Among his many accomplishments, cartoonist Thomas Nast was largely responsible for establishing the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party. He first introduced a pachyderm labeled "The Republican Vote" in a Harper's Weekly cartoon from the November 7, 1874, issue. The parable of "The Ass in the Lion's Skin" is from Aesop, not Shakespeare.
The Third-Term Panic. "An Ass, having put on the Lion's skin, roamed about in the Forest, and amused himself by frightening all the foolish Animals he met with in his wanderings."—Shakspeare or Bacon. Thomas Nast Harper's Weekly, November 7, 1874, p. 912
Two weeks later, he revisited the idea, showing the hapless Republican elephant "Caught in a Trap—The Result of the Third-Term Hoax." Nast, a Republican, was reacting in both cartoons to unfounded speculation that Ulysses S. Grant would run for an unprecedented third presidential term in 1876. Argosy Book Store has a copy of the November 21 page in its inventory.
Caught in a Trap—The Result of the Third-Term Hoax. Thomas Nast Harpers Weekly, November 21, 1874, p. 960
Thomas Nast Argosy Book Store listing accessed May 29, 2025
My mother-in-law told us that when she visited the Sistine Chapel in the 1950s she could lie face-up on the floor to take in Michelangelo's magnificent ceiling. Today there are forty-thousand daily visitors each of whom hopes to commune with the famous ceiling. Even if the chapel weren't crowded at all hours of the day, I'm certain that lying down on the ground to claim a comfortable vantage point would not be permitted. The summer crowds are a concern that might best be dealt with by reserving tickets in advance. If one does this through a tour, one can enter earlier than the general public. We used the tour group Viator, or Italy Wonders. Unfortunately, our tour skipped so many essential parts of the Vatican Museums that I can't recommend the group, but we did get to see Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Raphael's School of Athens which is certainly what most visitors want to see. Our tour, and dozens of others, met across the street from this entrance before the Vatican Museums opened. While waiting we bought ourselves some overpriced coffee served black.
Vatican City is not large. The magnificent dome of St. Peter's Basilica overlooks the museum grounds where tours regrouped.
The Belvedere Courtyard with a taunting view of some other areas of the Vatican Museums I assumed we were going to see.
The Vatican Museums' long halls are done extremely well:
Too nice to walk on:
The ceiling is painted to look like relief. Still, the cracks indicate it's got to be a conservator's nightmare.
Tapestry designed by Raphael depicting the resurrection of Christ:
Raphael The Resurrection of Christ (large detail)
Tapestry designed by Raphael:
The Gallery of Maps:
The world turned upside-down: Sicily, with the south oriented to the top.
The far end of the Gallery of Maps:
Exposure to the elements:
Up above:
Down below:
Roman mosaic
Fine woodwork:
Gianfrancesco Penni or Giulio Romano The Donation of Constantine Sala di Costantino
Raphael Ceiling of the Room of Heliodorus
Raphael The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, 1511–12
Raphael The Mass at Bolsena, 1512
Raphael The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila
Raphael The School of Athens (large detail)
Raphael The School of Athens (detail with Euclid or Archimedes)
Border details:
Border detail
Tiles underfoot:
Raphael Disputation of the Holy Sacrament
A gift of the Musée Rodin, 1959:
Auguste Rodin The Thinker, c. 1880, cast 1956
Pierre Matisse donated preparatory designs created by his father Henri Matisse for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.
This is a Pope by Francis Bacon, but is it a screaming Pope?
Francis Bacon Study for Velázquez Pope II, 1961
Photography is forbidden in the Sistine Chapel not, as we were told, for religious reasons but because the Vatican sold the photo rights at the time of the restoration. Instead I give you these amazing views from the Sistine Chapel Virtual Tour.
Michelangelo Buonarroti The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Michelangelo Buonarroti The Last Judgment
There should have been a lot more. No tour (except ours apparently) would be complete without stopping in the Museo Pio-Clementino. There in the Octagonal Court one can see the Apollo Belvedere, a masterpiece of Classical Antiquity greatly admired a few generations ago and proudly displayed on the Vatican Museum's ever-improving website:
Another essential stop would have to be the Hall of the Muses to see the Belvedere Torso, a large sculptural fragmentwhich had a profound influence on Michelangelo.
Edvard Munch created four versions of The Scream, his potent, angst-ridden image. Three are in Oslo museums but one, a pastel dating from 1895, has remained in private hands. In May, it will be sold at Sotheby's in New York. Sotheby's estimate is available on request, but The New York Times reported in February that this could sell for in excess of $80 million. Iconic works like this from major artists don't come up for sale that often, and they don't come cheap.
I'm surprised to see the early date on this work, as The Scream strikes me as a quintessential 20th century image. Yet Munch created this two decades before the horrors of the first World War. The horror, it seems, was personal, and not yet universal. In that sense it reminds me of Thomas Hardy's turn-of-the-century poem "The Darkling Thrush," presciently anticipating the bleak world to come.
The present work is a pastel on board dating from 1895:
Note: You can see another of Andy Warhol's versions of The Screamhere. I think Warhol remains true to its spirit, even without having experienced the same degree of torment and isolation.
You might also like my post on Munch's Madonna here.
