 Introduction
History
The statue of Pauline Bonaparte, executed by Canova between 1805 and 1808, has been in the villa since 1838. In 1807, Camillo Borghese sold Napoleon 154 statues, 160 busts, 170 bas-reliefs, 30 columns and various vases, which constitue the “Borghese Collection” in the Louvre. But already by the 1830s these gaps seem to have been filled by new finds from recent excavations and works recuperated from the cellars and various other Borghese residences.
Cardinal Scipione's collection of paintings was remarkable and was poetically described as early as 1613 by Scipione Francucci. In 1607, the Pope gave the Cardinal 107 paintings which had been confiscated from the painter Giuseppe Cesari, called the Cavalier d'Arpino. In the following year, Raphael's Deposition was secretely removed from the Baglioni Chapel in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia and transported to Rome. It was given to the Cardinal Scipione through a papal motu proprio.
In 1682, part of Olimpia Aldobrandini's inheritance entered the Borghese collection; it included works from the collections of Cardinal Salviati and Lucrezia d'Este. In 1827 Prince Camillo bought Correggios' celebrated Danae in Paris. New material was added during the whole of the 19th century; in 1902, the collection was acquired by the Italian State along with the Mansion and the entire Borghese property.
Location
Bus ATAC : 910,53.52,3,56,57,319,490,495
Metro : Line A , Spagna or Barberini Station
Collections
The main floor is mostly devoted to classical antiquities of the 1st?3rd centuries AD (including a famous mosaic of gladiators, above), and classical and neo-classical sculpture such as the Venus Victrix (above). It has a consistently breathtaking decorative scheme. The 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.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Borghese
Many of the sculptures are displayed in the spaces they were intended for, including nearly two handfuls of works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which comprise a large percent of his lifetime output of secular sculpture, starting with a juvenile, but talented, work such as the Goat Amalthea with Infant Jupiter and Faun (1615) to his dynamic Apollo and Daphne (1622?25) and David (1623) considered seminal works of baroque sculpture. In addition, three busts by this sculptor are in the gallery, two of Pope Paul V (1618?20) and an insightful portrait of his first patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1632). Finally it has some early, somewhat mannerist works such as Aeneas, Anchises & Ascanius (1618?19) and the Rape of Prosperpine (1621?22).
The picture collection includes works by Raphael (among them an Entombment), Botticelli, Pinturicchio, Perugino, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Sodoma, Dürer, Lotto, Domenichino (“Diana the Huntress”), Caravaggio (Madonna dei Palafrenieri), Rubens, Correggio (Danae), Bernini, Bassano, Van Dyck, Titian (Sacred and Profane Love), Bellini, Paolo Veronese and Antonello da Messina (Male Portrait).
Useful information
Always closed on:
New Year's Day (January 1)
Christmas - Christian (December 25)
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