Yesterday

Yesterday we headed over to Trastevere to look at some early early Renaissance paintings. Trastevere has a little bit of a different feel than the rest of Rome; it's the only area of the city that has been consistently inhabited since the Middle Ages (and they're very proud of that fact). It's a little grittier and has more of a village feel. We visited a church built in honor of a woman saint who had been sentenced to beheading. According to legend, it didn't work (or like only partially? She had a slice in her neck). She died three days later. Apparently, saint's bodies aren't supposed to decompose, so when they found her tomb years later, her body had been preserved. An artist named Moderno saw the body when they recovered it, and he sculpted her as she supposedly looked when they opened the tomb. It was pretty interesting (picture below).
In this same church we saw the very first painting of the Renaissance. We piled into these tiny elevators and went up to the second level where there was a fresco on the wall by Cavellini (the first paintings of the Renaissance were originally credited to a man from Florence--Giotto--but his paintings were done after Cavellini's. But since the first art historians were from Florence, they were a little biased). It was pretty cool to look at--a style that straddled two different eras.
We went to another church that had some beautiful mosaics and domes. It's all running together now, we go to so many churches.
The last place we went to on our morning outing was a little palace with paintings by Raphael. I think my favorite part about that, though, was seeing the ancient graffiti that had been scribbled over the paintings when the Roman soldiers had barracked in the palace during the second sack of Rome (1527). They had very nice penmanship. :)
Last night we walked around before dinner and popped into a few shops. There was some intense thunder outside, and when we were exploring a little church, it rattled the windows. We visited the Pantheon again on our way over to get food. There were still so many people there, and it was 7:30 in the evening. Chinese food again for dinner! Sweet and sour pork for me.
I'll upload my pictures from today and post that later. We have a quiz tonight that I need to study for.

Pictures from yesterday:

Inside the Pantheon under the dome.

Moderno's depiction of that woman saint whose name I've forgotten.

The bridge over the river on the way to Trastevere.