Milano

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It rained intermittently today in Milan, so I spent a fair amount of time indoors looking at art. Fortunately, there are numerous art museums right in the city center. My favorite is the Duomo Museum which houses art having to do with the cathedral. Sometimes an original sculpture is damaged or too weathered and a replica is made to replace it. In that case the original may go on display in the museum. I liked the section where they showed how the art in the cathedral was made. For example, the seventeenth-century carved marble reliefs went through stages. First the artist created a monochrome painting of the Creation of Eve, then made a terra-cotta model that was based on the painting (see photo). The final sculpted marble relief was, in turn, based on the terra-cotta model. The Creation of Eve is located atop the central doorway to the cathedral (see photo). I visited two different "pinacotecas" (picture galleries) and a museum of ancient art today, but I also was touched by the art in the Monumentale Cemetery. For generations families have been putting up sculpture-heavy monuments to their dead and the practice continues today (see photo). And I couldn't leave Milan without seeing the famous La Scala Opera House (see photo). I didn't go inside, so I don't have a picture of the inside to show you...maybe next time.

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