Warning: I'm about to go a bit link crazed. Specifically I'm dragging you in to what happens once I start googling and find things that interest me. (Translation: what I do on the internet at any time, on a daily basis.) Another warning, here's what I edited out of title of this post: May Contain Testicles, Teeth Removal from a Saint, A Cephalophore Reference and Tomb Artwork of a Famous Juggler. That was a bit too long.
Back in this post I told about rescuing this book - A Traveller in Southern Italy - from my family's Off To The Used Bookstore pile. I actually linked the wrong book - it's A Traveller in Italy - which makes a difference, because most of this book is about northern Italy. I'm totally not reading it...not really. ...Ok, not much. I do have at least a few examples of the problematic author I talked about in the last post - but that's to be in the review.
More interesting - for blogging purposes - is that what I have read has led to some really fun google searches for more about the country and the history. Of course I have quotes and examples! [Note: not enough skeletons in the book so far. I like my travel stories with skeletons, ghost stories, and a few ruins here and there. Also libraries. You'll note there is a link to some skeletons in artwork below, because that's just how my google searches lead me.]
The quote that started it on page 149 (but again, I'm not really reading this), about a chapel in the city of Bergamo, Italy:
"The gem of Bergamo is the building next to the church: the chapel to the memory of [Bartolomeo] Colleoni with money left by him for this purpose in his will. It was built at the beginning of the Renaissance, when architects erected the usual mediaeval church with a rose window and an open arcade, but, to be classically fashionable, covered it with medallions of ancient heroes strangely contrasted with scenes from holy writ. ...
...In another part of the little chapel is Medea, Colleoni's favorite daughter, carved in white marble, who died seven years before her father. She was not a great beauty, and the fashion of plucking the hair high upon the forehead did not suit her. Nevertheless she lives again in the resurrective art of sculpture in a marble gown of figured brocade, her head upon a tasselled pillow. Her delicate, intelligent face, and her slender neck, remain one of the memories of Bergamo."
It seemed a little odd (and insulting) to toss in that part about Medea not being a great beauty, because that's not the way other tourists describe her statue (that I've read so far, anyway). That's one of the many examples of the author using a tone which is...well, I don't much like the guy.
But I did want to see what these places look like, especially to find out more about the classical heroes bit, because that's vague. What I found was that there's a lot of interesting detail that A Traveller in Italy has left out - though of course that's after I've read many web pages of information.
Wikipedia page for the chapel: Cappella Colleoni, which has the following information about the art:
"Over the main portal is a rose window, flanked by two medallions portraying Julius Caesar and Trajan. The upper part of the basement has nine plaques with reliefs of Biblical stories, and four bas-reliefs with Hercules's deeds. The four pilasters of the windows flanking the portal are surmounted by statues of the Virtues."
What that doesn't tell you is that the reason Hercules was used was because supposedly Bartolomeo Colleoni felt he was a descendent of Hercules - in a sort of "I'm like him!" way instead of actual ancestry. I've only read bits about Colleoni online so far, so take that with a grain of salt.
There don't seem to be any photos of Medea's marble tomb-statue - here's an old black and white image on Pinterest, and the chapel's wikipedia page has something similar. This is probably due to restrictions on photographs inside the chapel.
What many sources online seem to agree on is that the Colleoni coat of arms has three testicles on it - in part as a joke because the Italian word for testicles (coglioni) sounds like Colleoni - and also because apparently Bartolomeo went around telling people he had three. Which is a real condition, but you can also imagine the type of person that would want to brag about this.
Google will now have forever in its files that I searched for Colleoni, coat of arms, and testicles. Fun, huh? I'll let you try that link to find out more - and I didn't have any one resource on this, it seems common knowledge. Of course it could be a bit of folklore always told to tourists - but then there is that coat of arms. [links: Time Out Venice, Veneto Inside, quote from book on Venice via Google books, etc. - keep reading, I link to a photo of that coat of arms...]
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(Ms. Novikova in the "mad scene")
