🥳Great news for which we are very thankful today: an anonymous couple has donated a need-based scholarship for a St. John’s College Santa Fe student, covering all expenses for the RILA Rome program! Our other support for scholarships is from institutions, so we are especially thankful that these private individuals recognized the value of the experience in Rome and reached out to us to offer this support. We hope others will follow suit! The gift aims to make summer study in Rome possible for a Santa Fe student who could not afford it otherwise. It will cover not just tuition, but also meals, airfare, housing, Italian classes…everything. We are ecstatic to make this experience possible for a student who otherwise could not afford it. The generous gift is named in honor of the current SJC president Walter Sterling, who helped found RILA. We are extremely grateful to the donors for this magnificent gift! Founded by SJC tutors in 2007, the Rome Institute of Liberal Arts, was designed to leverage the natural advantages that SJC students have for understanding the wonders of Rome. It offers programs combining seminars on ancient and modern core texts with the exploration of the art, architecture, and history of Rome. Students tell us every year that the program changed their life, rejuvenated and expanded their dedication SJC, and opened new study and career paths. RILA has been running programs for 18 years, and hosted hundreds of SJC students in Rome, with around 30 different SJC tutors teaching them. RILA helps SJC enrollment by making the college more attractive to prospective students who expect study abroad to be a part of their college experience. #romeinstituteofliberalarts #sjc #santafe #philanthropy #waltersterling #rila #rome

The church of Santa Bibiana is practically unknown even to Romans, and even though it holds a famous sculpture by Bernini, and was the first place he tried out his “bel composto” (or beautiful synthesis) of architecture, sculpture, and painting. The sculpture looks up to the fresco of God the Father painted in the ceiling. The sculpture in itself is impressive, using for religious purposes the details from his Apollo and Daphne, and with remarkable attention to the delicate hands and the expression on the face. The building’s architecture resembles his later work at Palazzo Barberini, although without ornament. It also contains the earliest painting of Pietro Cortona after arriving in Rome. It’s so unknown because the church is practically underneath the train tracks , hidden by the main station on an ugly street. Thanks to the Galleria Borghese for taking us to visit it on a fantastic field trip! #romeinstituteofliberalarts #galleriaborghese

Morning light around the Capitoline hill and Ara Coeli today. #romeinstituteofliberalarts

Inspiring and thoughtful PBS interview with Walter Sterling, president of St. John’s College, about the value and the stakes of an education to nurture our shared humanity in the midst of our technological and political troubles, and about the virtues of his college’s distinctive approach to it. The link to the video: https://www.pbs.org/video/how-to-overcome-a-liberal-arts-backlash-n51le7/?fbclid=IwdGRleANLEQ5jbGNrA0pQo2V4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMW01WlBRZ1JSS01IVGwybEsBHiPksyUuB7biHob7uDWAxWvWbtzzZd0h9w9jNmN4rOjPzYuEhkNLPQc_9Rb8_aem_xeA7gFX1toheOX68gZi3fQ #liberaleducation #sjca #sjcsf #romeinstituteofliberalarts

After talking about Caravaggio yesterday, today we went to see a number of his paintings at Sant’ Agostino, San Luigi dei Francesi, Santa Maria del Popolo, and the Galleria Borghese. Whew! And last week we saw the Caravaggio 2025 show, so we now have a lot of his paintings under our belts. And on the way we saw so many other great things today. In these pictures some Bernini and a couple of bookish paintings about curiosity (with stories from Herodotus and Apuleius). Also a detail from Dominichino’s Acteon painting (Caccia di Diana) in the Borghese, where the curious spectator gets caught in the act. #romeinstituteofliberalarts #sjc #uta

In Siena beyond the usual suspects. There’s an impressive collection of northern art in the Santa Maria Della Scala complex and fantastic Sienese paintings in the Pinacoteca Nazionale. And no one else seems to know or care that these museums are there, so the visit is extremely pleasant. Some pictures here from the usual beautiful places too. #romeinstituteofliberalarts #sjc #uta