While trekking in Italy during June of 2023, Becky and I spent a few days in Rome.

While there, we booked a ticket at the most beautiful museum in Rome.  The Borghese Gallery is one of the most interesting and prestigious museums in the world. The artworks of the Galleria Borghese are among the most beautiful in Italian Baroque: inside the museum, we found some of Bernini’s most beautiful masterpieces, but also paintings by Raphael and numerous works by Caravaggio.

Imaged above, the Borghese Gallery is located in the northern portion of Rome, within the lush and sprawling Villa Borghese Gardens.

This stunning art museum is surrounded by lush greenery and manicured gardens, offering a peaceful oasis in the bustling city. The closest landmark is the Spanish Steps, which was just a 10-minute walk away. Becky and I chose to take the public bus to the bus to Pinciana/Museo Borghese stop. This dropped us right there.

The villa and park were laid out by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, favorite nephew of Paul V, who had the house designed for pleasure, and entertainment. The hedonistic cardinal was also an extravagant patron of the arts, and he commissioned sculptures from the young Bernini that now rank amount his most famous works.

Scipione also opened his pleasure park to the public. Today the villa housed the superb private Borghese collection of sculptures, paintings in the Museo and Galleria Borghese. Without showing all of them, we picked a few pieces that we thought were the most interesting & showed the flavor of each room.

Imaged above, the museum is divided into two section, the sculpture collection occupies the entire ground floor and the picture gallery is on the upper floor. Becky and I started on the ground floor in the ‘Main Entry Hall’.

Pictured above, this imposing hall welcomes the visitor to the villa with a celebration of the glory of Roman civilization. Immediately, Becky and I noticed a large equestrian statue, (set high up on the wall), of the hero Marcus Curtius sacrificing himself for his people by flinging himself into the chasm of the Roman Forum after and an earthquake in 362BC. According to the myth: astride his horse, fully and meticulously armed and decorated, Marcus rode and leapt into the chasm where the deep pit closed up over him, saving Rome from Hades. This statue was actually created by Pietro Bernini, father of the famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Pictured above, against the eastern wall, are niches containing two remarkable ancient sculptures from the Ceoli Collection, a ‘Bacchus’ (left) highly reminiscent of Praxiteles and a ‘Satyr’ (right), in a twisting pose raising pedum or shepherd’s crook in a threatening or joking gesture. Below the Satyr is a fragment of a Neo-Attic relief dating from the 1st century BC depicting scenes from the cult of Bacchus.

Pictured above, the ‘Main Entry Hall’ floor was decorated with the fragments of a 4th-century AD mosaic, depicting gladiators fighting. These were found in Torre Nova of the Via Casilina and set in the floor of the ‘Entrance Hall’ in the 19th century. Becky and I continued into Room #1.

Pictured above, the reclining Pauline Bonaparte, (sister of Napoleon Bonaparte and wife of Camillo Borghese), in the center of room #1, holds an apple in her hand evoking the ‘Venus Victrix’ in the judgement of Paris, who was chosen to settle dispute between Juno (power), Minerva (arts and sciences) and Venus (love). This marble statue of Pauline in a highly refined pose is considered a supreme example of the Neoclassical style.

Pictured above, Antonio Canova executed this sculpture between 1805 and 1808 without the customary drapery of a person of high rank, an exception at the time, thus transforming this historical figure into a goddess of antiquity in a pose of classical tranquility and noble simplicity.

Pictured above, Paolina Bonaparte caused a scandal at the time because she was represented half-naked, in the guise of the winning goddess Venus. The mattress looked real, the woman’s skin seemed alive for how white and smooth it was! I almost felt like, touching the mattress to see if it is really made of marble, (amazing)!

Pictured above, opposite the statue ‘Venus Victrix’ stands an extraordinary work by the sculptor Luigi Valadier, the ‘Herm of Bacchus (1773). This refined bronze head has been patinated in green copper tones by the artist and crowned with a wreath of gilded ivy leaves. Becky and I, then moved to Room #2.

Pictured above in the center of Room #2, this sculpture, by G.I. Bernini (1624), captures the moment just before David attacks Goliath with a rock. Bernini modeled David’s face on his own at the age of 25. The oversized cuirass leant to David by King Saul before the encounter lies on the ground with the harp David will play after his victory.

Bernini’s ‘David’ appears like an athlete in swirling motion. His feet are wide apart and he twists to gain the maximum swing for his shot. The intensity of his gaze and energy are palpable. I could almost feel his resolution. Additionally, Bernini’s ‘David’ is a masterpiece on realism, (an unbalanced pose, bulging veins, unflattering face , and even armpit hair). Bernini slays the pretty-faced Davids of the Renaissance and prepares to create the Baroque art-style.

Pictured above in Room #2, the large painting by the Sienese artist Rutilio Manetri, ‘Perseus Freeing Andromeda from the Sea Monster’, also reflects the Baroque style of painting at the beginning of the 17th century. Additionally the front panels of the splendid ancient sarcophagi that are found below the Manetri painting, includes the striking scenes of the labors of Hercules, executed in Asia Minor around 160AD, framed by oriental arches on small columns. Becky and I, then continued to Room #3.

Pictured above, in Room #3, Gian Lorenzo Bernini created, (at the age of 24) an unprecedented masterpiece depicting the chaste nymph Daphne being turned into a laurel tree, pursued in vain by Apollo god of light. Bernini was inspired by a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses where a mischievous Cupid holds sway. Apollo is struck by Cupid’s golden arrow of love. Overwhelmed by lust, he chases after Daphne. But Daphne’s simultaneously been stuck by a lead arrow of disgust. She cries out to her father, a river god, for help. He transforms her into a laurel tree.

Pictured above, the young Apollo is captured at the exact moment when he reaches his beloved Daphne who is turning into a laurel. Everything happens before the astonished eyes of the God: the feet become roots, the hands become leaves, the hair branches, and the body a rough trunk. I’m amazed of the details depicted, to the fineness of the leaves, the raised foot of Apollo and his sandal, the half-open mouth of the nymph that seems to be screaming. It is hard to believe that it was carved out of marble. Pictured below, I noticed the same scene, colorized, painted on the ceiling above by Pietro Angeletti in 1780.

Pictured above on the right in Room #3, is ‘John the Baptist’ (1767-1768) baptizing. This is a plaster model for a sculpture done at the church of S. Maria degli Angeli, by Giovanni Antonia Houdon. Onto Room #4.

Pictured above, Room #4 was designed by the architect Antonio Asprucci, avoiding Baroque ostentation and Neoclassical severity. Valuable antique sculptures were set in the gilded niches and this included the “Borghese Artemis’, a rare original by a Greek master from the 4th century BC. At the center of room, the statue called ‘Pluto and Proserpina’ was created between 1621 and 1622 (at 23/24 years) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini,  (pictured below).

I would classify this statue as one of the best in the world. G.L. Bernini follows another classical theme: Pluto, brother of Jupiter and Neptune, happens upon his niece Prosperine picking flowers and is immediately smitten with her. Losing his head he seizes her and drags her down to his kingdom of the underworld where she becomes his queen. Bernini depicts the scene as the duo arrives at the doorsteps of Hades where Cerberus the three-headed hell hound stands guard.

Pictured above, Pluto is squat, rough and uncouth, with knotted muscles and untrimmed beard. He is trying not to hurt her, but she pushes her godly molester away and twists and twists to call out for help. Tears roll down her cheeks. Note how Pluto’s fingers dig into her frantic body as if it were real flesh. Bernini uses Carrara marble to accomplish this amazing scene. [He was only 23 years old]. I even noticed a small imperfection in the middle of the back of Pluto. It was obviously put there on purpose by Bernini, to show that Pluto wasn’t entirely perfect as a god, (pictured below).

To finish the story; Ceres, Proserpine’s mother and the goddess of fertility was so upset by her daughter’s abduction that she refused to let anything grow causing famine. The gods, worried that there wouldn’t be any people left to worship them, stepped in and arbitrated a settlement, whereby, Prosperine would return to upper earth for a good part of the year and thus the seasons were born. Spring and the growing season began with the return of Prosperine to visit her mother.

Picture above in room #5, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was asked in 1620, to make the buttoned mattress upon which the 1st century Hermaphroditus reclines, so strikingly realistic that visitors are inclined to give it a test prod. The figure of Hermaphroditos, always portrayed as a female with male genitalia, lies asleep on a messy mattress. The sculpture exudes ambiguous seductiveness. It may appear to be female or male. Then, the scene on the ceiling, (pictured above on the right) depicted the myth of the Hermaphrodite and was painted by Nicola Bonvicini in 1782. According to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, the youth’s double nature resulted from his forced union with the clingy water nymph Salmacis. She beseeched the gods to never let them part. Her wish was granted and their bodies were fused.

According to Virgil’s epic poem “The Aeneid”, Rome was founded by the Trojan prince Aeneas who fled the fallen Troy with his father Anchises and son Ascanius. Pictured above, this sculpture is a depiction of that event and at the same time an allegory of the three ages of man. Looking closely, I could actually see baby fat on the boy, muscular sinew on Aeneas and wrinkled skin on Anchises. Anchises never made it to Latium, dying on the way.

Also found on the western side of Room #6 is the stature called ‘Truth Unveiled by Time’. Another G.L. Bernini statue of marble, it is of a naked young-woman being unveiled by a figure of “Time” above her. Unfortunately, the figure of “Time” was never executed, and the statue remained unfinished. Bernini wanted to add the figure of “Time” to the grouping, but time seems to have beaten Bernini, as he never completed his plan before he died. The female figure is holding the sun in her hand and represents naked “Truth” as her drapery appears to be leaving her body by the invisible hand of “Time”. It is certainly G.L. Bernini’s most personal work.

Pictured above, Antonio Asprucci designed a room inspired by recurrent motifs in ancient Egyptian art to house the Borghese collection of Egyptian statues. The central place in the room was occupied by the ‘Satyr on a Dolphin’, dating from 1st century AD, (pictured on the above-left). The severe statue of a ‘Peploglora (woman wearing a peplos)’ dates from the 5th century BC, and is possibly a Greek original, (pictured above-center). The great ‘Isis’ is represented as she hastens to seek the body of here husband Osiris and was sculpted in the mid-2nd century AD, (pictured above-right). Note that the gown of ‘Isis’ is made of black marble.

Pictured above, I call this Room #8 the Caravaggio Room because it holds the greatest collection of Caravaggio paintings anywhere. However, it happens to have the statue of the ‘Dancing Satyr’ in the center. It is a Roman sculpture in a twisting pose from the 2nd century AD. The Neoclassical sculptor, Berthel Thorvaldsen, restored the ‘Satyr’, but instead of the original flute, (for Lysippus), his figure is holding crotals, (musical instruments similar to cymbals.

Pictured above on the left, this self-portrait as ‘Bacchus’ shows 20-something Caravaggo as he first arrived in Rome in the early-1590s, a poor bohemian enjoying the wild life. The painting called ‘Young Sick Bacchus’, probably indicates that Caravaggio’s physical ailment involved malaria, as the appearance of his skin and icterus in the eyes are key factors of active hepatic disease leading to high bilirubin levels. Pictured above on the right, is also a self-portrait painting called the ‘Boy With a Fruit Basket’. It dates from when Caravaggo made a living painting minor figures in other artists paintings. His specialty was painting realistic fruit.

Eventually, Caravaggio pioneered Baroque painting, much as Bernini soon would do with sculpturing. Caravagio’s unique style combined two striking elements: uncompromising realism and strong light-dark contrasts. Pictured above, Caravagio’s ‘Saint Jerome’ of 1606, has his saint balding and wrinkled. St. Jerome was a Roman priest who translated the bible into Latin. He innocently stretches out an arm to refill his writing quill, thereby drawing your attention to the skull.

Pictured above, Caravaggio creates a painting that depicts ‘Saint John the Baptist’ a nude teenager with dirty feet. His models were obviously of ordinary people. However, I felt this painting was a bit homoerotic and his model seems to be a split-image of Bob Dylan in the 1600s.

Pictured above, is ‘Madonna of Palafrenieri’ and Child with St. Anne, one of Caravaggio’s religious works that helped keep him become rich and famous. He was commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese to create a painting for the St. Peter’s Basilica. However, he just couldn’t be conventional. Instead of showing St. Anne, Mary’s mother, as a divinely personage, he paints her as an elderly hag. Add to that Mary’s cleavage and Jesus’ uncircumcised little penis and you know why the Vatican was glad to sell it back to Scipione just a few years after its showing. Obviously the snake was meant to symbolize evil and Satan. However, I feel it is his most beautiful work.

Now rich and famous, Caravaggio led a reckless and partying life after 1605. In 1606, he killed a man in a bar-fight and had to flee Rome. From exile, Caravaggio appealed to Cardinal Borghese to get him a pardon. Of course, he influenced the deal by offering the above painting to Cardinal Borghese. Pictured above, ‘David with the Head of Goliath’ features perhaps the same model as the ‘St. John for David’, but there is no doubt that Goliath’s head is a self-portrait. The look of regret and faint disgust on David’s face is unique in the hundreds of paintings of this subject. Nothing triumphal here, just the horrid reality of death. Unfortunately, this was Caravaggio’s last painting, because he died under mysterious circumstances on his way back to Rome.

After exploring Room #8, the Caravaggio Room, Becky and I went upstairs to the Pinacoteca or Painting Gallery. This brought us onto Room 14 where we immediately entered into another small room called the “Pinacoteca Entrance”. Here, Becky and I viewed a group of art-work with an original-style of mosaics, using semi-precious stones. They looked like a paintings, but they were actually a mosaics, or I would say micro-mosaics, (pictured below).

Pictured above, this art-work represents, the cardinal Scipione Borghese, as ‘Orpheus’, (the mythological figure who charmed all living things with his music). It was one of the several pieces made in 1618 by Marcello Provenzale. This mosaic measures (44 x 63)cm . The mosaic pieces are the size of a head of a pin! The artist was known to use different materials in his works: semi-precious stones, glass, and colored ceramics. The tiny-tiles were inserted on a layer of stucco or putty, in a clay base with raised borders, and gone over with wax at the end to polish and minimize the outlines of the tiles. The artistic merit of micro-mosaics was determined by how closely they resembled actual paintings. I thought the ‘Orpheus’ was particularly wonderful in its details and the vivid colors. They  should last forever.

The next room we explored was Room #9. Here, Becky and I found two major Raphael paintings. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the Renaissance. His artworks are famous for the clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual accomplishment of the Neoplatonic perfection of human body. Pictured above, is ‘The Deposition’ by Raphael in 1507. Raphael’s ‘Deposition’ is considered one of the artist’s earliest masterpieces.  It depicts the moment in which the body of Christ is being moved to the sepulcher and the three men carrying it are arched due to their effort. All around, women are in agony and despair. Saint John is the figure with folded hands looking at the body of Christ.

Pictured above is the other Raphael masterpiece found in Room #9. Intended as a wedding gift, this Raphael masterpiece depicts the virtues and symbols of a young bride. The young Florentine woman in the painting symbolizes virginity and spiritual love. Even the unicorn is a symbol of chastity. [Medieval legends held that only a virgin can tame a unicorn].

Room#10 was our next destination. There we came across another masterpiece called ‘Danae’ that was created by Correggio. Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489-1534), usually known as just Correggio, was the painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, responsible for some of the original overwhelming and erotic works of the 16th century. Pictured above, this painting portrays ‘Danae’, a figure from Greek mythology. ‘Danae’ was the daughter of Acrisius, (King of Argos). An oracle forecast that Acrisius would be murdered by Danae’s son. So he jailed her in a bronze tower. Unfortunately for him, Jupiter, in love with the young woman, made her pregnant in the form of golden rain. In Correggio’s painting, Danae is seen lying on a bed while a child Eros undresses her as gold rains from a cloud. At the foot of the bed, two putti are testing gold and lead arrows against a stone.

Pictured above, the early 16th-century paintings in Room #10 were by Florentine masters and painters from the Parma, Bologna, Brescia and Genoa schools, and include a ‘Venus’ by Cranach, (left) and a ‘Venus’ by Brescianino, (right) which were displayed together. Brescianino (a painter from Siena), painted the ‘Venus’ around 1525, creating the illusion of a life-like figure looking into the mirror in the seashell as though about to step out of the niche, and flanked by cupids with tousled hair. Around 1531, Cranach (a leading Flemish-painter of the German Renaissance) on the other hand, painted a ‘Venus’ draped in a transparent veil gazing directly at the spectator. In contrast to her nudity, she wears an elegant red hat with crane feathers and a necklace of gems that reflects the Gothic style. At her feet, the winged infant Cupid looks up at her mother and is holding a honeycomb with a swarm of bees landing on his arms. His expression is sullen from the bee stings, and he is turning to Venus for comfort but she does not seem to display any compassion. 

Once Becky and I were finished with Room #10, we back-tracked to Room #12. There, we found another masterpiece called ‘Leda and the Swan’. Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces or rapes Leda (wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta). Pictured above, ‘Leda and the Swan’ is a painting from the circle of Leonardo da Vinci, with Cesare da Sesto being the most likely artist. This copy by Cesare da Sesto is said to be the closest to the original Leonardo’s ‘Leda and the Swan’, that was lost to history. Here, Leda seems to be standing in an elegant curving pose with her arms wrapped around the swan’s neck.

As we were walking through Room #14, Becky and I discovered this little treasure. Pictured above, this small sculpture was created by a teenage Bernini, who was a child prodigy. It’s significant because the sculpture is Bernini’s earliest identified work. The sculpture is based on the Greek myth where Cronus eats his children so they won’t murder him as prophesied. To protect her son Zeus from Cronus, Rhea hides him in a cave on Crete. Young Bernini gives the classic myth a Roman spin by making the two young boys as putti, (children who sometimes appear as cherubs or cupids). The goat looks almost motherly in this case.

Room #15 contained the early 16th-century paintings from the Lombard and Veneto schools. Pictured above, in ‘Tobias and the Angel’, the Brescian artist Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo depicts the biblical episode in which the archangel Raphael informs young Tobias to catch a fish and use its bile to cure his father’s blind father. Savoldo pays particular attention to the details of the drapery, as it appears to have a silvery sheen, and to the naturalistic elements in the painting, such as the light that penetrates the foliage and the atmospheric clouds in the distance.

Pictured above are two paintings we found in Room #18 called ‘Susanna and the Elders’. [Susanna and the Elders is an Old Testament story of a woman falsely accused of adultery after two men who, after discovering one another in the act of spying on her while she bathes, conspire to blackmail for sex]. The painting on the left was created by Pieter Paul Rubens in 1602 and the painting on the right was created by Gerrit Van Honthorst in 1655. In both paintings, Susanna has a white cloth draped over her. The white symbolizes her purity and goodness because she did not commit adultery, just like the elders are planning to accuse her of. However, her face implies that she is shocked that the elders observe her bathing. She also looks frightened since she does not know what the elders aim to do to her.

Looking for masterpieces, Becky and I continued walking through the rooms upstairs at the Borghese Gallery. We found Federico Barocci’s, painting, ‘Aeneas Fleeing from Troy’, in Room #19. It was a remarkable artwork measuring 176 x 253 cm. It was Barocci’s, (an Italian Renaissance painter), only attempt at historical narration. The scene shows that Aeneas leaves the city of Troy with his wife Creusa and his son Ascanius.  He was trying to escape the fire, which has already begun to burn the round temple in the background. On his shoulders, he carries his father, Anchises. [Note that the complex division of space, the movement of runaway figures, and their clothes of pastel shades foreshadow the stylistic features of Baroque art].

A additional painting that Becky & I enjoyed in Room #19 was ‘Diana’. The subject is inspired by a passage from Vergil’s “Aeneid”. It shows relates to an archery competition between Aeneas’ friends.  In Domenichino’s ‘Diana’, he revives ancient topics and the embodiment of nymphs. {Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters}. Pictured above, a nymph holding a greyhound shows us what happens to two male figures hidden in the bushes on the right side of the canvas. According to the myth, her terrible rage of Diana was unleashed against the hunter Actaeon, who, upon seeing her bathing, was turned into a stag and devoured by his dogs. One of the nymphs, immersed in water, gentle and sensual, looks at the viewer and connects the inner and outer spaces of the Baroque artwork.

The last room Becky and I explored at the Borghese Gallery was Room #20. There, we found two major masterpieces of Titian. Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (1488/90-1576), known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered an essential member of the 16th-century Venetian school. Titian was one of the most versatile Italian painters who was famous among his contemporaries as “The Sun Amidst Small Stars”. Pictured on the above-right is ‘St. Dominic’. [Saint Dominic was a Castilian priest and founder of the Dominican Order who is believed to have been immortalized by the renowned Venetian painter Titian]. Pictured on the above-left is the ‘Sacred and Profane Love’. As its title implies, the painting presents two forms of love. Sacred love stands on the right with a church in the background. Profane love, in the guide of a bejeweled woman, sits on the left. A baby Cupid plays in the middle, an ambiguous combination of the two. Another ambiguous feature is that the women are sitting on a tomb filled with water.