Borghese collection

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The Borghese Collection was a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, an important art collector. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art. He also bought widely from leading painters and sculptors of his day, and his commissions include two portrait busts by Gian Lorenzo Bernini[1][2].

Scipione developed a large estate and vineyard on the Pincian hill in Rome into a vast garden and complex of palaces, the Villa Borghese, to house his collection. He also used the Villa Mondragone for this purpose. In 1775, in homage to his Borghese ancestors, Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese and the architect Antonio Asprucci embarked upon renovations to Villa Borghese, which had always been a semi-public museum since the 17th century. Integrating the sculptures of the Borghese collection and existing vast Baroque ceiling decors, they created a spectacular monument to the Borghese family (Paul 2000).

[edit] At the Villa Borghese

The Villa still houses a major part of the collection, as the Galleria Borghese. Many of the sculptures there are displayed in the spaces they were intended for, including early works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

• Caravaggio is well represented at the Villa by, among others, his
  • Boy with a Basket of Fruit
  • St. Jerome
  • Sick Bacchus

Other paintings of note include

• Titian's Sacred and Profane Love
• Raphael's Deposition
• works by Peter Paul Rubens
• works by Federico Barocci.

[edit] Bernini collection

The small collection of works by Bernini (whose first patron was Scipione) comprises a large proportion of his lifetime output of secular sculpture; in this collection one can see the sponsored Bernini mature from juvenile, but talented works, such as the Goat Amalthea with Infant Jupiter and a Faun (1615)[3] to his supreme and dynamic Apollo and Daphne (1622–25)[4] and David (1623),[5] considered seminal works of baroque sculpture. In addition, the gallery contains three busts, two of Pope Paul V (1618–20) and one marvelously conversive and stunningly innovative portrait of his patron, Borghese (1632).[6] Finally it has some early, less successful, somewhat mannerist, but masterful works such as Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (1618–19)[7] and the Giambologna-emulating Pluto's Rape of Prosperpine (1621–22),[8] and also a personal, somewhat emotionally muddled allegory of Truth Unveiled by Time (1646–52).[9]

[edit] At the Louvre

In 1807, due to financial difficulties and under pressure from his new brother-in-law Napoleon Bonaparte, Camillo Filippo Ludovico Borghese sold many major ancient sculptures from the collection to the Louvre Museum at below their market price, where they now reside, including

• sculptures recently excavated at Gabii
• the Antinous Mondragone
• the Borghese Gladiator
• the Borghese Hermaphroditus
• the Borghese Vase