We left the main cathedral to head for the Vatican museums. We knew we wanted to see the Sistine chapel, so we decided to head that direction. The first thing we encountered was a long hallway full of jumbled statuary, with paintings of questionable significance on the celing. I really like the use of greyscale and color in this painting, although I suspect it represents a concept that I don't like overmuch.

There seemed to be an endless stream of these sorts of paintings. Most of them are simply angels with occasional snakes and nasty looking demons, but this one contains a Roman looking guy who appears entirely fed up with the proceedings. His lower place in the painting also implies an inferior social status. There is an inscription in Latin at his feet, too, which would probably reveal his identity if I could read it.

Most of the beautiful marble statues of Rome have traces of paint on them, implying that they were once painted, and generally in what we would consider garish colors. In this statue, though, they've repainted just the eyes, which does give a depth to the statue that it simply wouldn't have with the round, flat eyes of unpainted stone that we typically see nowadays.

I've done quite a bit of editing on this photo, by the way. The glare from the window was pretty distracting, so I've mostly cleaned that up so you can see the statue.

Most of the statues in this hallway are unlabelled. Perhaps it is a demon tickler. It is probably a tickling Satyr, although what he hopes to gain by tickling is not clear.

And this one appears rather mammalated.

Next there's a hall of tapestries. This hall is understandably dark, but it makes for tricky photography, especially since people don't realize you're taking a picture and will walk in front of the shot. I did capture this lion as he seems to peer out of the tapestry at you.

As well as this rather unusual depiction of Jesus with his pet dog and cat.