes in the winter the first painting that I felt like I truly loved and was possibly my favorite painting ever was Giotto's Lamentation. I actually didn't even know we'd be seeing it until I got there and was watching the orientation video they show you before you go into the church..then it hit me that we were about to see it in real life and I began to freak out! For those who arent familiar with the chapel, there are dozens of scenes of all of christs life and miracles and crusifixion. pretty much the entire new testiment is painted on every wall. Not only are the colors beautiful and the composion interesting and perfect in my eyes, but in the video they talked about how all of the frescos are so famous because Giotto painted them as they would have truly occurred. Minus one scene of the devil eating the wicked and then pooping them out I feel like all of the paintings of christs life were very inspired and accurate. It was the closest I have felt to the story ever. For example they show the nativity of Mary laying down and Joseph half asleep in the stable which is kind of funny but at the same time that's exactly how it would have been. Mary would have not been standing beautiful over the newborn Christ child and Joseph would have been tired. Also the image of the slaughtering of the innocence was very beautiful in showing all the tears on all of the mothers faces and showing real emotion in the face instead of an archaic smile or a glorified angelic grin that most paintings or statues show women as. I also loved the one of the 12 apostles at the end and they are all looking in different directions when Christ is appearing to them after the resurrection. It reminded me of Hollands talk two conferences ago about how the apostles didn't now what to do when Christ was gone. They were simply going to go back to fishing and Giotto shows this so beautifully in such a simple composition. And of course my favorite is the Lamentation where they take Christ off of the cross. The visual lines, the colors, the expression on the faces of even the angels weeping, and most of all the interesting figures sitting away from the viewer so you see their backs. We were taught that Giotto did this because he wanted the viewer to be able to sit themselves in the painting with everyone else. So cool when a painter includes the viewer. Which is also why I like a lot of the Impressionism and the manorism paintings more than the classical because you can usually see either look through the eyes of the painter, or the eyes of the subject and apply it to yourself. So cool.

Well once we finally got to Venice, we saw many things like Manet and tons of famous Venician paintings. Today however I have never felt more tired. I think that everything hit me all at once and I couldn't even write notes because my hand was exhausted. So after a bunch of museums I went back to the hotel and took a 40 minute nap. Then after we went to another church with some famous Titian paintings and I learned that in Nancy Drew books she said her mother said she had Titian hair which means strawberry blonde. I now understand the reason behind this because Titian always made Christ have strawberry blonde hair because it was said that was his favorite hair color. Kinda funny. I'm going to tell Erin now that she has Titian hair, and she is NOT a ginger haha.

Then after the museum, Maddie, Madison, Caroline, Jessica, Abby and I all split a gondola ride that was AMAZING!!!!!! It was 40 minutes and our gondolier was very handsome and said he had been a gondolier for 21 years! That's as old as me...so that means he's probably 35-40 and he looks that good.. Dang. He even sang to us and whistled love songs, it was great. He showed us the hotel where The Tourist was filmed. So cool. I think I'm the only one who loved that movie. Maybe because I love Venice and Johnny Depp, and any movie that takes place in Europe. Also I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to movies. Anyways, Venice is prettier than I ever imagined. Got a REALLY pretty watch with Venician glass in it that is gray and my favorite thing in the whole world. I think I might wear it to bed.. Ok maybe not. But I love it. Leave for Austria tomorrow. So excited but sad to leave Venice and Italy in general.