(no subject)
Today was a hard core sightseeing day, even though it was thunderstorming. We saw St. Marco's Basilica, the grandest church in Venice, as well as the Ducal Palace and Peggy Gugenheim's collection. St. Marco's is not as big as the Duomo in Florence, but way way more detailed and richer. All kinds of gold and silver items, and mosaics covering everything. The cool thing about it is that it was made over several hundred years, and the artistical styles are completely different in different parts of the church. Apparently whenever Venice plundered another city, like Constantinople during the crusades for example, they would bring all the treasures back and use them to decorate St. Marco's.
The Ducal palace was also nice, with lots of famous art everywhere, and very cool gothic architecture (and cool prison, where Cassanova was kept at one point) but we were really tired once we got out of that place. Went to see Gugenheim's collection anyways. It has some paintings by Picasso and Ernst and others. Neither Miwa or I are modern art lovers (me not being very knowleagable about art in general) but I found that after looking through that collection I was quite refreshed. I think the proportions and colours represented there must be very pleasing to the eye. Also perhaps because the museum itself was very bright and simply laid out compared to St Marco's and the palace. There was this sculpture of a roaring lion I really liked, and also the famous 'guy on a horse with a stiffie' (not the real title).
The Ducal palace was also nice, with lots of famous art everywhere, and very cool gothic architecture (and cool prison, where Cassanova was kept at one point) but we were really tired once we got out of that place. Went to see Gugenheim's collection anyways. It has some paintings by Picasso and Ernst and others. Neither Miwa or I are modern art lovers (me not being very knowleagable about art in general) but I found that after looking through that collection I was quite refreshed. I think the proportions and colours represented there must be very pleasing to the eye. Also perhaps because the museum itself was very bright and simply laid out compared to St Marco's and the palace. There was this sculpture of a roaring lion I really liked, and also the famous 'guy on a horse with a stiffie' (not the real title).