Borghese Gallery

The Galleria Borghese () is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. At the outset, the gallery building was integrated with its gardens, but nowadays the Villa Borghese gardens are considered a separate tourist attraction. The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese Collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). The building was constructed by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese himself, who used it as a ''villa suburbana'', a country villa at the edge of Rome.

Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Bernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection by his ''Boy with a Basket of Fruit'', '' St Jerome Writing'', '' Sick Bacchus'' and others. Additional paintings of note include Titian's ''Sacred and Profane Love'', Raphael's ''Entombment of Christ'' and works by Peter Paul Rubens and Federico Barocci.

History

The ''Casino Borghese'' was erected in an area that in the seventeenth-century was outside of the walls of Rome, with the closest access being the Porta del Popolo. At the origins, the villa grounds covered an area with a circumference of nearly 3 miles. The main building was designed by the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzio. The portico had spolia derived from the Arch of Claudius, once on the Via Flaminia.

By 1644, John Evelyn described it as "an Elysium of delight" with "Fountains of sundry inventions, Groves and small Rivulets of Water". Evelyn also described the ''Vivarium'' that housed ostriches, peacocks, swans and cranes "and divers strange Beasts". Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese (1730–1800), who began the recasting of the park's formal garden architecture into an English landscape garden, also set out about 1775, under the guidance of the architect Antonio Asprucci, to replace the now-outdated tapestry and leather hangings and renovate the ''Casina'', restaging the Borghese sculptures and antiquities in a thematic new ordering that celebrated the Borghese position in Rome. The rehabilitation of the much-visited villa as a genuinely public museum in the late eighteenth century was the subject of an exhibition at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, in 2000, spurred by the Getty's acquisition of fifty-four drawings related to the project.

In 1808, Prince Camillo Borghese, Napoleon's brother-in-law, was forced to sell the Borghese Roman sculptures and antiquities to the Emperor. The result is that the ''Borghese Gladiator'', renowned since the 1620s as the most admired single sculpture in Villa Borghese, must now be appreciated in the Musée du Louvre. The "Borghese Hermaphroditus" is also now in the Louvre.

The Borghese villa was modified and extended down the years, eventually being sold to the Italian government in 1902, along with the entire Borghese estate and surrounding gardens and parkland.

Collection

The Galleria Borghese includes twenty rooms across two floors.

The main floor is mostly devoted to classical antiquities of the 1st–3rd centuries AD (including a famous 320–30 AD mosaic of gladiators found on the Borghese estate at Torrenova, on the Via Casilina outside Rome, in 1834), and classical and neo-classical sculpture such as the ''Venus Victrix''.

The main floor's main large room, called the '' Salone'', has a large ''trompe-l'œil'' ceiling fresco in the first room by the Sicilian artist Mariano Rossi makes such good use of foreshortening that it appears almost three-dimensional. The fresco depicts ''Marcus Furius Camillus relieving the siege of the Capitoline Hill by the Gauls''. The grotteschi decorations were painted by Pietro Rotari, and the animal decorations by Venceslaus Peter Boemo.

The first room off the Salone, is the Camera di Cerere, with marble vase depicting ''Oedipus and the Sphinx''. The second room has a ceiling frescoed by Francesco Caccianiga with the ''Fall of Phaeton''. The third room houses Bernini's ''Apollo and Daphne''.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Borghese

Many of the sculptures are displayed in the spaces for which they were intended, including many works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which comprise a significant percentage of his output of secular sculpture, starting with early works such as the '' Goat Amalthea with Infant Jupiter and Faun'' (1615) and '' Aeneas, Anchises & Ascanius'' (1618–19) to his dynamic '' Rape of Proserpine'' (1621–22), ''Apollo and Daphne'' (1622–25) and ''David'' (1623) which are considered seminal works of baroque sculpture. In addition, several portrait busts are included in the gallery, including one of Pope Paul V, and two portraits of one of his early patrons, ''Cardinal Scipione Borghese'' (1632).Bust of Scipione Borghese by BERNINI, Gian Lorenzo
/ref> The second Scipione Borghese portrait was produced after a large crack was discovered in the marble of the first version during its creation.

Nearby museums

Also in Villa Borghese gardens or nearby are the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, which specialises in 19th- and 20th-century Italian art, and Museo Nazionale Etrusco, a collection of pre-Roman objects, mostly Etruscan, excavated around Rome.

Gallery

Sculptures

File:Bernini Truth unveiled by Time Gal Borghese.jpg, ''Truth Unveiled by Time'' by Bernini. c. 1645-1652
File:Roma 1003 40.jpg, ''Apollo and Daphne'' by Bernini. c. 1622
File:Amazon with barbarian and Greek, Roman, detail, c. 160 AD, marble - Galleria Borghese - Rome, Italy - DSC04659.jpg, Amazonomachy - sculpture group with an Amazon attacking a Barbarian and a Greek, c. 160 CE Roman copy of Greek original.
File:RapeOfProserpina.jpg, ''Rape of Proserpine'' by Bernini. c. 1621
File:Bernini's David.jpg, ''David'' by Bernini. c. 1623-1624
File:Paolina Borghese (Canova).jpg, Pauline Bonaparte by Antonio Canova.
File:Bernini ScipioneBorghese.jpg, ''Bust of Scipione Borghese'' by Bernini. c. 1632

Paintings

image:DossoDossi.jpg, Melissa by Dosso Dossi. c. 1507
image:Caravaggio - Saint Jerome Writing, c1606.jpg, Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio. c. 1606
image:Rafael - A deposição.jpg, '' The Deposition'' by Raphael. c. 1507
image:Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - St John the Baptist - WGA04196.jpg, St John the Baptist by Caravaggio. c. 1610
image:Jacopo da Ponte - The Last Supper - WGA01433.jpg, The Last Supper by Jacopo Bassano. c. 1546
Image:Madonna and Child with St. Anne-Caravaggio (c. 1605-6).jpg, Madonna, Child and Serpent by Caravaggio. c. 1605-1606
image:Correggio - Danaë - WGA05341.jpg, Danaë by Correggio. c. 1530

Image:Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Boy with a Basket of Fruit - WGA04074.jpg, ''Boy with a Basket of Fruit'' by Caravaggio. c. 1593
Image:Domenichino - Diana and her Nymphs - WGA06390.jpg, Diana and Her Nymphs by Domenichino. c. 1616-1617
image:Titian - The Scourging of Christ - WGA22826.jpg, The Scourging of Christ by Titian. c. 1560
Image:Sisto Badalocchio - The Entombment of Christ, 1610.jpg, Deposition by Sisto Badalocchio. c. 1610
image:Paolo Veronese - St John the Baptist Preaching - WGA24813.jpg, St John the Baptist by Paolo Veronese. c. 1562
Image:Rubens Deposition.jpg, Deposition by Peter Paul Rubens. c. 1602
image:Gerrit van Honthorst cat02.jpg, The Concert by Gerrit van Honthorst. c. 1626-1630
Image:Antonello da Messina 054.jpg, Portrait of a Man by Antonello da Messina. c. 1474-1475
Image:Lady with unicorn by Rafael Santi.jpg, Lady with a Unicorn by Raphael. c. 1505
image:Titian - Venus Blindfolding Cupid - WGA22908.jpg, Venus Blindfolding Cupid by Titian. c. 1565
image:Dominikus von Tizian.jpg, St. Dominic by Titian. c. 1565
image:Parmigianino - Portrait of a Man - WGA17040.jpg, Portrait of a Man by Parmigianino. c. 1528
image:Lorenzo Lotto - Madonna and Child with St Ignatius of Antioch and St Onophrius - WGA13663.jpg, Madonna and Child and Saints by Lorenzo Lotto. c. 1508
image:Painting of Susanna and the Elders by Rubens.jpg, Susanna and The Elders by Peter Paul Rubens. c. 1607-1608
image:Giovanni Bellini - Madonna and Child - WGA01777.jpg, Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini. c. 1510
image:Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Sick Bacchus - WGA04072.jpg, Young Sick Bacchus by Caravaggio. c. 1593
image:Gianlorenzo Bernini - Self-Portrait as a Young Man - WGA01971.jpg, Self Portrait by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. c. 1623

Notes

External links

Official website

Amor sacro e amor profano (Sacred and Profane Love)
Description of the painting.



Reviews of Galleria Borghese

Satellite photo
— the Galleria Borghese is the villa in the center of the photograph surrounded by landscaped gardens.

Roman Map of the area with related services
*
*

{{authority control

Houses completed in the 17th century
Art museums and galleries in Rome
Borghese, Villa
Art museums established in 1903
1903 establishments in Italy
Rome Q. III Pinciano