Borghese Gallery - Rome, Italy
N 41° 54.845 E 012° 29.524
33T E 292012 N 4643278
The Galleria Borghese (English: Borghese Gallery) is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana.
Waymark Code: WMPQX6
Location: Lazio, Italy
Date Posted: 10/10/2015
Views: 11
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.
The Villa was built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese himself, who used it as a villa suburbana, a party 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. Other paintings of note include Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, Raphael's Entombment of Christ and works by Peter Paul Rubens and Federico Barocci.
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. Its decorative scheme includes a trompe l'oeil ceiling fresco in the first room, or Salone, by the Sicilian artist Mariano Rossi makes such good use of foreshortening that it appears almost three-dimensional.
Many of the sculptures are displayed in the spaces they were intended for, 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). The second Scipione Borghese portrait was produced after the a large crack was discovered in the marble of the first version during its creation.
Name of Source Book: 1,000 Places to See Before you Die 2010 paperback edition.
Page Location in Source Book: 192
Type of Waymark: Site
Location of Coordinates: Entrance
Cost of Admission (Parks, Museums, etc.): 13.00 (listed in local currency)
List Available Hours, Dates, Season:
Monday: closed
from Tuesday to Sunday: from 8.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.
Closed the 1st of January, 25th of December
Access up to half hour before the closing time
Official Tourism Website: [Web Link]
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