9. Rome - Capitoline (including two Caravaggios)

Below: Palazzo Senatorio - historically used by the Roman Senate, now the meeting place of the Comune di Roma (City of Rome). The statue of Marcus Aurelius is a copy of one found in the museum to the left of the Senatorio.
Below: Looking from the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the seat of the magistrates during the late middle ages. There's a couple of Caravaggios in there: Fortune Teller I (not as good as Fortune Teller II in the Louvre) and John The Baptist.
Below: On the sides of the niche in the panels of the stairway, Michelangelo placed two colossal statues of rivers (almost 15 feet long) sculpted in the second century AD and coming from the thermae of Constantine on the Quirinal Hill. This is the Tiber, flanked by a tiger that was later changed into a she-wolf and the twins. This statue originally represented the Tigris and the characteristic attributes of the Tiber river were added only in the sixteenth century.
Below: Newlyweds pose for photograps in the portico of the Palazzo Nuovo
Below: The original bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Palazzo dei Conservatorio museum. It is the only fully surviving bronze statue of a pre-Christian Roman emperor. Others were melted down for coin or other uses in the Christian era. Statues were also destroyed because medieval Christians thought that they were pagan idols. The statue of Marcus Aurelius was not melted down because in the Middle Ages it was incorrectly thought to portray the first Christian Emperor Constantine.The statue was erected in 176 DC. Its original location is debated: the Roman Forum and Piazza Colonna (where the Column of Marcus Aurelius stands) have been proposed. In the medieval era it was one of the few Roman statues to remain on public view. In the 8th century It stood in the Lateran Palace in Rome, from where it was relocated in 1538 to the Piazza del Campidoglio (Capitoline Hill) during Michelangelo's redesign of the Hill.
Below: Head of a colossal 4th century AD statue of emperor Constantine I in the Palazzo dei Conservatori

Below: In the Pinacoteca of the Capitoline museums is this Fortune teller by Caravaggio (1596). Compare it to the one in the Louvre, underneath (also 1596). I've stared at both of them for a long time. Admittedly i'm more familiar with the Louvre version, but I much prefer it. The light source is more evident, but there's also something about the subjects - Caravaggio seems more intimate with them. The young gypsy is more worldly wise and craftier, and the young buck more gullible. The whole seems more intimate and immediate. The model for the boy was probably Mario Minniti who was a friend, colllaborator and lover (?) of Caravaggio in Rome in the late 1500s. He eventually married and returned to his native Sicily and is an artist of renown.
Below: St John the Baptist c 1600. A subject Caravaggio returned to over and over (probably because he was being commissioned to execute this popular subject) and there are several in various places in Rome. His model may have been his servant, a boy called Cecco. There is an almost identical version to this in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij.