Winding up - the last week in Rome

(you think that means it's over, but really there are still posts to come with backlog from Pienza, Siena and Florence...)

I have now been back from Rome for over six months. The feeling of being there, with so much art and so much history and, contradicting that, so much sheer here-and-now life whirling all around me still has yet to fade. Some days, when life in Melbourne is failing to inspire, the month away starts to feel like a bit of a dream, but then I sit down with a Rome-buddy or two, discuss the altar paintings at Chiesa Nuova or the pavement at the Campidoglio and --hey presto-- it's like we were there only yesterday. But reminisce all I like, the Rome chapter has now well and truly closed for me: results are in and technically I am no longer enrolled in the subject at all. This slightly sad note does have a happy ending: my grade for all the Rome assignments was better than I ever could have expected, and means my plan to do honors in art history in 2010 is coming along very nicely. My intended thesis topic is (literally) centuries away from all the Renaissance and Baroque art I was studying in Rome...but geographically it isn't that far off at all - I plan to write on Futurism, an early twentieth century avant garde movement, started (of course) in Italy. My love of Futurism deserves more than a fleeting mention at the bottom of a set of photos, so rather than explaining it here, I promise to devote an entire post to Marinetti and his merry men in the near future.