The Swimming Pool that Turned into a Museum

Reminiscent of the Canopus at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. Lovely building, but the statues appear to be those second-rate, pedestrian things, flawless in execution but of no redeeming artistic value. Sort of like statues one might find mass-produced for the graveside, or like the horribly ugly ones at the entrance to the Uffizi in Florence - if still there.
Those were particularly awful, being unflattering busts of some nasty-looking nobility.

One was in porphyry, which, to me, is just a horrible medium to sculpt in. Maybe it was the hideous porphyry statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, with its grotesquely giant-sized head, that put me off. I tend to think it was the colour more than anything.

These pale in comparison, but the idea of the bewigged French nobility sitting calmly next to two sets of Mary and Baby Jesus, beside the pool, seems a little ludicrous. The mise en scene is a noble effort, but falls short of its intended goal.

There. How's that for verbiage?

/golfclap: but you actually made sense without sounding like a total douchebag. +1 to you sir.

It's easy to be a critic of something that doesn't have a will. My area of criticism would be that this was all generated as the result of human ignorance. There is really no need of or inherent beauty in any sculpted thing. I wouldn't even begin to criticize it in the way ted has because it's irrelevant. If I happened to be a "Particularly awful.. unflattering.. nasty-looking nobility." I might very well be offended. ted is pretty safe saying what he is saying and nobody picking up on any "offense" because you simply can't relate to the object of his criticism.