Two nights ago I was in Turin, or Torino, in Italian. It is a beautiful city. Even though it was raining it was a pleasure to walk around because, like Bologna, many of the sidewalks are covered. Here is a pic.
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Hundreds of city blocks all covered with these beautiful arcades. Even the cross streets are covered in most places. |
I went to two museums. One at the Academia del'arte. It is the major art school in this city and has been training artists for nearly 6 centuries. The museum has great works and many of the best copies of major works from all over Italy. These are used for training students in the techiniques of the masters. I also went to the Galleria Sabauda, two floors in the Museum of Natural History. This collection was a donation from the Bishop of Torino in the 16th Century. It includes some of the most important religious art outside of the Vatican Mueums. Of Course, No Pictures.
There was one painting call "the Passion of the Christ", three centuries before Mel Gibson used the same title for his movie. It is relatively small painting about 2.5 feet long by 2 feet high. One starts at the upper left corner where the scene is the Triumphal Entray into Jerusalem. YOu then follow once scene after another and it tell the entire passion story - all the way to the upper left hand corner where there is a scene of Jesus appearing to the Disciples at the Sea of Galilee. That scene is less than half inch long and about 1 one third inch high. The whole canvas is a series of miniatures. As I was studying the canvas, a small group was led by a guide who, in my estimation, left out many of th details. One of the women in the group asked about certain scene, Herod and Pilate, riding horses side by side. So I chimed in saying that was the part of the story that says Herod and Pilate became friends after this incident. So the guide asked me how I came to know this painting. I responded, "I don't. I know the Gospels". And then proceeded to name about 12 more of the miniature scenes the tour guide missed, or simply didn't know. I had a great time.
Here are a few more scenes of Torino.
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| The royal palace, now the center of the regional government of the state to which Torino belongs. |
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| A gallery covering a series of streets like the one in Naples, although a bit smaller scale. |
The one disappointment was the visit to the cathedral and the display of the Holy Shroud. The cathedral is rather uninteresting and the shroud is not usually open for display. The shroud is the reason I put Torino on my agenda in the first place. However, I discovered a beautiful city which deserves a return visit sometime.
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| The Cathedral of Torino. |
I'm going to save this post now. The internet is starting to do some strange things. So I will log off and log on again. Be sure to check back.
