Wednesday 4^th May  2011

I had planned rare sight-seeing in Rome, but it didn’t come off. I was lolling in bed on the Sunday morning, so missed Sant Ivo, which only opens then. The Bramante cloister that Sonny told me about (I’m a bitch for Bramante: little idea who he was) was chuiso lunedi. We whizzed past San Carlo alla Quattro Fontane on the motorino but I failed to return when it might have been open.

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of these places. Take it from me, they’re rare. Sight-seeing should be rare if it occurs at all. Don’t mill with the general. Arrange to be shown round by the director after hours. This can compensate for the annoyance of the place not being for sale or the price even advertised and the irritation of other artists drawing attention to themselves. As masters and shapers of our persons, surroundings and narrative line, we don’t like this.

But I did see the Palazzo Farnese, whose rare, rare opening spurred me to board for Rome in the first place, apart from the chance to be with Sonny. Within is the painted ceiling by Annibale Carracci of ‘The Loves of the Gods’, described either as ‘the second ceiling in Rome’ after the Sistine Chapel or the first.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime op to see it.

As it happens, I’d never heard of Annibale Carracci but I was thrilled with his ceiling. It’s like Michelangelo but none of those lumpy figures who’d fall over if they tried to stand up. The great glory was its Poor Little Rich Gay theme, the thoroughly unsatisfactory conflict between ‘erotic’ and ‘spiritual’ love, Eros and Anteros, never apparently resolved despite the central panel showing the so-called ‘Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne’, he being the most frightful good-time boy and she ghastly agonised little goody-two-shoes.

The parallel may not be exact, but in a general sense the Poor Little Rich Gay embrace of superbly riven and conflicted human nature, our rejection of the simple procession of ‘marriage’ as commonly understood, our forging of a new complex web of relationships, where the permanent partner, if there is one, may not necessarily be the sexual companion, was well grasped by Annibale.

Well done, Annibale.

The Farnese Ceiling, Showing 'The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne'

The Farnese Palace Ceiling by Annibale Carracci

Detail from Farnese Palace Ceiling