Art and Architecture: Introduction

We call him Pierluigi. He is our Art and Architecture class professor, and yet the name is so Roman, and sounds like two names, anyway, and he asked us to call him "Pier"... We can't believe his first name is Romeo.

He is not at all handsome, he wears glasses which make it seem that we are viewing his eyes from the wrong end of a telescope, and he is incredibly, astonishingly, magnificently, phenomenally knowledgable. Ask him the simplest, most specific question that you can think of, and he will still have pages to excitedly tell you, if you are at all interested.

The first class, we began with the Etruscans, the Roman's predecessors, and became fully convinced that he had dedicated his life to Italian history. He knew who. He knew when. He knew why and where. He knew who found out and why. He knew who cares and where to find more information and how to tell if the information is authentic.

We moved through ancient Rome, and as we admired the sculpture he casually told us the name of the work, who discovered it, who created it, who funded its creation, what it portrays, where it has been, why it was damaged, similar portrayals, which is his favorite...

We spent a class specifically focused on the evolution of mosaics and he told us where each color of marble came from. We went to the Vatican museum and he suddenly became an encyclopedia of the development of Rennaissance art. We are only half-way through classes!

We passed the Egyption section that day, and he dropped the fact that he was an Egyptologist, and I don't think that I have quite absorbed that one yet. Does he know everything about everything in Egypt, too?!

Not only does he know everything, but he gets so excited about what he is talking about, though heaven knows how many times he has told it.  (Did I mention that one of his books is in its second edition, eventhough it has been out less than a year?) He'll be halfway thrgouh a sentence when - "AH! See here an excellent representation of..."

I am going to try to write a summary of each class. I really love them, though three hours of lecture and walking tours can really wear you down, and I would love to have you enjoy them as well. The only problem is that I will most likely get sidetracked by researching.

-Maria

P.S Seconds after I took that picture of him, he turned around and casually translated the hiroglyphics. Oh my goodness. He really does know everything about Egypt, too!