Apollo and Daphne Galleria Borghese, Rome

Rome My desire to visit Italy dates back to 1999 and a piece of advice doled out by Garrison Keillor in his since-retired "Mr. Blue" column. Back in the go-go days of the dotcom economy, Keillor recommended a visit to the Eternal City as a cure for whatever ails the modern, over-worked American. The go-go days may be gone-gone for now, but the advice still holds. Rome is dirty, hot, and hectic -- much like New York City -- But it doesn't have 50 Cent on the radio, Fox News on the television and scrolling updates at the bottom of the TV screen. These are all positives in my book. Best of all: Rome doesn't have many Americans. Not to piss on my homeland and its citizens, but every relationship needs a little time apart. Rome is the place to go when you feel like strangling the guy standing next to you on the subway or find yourself fantasizing about a parliamentary model of government in the U.S. You'll either come back fully relaxed or fully grateful to live in a country that has clearly marked crosswalks at every corner. Rome is also the place to go if you're a former history major like myself. I mean, let's face it: If the ancient Romans didn't build it, conquer it, or eat it, it couldn't have been built, conquered or eaten. A word of warning: Rome can tough on the history buff. They have so many piles of it lying around everywhere that nobody seems to worry too much about explaining the difference between one pile and the next. Even the Italian captions seem woefully inadequate when you're trying to distinguish Republican-era artifacts from Imperial-era artifacts. Long story short: You have to do your homework or hire a quality guide if you want to get the full insight on what went where. Because Tracy and I were trying to do things on the cheap, we relied on our Rick Steves guide book. In addition to laying out decent walking tours of the Forum and the Vatican, Steves laces his descriptions with lots of wry commentary. Like me, he tends to be a little less than reverent towards Christianity and its local franchisee, the Roman Catholic Church. One visit to the Forum and you realize that whatever religion the Romans practiced (and continue to practice) has less to do with individual faith and more to do with preserving the greater glory of Rome itself. Also, the Romans were such prolific borrowers. Every religious site boils down to a weird mashup of symbols: totemic she-wolves suckling Iron Age hero kings, Vestal virgins guarding artifacts from ancient Troy, bronze crucifixes on top of stone obelisks. The Roman approach to religion is very much like Wachowski Brothers' approach to "The Matrix:" Stack your deck with the best elements, shuffle a few times, and then deal. The most impressive sight on the trip, for me, was Bernini's statue of Apollo and Daphne at the Borghese Gallery. An astounding piece of work, it impressed me both on an artistic level and on a technical level. The two levels aren't very far apart, I realize, but even the person who finds art a little boring has to respect the intricacy of detail, the complete mastery of the medium (marble). I reserve the right to change my mind, but for the moment I rate this statue as the ne plus ultra of marble carving. In a posting after I got back from the trip, I rated Bernini an equal (if not a superior) to Michelangelo, I got an email from Chris Poke who gave me a little background about Bernini in general and Apollo and Daphne in particular. Writes Poke: Bernini designed it and probably carved the bodies, but his collaborator Giuliano Fanelli executed the virtuoso passages of leaves and roots. A lot of the Baroque sculpture you saw was collaborative like this - often, the man now credited with the work designed it and made a plaster model (sometimes not even full-size), which was then "copied" by specialist marble carvers. You want to think of Bernini more as an entrepreneur than an individual genius: he was so successful, and dominated the art scene in mid-17C Rome to such an extent, that it is said that nothing major could be done in Rome without his say-so. This is not said lightly in a society in which aristocratic clients and patrons normally controlled large cultural projects. This is interesting, because while in Rome, my wife and I happened to bump into American artist Mark Kostabi. We were at a restaurant called Settimo on the Via del Pellegrino and Mark happened to take a seat at the next table. Recognizing us as Americans, one of the waiters introduced us to Mark, who is apparently one of their favorite customers. I didn't know anything about the guy, but my wife, an art major during her days at Michigan, immediately started chatting him up. During the conversation, I learned that Mark and I both went to the same elementary and high school, an odd discovery but given the way odd things always happen when you're on vacation, not enough to make me fall out of my seat. Since returning home, I've read up on his career and noticed that his art (which I profiled for the La Habra Journal) follows very much the Bernini model. As much an entrepreneur as an artist, Kostabi has churned out a mind-boggling number of works, most of which were produced by hands other than his own. No wonder the guy has an affinity for Rome, where he can cop tips from the Baroque masters. Anyway, back to the travelogue: The second most impressive sight on the trip, for me, was the interior of St. Peters. Gleaming in polished marble and as large as a dirigible hanger, St. Peters is the repository of two works familiar from any Art 101 class: Michelangelo's Pieta and Bernini's altar canopy. I had been warned going in that I might come away disgusted by the profligacy of the Catholic church. Far from it. If anything, I came away thoroughly awe-struck. Big ups to Pope Julius II and his 16th and 17th century successors for seeing it through. I would rate the Pantheon among the top sites, but the Pantheon is a bit grotty on the outside and full of tourists on the inside. Being surrounded by tourists never hurt anyone (especially if you're a tourist yourself) but it does take away the effect somewhat. Even more irritating, however, is the fact that the church has rededicated the Pantheon as a basilica (St. Maria of the Martyrs). Of course, preservationists in the audience will point out that, without the church's protection, the Pantheon would have been looted by marble-hungry construction crews. Given that the structure has already been picked clean of its decorative bronze (even my new hero, Bernini was a culprit, alas), I suppose I should credit the church for protecting a structure dedicated, literally, to all the pagan gods. Anyway, if my visit to Rome has taught me anything, it's the knowledge that in another 5,000 years when Christianity has morphed into some syncretic mishmash involving space aliens, voodoo rites and aging Intel Pentium chips, Rome will have somehow found a way to be the center of it all.