Milan

Yesterday was my day to spend in Milan. I got a slower start than many of my previous days but was still out by 9:00. I took the trolley car from my Air BnB down to the Piazza del Duomo. That is also the location of the Milan cathedral which has the 4 biggest nave in the world. I am starting to develop church and cathedral fatigue but it was a very beautiful cathedral with beautiful stained glass windows. Many were damaged during WW2 but a few had survived. The church ceiling was supported by 53 huge columns which Rick Steves described as the size of sequoias. I did the Rick Steves tour which was just right. The most interesting thing was a statue of St. Bartolomeo. St. Bartolomeo was skinned alive by the Romans in 100 AD. He seems to be a favorite of sculptures or painters here in Italy. After the Duomo, I headed over to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele which is Milan central for luxury clothing and fashion accessories. It is a glass and iron domed four story building. An Italian version of the Eiffel tower but as a building. All of the high end brands were represented including Gucci, Prada and LVMH to name a few. After some lifestyles of the rich and famous I thought I needed some culture. I wanted to go to Pinacoteca Ambrosia Milan's oldest museum but it was closed on Wednesday which totally caught me off guard. Mondays are the norm for museum closures but Wednesdays. Instead I headed off to the Brera Art Gallery. I opted to do the audio tour as Rick Steves didn't offer much of a tour. The audio tour was supposed to highlight the best of the museum but I seemed to prefer many of the paintings not on the tour. My favorite painting was of Christ lying on a stone altar after he had been crucified painted from the perspective of his feet. It was a very interesting perspective.

After a vegetarian lunch and some wandering around the streets of Milan- gosh they have a lot of clothing stores , I was going to finish off with the highlight of the day. Leonardo De Vinci's last supper. I had booked the ticket 3 months in advance and had to actually call Italy to get a ticket as I had missed the online ticket purchase. I was there a good hour in advance and it had started to rain so I chilled out in a coffee shop. Leonardo spent 4 years painting this masterpiece from 1494 to 1498. He painted it in a Dominican monastery dining hall associated with the church Santa Marie dell Gracie. He had been commissioned by a wealthy nobleman who was hoping to curry favor with the monks so he could be buried in their church. All Dominican monasteries have a picture of the crucifixion and of the last supper in their dining halls. Tradition. What was radical about Leonardo's painting was that it had perspective when you looked at it from the hall. It appears that Jesus and the disciples are an extension of the hall. Leonardo also gives the disciples so much character rather than merely representing 2 dimensional characters. One can feel the emotion in the room when Jesus announces that he will be betrayed by one of them. The fear and anger is palpable. The problem with the painting is that Leonardo merely painting the walls rather than doing el frescoes which penetrates the paint I to the mortar like Michelangelo did with the Sistine chapel. The paint had been peeling off within several years of being painted. That combined with high humidity from visiting tourists has resulted in the painting slowly fading. It is all rather ethereal. The Sistine chapel was more impressive however the last supper is still very iconic. The visit and tour was a great way to finish the day.Read more