Statue Gazing

Last year I went statue gazing with a taster in Venice and feast of gluttonous proportions in Rome. Everywhere I turned there were statutes depicting strength, power, movement and triumph. There were muscular legs, rippling torsos, solid feet and uplifted arms; men fighting with men or beasts or mythical creatures; beautiful women; family groups with a tale to tell and un-numbered busts in every size and colour. So much and all created from stone.

Then there were the hundreds of young men in various poses and it is here that some irreverence slips in. After careful analysis and from a sample of one too many galleries, ruins and museums I have worked out that these young men fall into one of five categories:

1 – ‘Woe is me!’

2 – ‘Showing off’ – his torso/profile/bits (with or without fig leaf).

3 – ‘50 ways to wear a piece of cloth’

4 - ’Do I look good with this helmet/wreath/spear/bow/animal?’

5 – ‘Look no hands/feet/arms/legs/head/anything!’

There were indeed some very beautiful ones but I preferred a wonderful old man with his realistic wrinkled chest and age worn limbs.

It was the large number of random heads without bodies and bodies without other bits that bothered me, especially in ancient Rome. There were even several statues that had lost body, limbs and head and all that remained was the cloth – beautifully carved though it was. They can’t just sit there day in day out, year in year out, century in…….. I thought. There is only so much people watching that a statue can do.

So it is that after all the tourists, curators and guardians have left each night, then there is real action. As darkness falls all the heads get ready to move, and at a signal ‘musical heads’ begins. Each head moves along from podium to stand to torso and when the music stops those heads on bodies start a speech, or to chat, or begin a discussion or philosophise whilst the others must wait silently for a body (sex and age not being significant). When the music resumes the heads move on. Those statues lucky enough to be permanently more or less complete have control of the music (lyres and flutes usually being available) and make sure that every head gets a turn within a reasonable time. The definition of ‘reasonable’ is itself open to philosophical debate of course.

Just once a year at the winter solstice a free-for-all occurs when the whole city is open for rearrangement and heads, torsos, legs, arms, cloths, animals and chariots set off to make the very best of the hours of darkness – a sight and sound beyond imagining.

Irreverence and flights of fancy faded away however when I met with one marble statue that took my breath away  - Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’. It made me stand and stare and filled me with awe and humility: such a beautiful, detailed and moving tableau and coaxed from solid rock.  Then on the final day came the work of Bernini – ‘Apollo and Daphne’, ‘David’ and ‘Pluto and Proserpine’. Some statues make you gaze and gaze, and need no music.