Today we visited the American embassy to the Holy See, where we got to meet Ambassador Diaz. The ambassador was very gracious, giving us a rundown on his various duties and the particulars of some of the embassy’s goals. However, despite his good nature and hospitality, I couldn’t help but leave the embassy with a bad taste in my mouth. Though it had nothing to do with the ambassador or his staff at the embassy (who were very nice), I couldn’t help but notice that, for all of the gratuitous information shared with us during our meeting, there was no mention of the embassy’s actual accomplishments. Sure, they told us about the many conferences on social justice and all of the awareness-raising activities they’ve conducted in the past, but it was all just fluff – meaningless pseudo-accomplishments with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. I suspected that the reason for all of the feel-good fluff was that the embassy actually does very little in the way of actual policy-making. The office is largely just for show, to keep relations between the US and the Holy See from deteriorating (I honestly think it would make no difference if the office either never existed or ceased to exist today). These observations are in no way meant to disparage the men and women of the embassy, but they are my honest views on the matter.

Our second activity of the day was a visit to the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, a historic Roman palazzo converted into a museum with an impressive collection of paintings, statues, and furniture that has been assembled by the Doria Pamphilj family since the 16th century. Our goal was to view three paintings: Titian’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, and Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Penitent Magdalene. Unfortunately, the former was unavailable for viewing, as it is currently undergoing restoration. Fortunately, it was barely missed, as the plethora of beautiful, awe-inspiring, and bizarre works housed in the gallery were more than sufficient to keep our interest. The two Caravaggio works were interesting (to me) less because of their compositional/aesthetic features, and more because of the subject matter, both separately and comparatively. In particular, what I found fascinating was the fact that both the figures of Mary in Flight into Egypt and Mary Magdalene in Penitent Magdalene are speculated to be based on the same model. Indeed, their poses are almost identical, a fact that I find interesting in and of itself. Rather than read too much into it here, however, I’d like to move on to some of the other works that caught my eye as I wandered through the gallery.

The statue collection was a smorgasbord of mythical heroes and deities. I saw Odysseus clinging to the belly of a ram, attempting to escape the notice of the blinded Cyclops, Polyphemus. I also saw at least three works depicting my chosen topic of concentration for this trip, Dionysus/Bacchus. One portrayal was of a wine-colored (how appropriate), cherubic Bacchus, draped with grapevines. The other two were elaborate sarcophagi, showing Dionysian retinues, complete with dancing nymphs and satyrs, playing various instruments, and Dionysus himself, atop a chariot pulled by large wild cats. In the center of the statuary was perhaps my favorite of them all: a centaur with the human half bronze-colored and the horse half black. Somewhere in between the statue room and Penitent Magdalene, I noticed two different works that I found especially intriguing: one was a work by Bernardo Parentino, called The Temptations of St. Anthony, and struck me as one of the more bizarre paintings I’ve ever seen. The subject of it, as one can discern from the title, is simply St. Anthony being “tempted” (though it looks more like torment) by various demons during his pilgrimage in the “desert” (here depicted as Hell).

The second work was by Trophime Bigot, called Boy Singeing a Bat’s Wings. The title is self-explanatory. The reason it stood out to me is that it was probably the creepiest painting I’ve ever seen. The boy’s gaze lingers on the viewer, and his smile is unnerving, made particularly so by the fact that, as he stares at you, he’s holding a lit candle to a bat’s wing, for seemingly no purpose other than to give you nightmares. And yet, I can’t seem to look away…