Leaving Prato

Today is the last day of the program at Monash's outpost in Prato, Italy.  There have been numerous highlights.  The Venice Biennale was certainly one.  I am not going to try to review it - I didn't see all of it, even in the three and a half days I spent looking at it, and there are plenty of reviews on-line.  My favourite work was the installation by James Turrell, one of his "Ganzfeld" series.  I also enjoyed the Greek pavilion very much, a beautifully quiet space.  The official Chinese exhibition was tasteful and restrained, but the less official Chinese work tended to be big and brash; maybe it is the successor in this respect to American art of the post-war era.

Not quite part of the Biennale, the exhibition in the Palazzo Fortuny had an eclectic mix of very interesting works in a wonderful setting.  We also visited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, with numerous significant twentieth-century works.  I was interested to see some Italian Futurist work in a separate collection, including a painting by Giacomo Balla representing the transit of Mercury in front of the Sun, from 1914.

On the way to and from Venice we visited Ravenna, to see the Byzantine mosaics, and Padua to see the Giotto cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel.  Both of these visits were highlights for me as well.

I have also seen some more things connected with the history of science.  I visited the Palazzo Poggi in Bologna which in the 18th century housed a scientific institute and now contains an eclectic museum representing the diverse interests of this institute, ranging from optics to map-making to anatomy to fortifications; there is also a room with remarkable models of sailing ships.  Some of the material is from collections going back to the 16th century.

Detail of navigational map of the known world from 1556.

An unexpected find was the International Museum and Library of Music in Bologna, providing a connection between art and science in the form of Renaissance tuning theory.

Keyboard with 31 notes to the octave, from 1606

I also visited the Museo Galileo in Florence.  Not only do they have the only two telescopes ascribable with certainty to Galileo, they also have relics in the form of some of Galileo's fingerbones!  Both the Museo Galileo and the museum of the Palazzo Poggi brought out the connection between geometry and warfare; Galileo had a business making and selling "geometric and military compasses", a multi-purpose instrument designed by him and intended for aiming cannons, among other things.

I have seen one museum of present-day science, the Museum of Planetary Science here in Prato.  It is an active centre of research, and has the best collection of meteorites I am ever likely to see.

A Martian meteorite, ejected from Mars, and found in the Sahara desert in 1997.  It weighs two kilograms and is the largest specimen of a Martian meteorite on display in Europe.

My next stop is Rome.