Friday, May 27, 2016

A Few Statues to Laugh at

When in Rome, take photos of the funny statues among all of the great statues.

First, some headless muses...


Then this guy who has teeth. Which made me realize that statues never seem to show the teeth of their subjects.


Maybe he was laughing at the baby Hercules statue with its cherubic face atop a too-adult but chubby body:


I liked this eldery lion...


...and wish I knew what this outfit means:


I hope to look this one up. It's the main statue in the Piazza Navonna, and clearly there's a god doing godly stuff up above, while these four men act all scared or awed or whatever. But I can't get over the way this guy is trying to hid under a piece of cloth. Effective strategy when it comes to hiding from gods, I'm sure.


I wonder if any shoe designers have copied these boot-sandals yet:


And now two examples of the Roman obsession with the naked male figure. First we have a parade of naked guys (gods) showing off their symbols and pets...


...and second, the most absurd of all (to me). It's basically a bust of a young man, but the sculptor made sure to carve his genitalia, too.


Which have since mostly broken off. Ouch.

4 comments:

Gina said...

The last statue looks unfinished or in the process of being sculpted. You're in Rome? Lucky duck....

Daughter Number Three said...

Yes, that's what I was assuming. It ended up being a bust, but all the important parts were represented.

Daughter Number 3.1 said...

The last one is a Herm! They were really popular in ancient Greece. At one point this famous guy got arrested for knocking all the genitalia off of them.

Daughter Number Three said...

A Herm! Makes more sense. I know if I looked up the guy hiding under his clothes that would make more sense, too.