Galleria Borghese, 1

Thursday (Maunday Thursday, for those of you keeping score at home) we thought we'd do an old favorite, the Galleria Borghese, and then see whether or not we had any energy left for more. This is not terribly ambitious physically, since the Galleria allows you only two hours inside; intellectually and aesthetically, if you like art and art history, it's fairly overwhelming. One of the world's great museums. In any case, en route Vicki discovered she had recorded our timed entrance incorrectly--1PM, not 11AM--so, with time to kill, we decided to head over to the Piazza Popolo and take in the the SM church there, with its Caravaggios, Berninis, Rafael, Pinturrichos, etc. Easter Week: we knew it was a risk.

Translation: wrong again, pagan tourists! But if we had

we had gotten in, this is what you would have seen:

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2013/11/santa-maria-

del-popolo.html.

So we decided to just walk the park; ever popular
Anne Boleyn statue

Pines of the Villa Borghese; Respighi in our ears

Wildflower snow

And a pretty fountain

Now in the Galleria Borghese: Bernini's Rape of

Proserpine, 1621; realistic touch (on her thigh)

Dilemma: in addition to its regular stupendous world-class
collection, the Borghese has integrated an exhibition of Guido
Reni paintings from all over, to celebrate its re-acquisition of
a favorite; Reni is a favorite of ours: so I'll have to incorporate
some of these works with such regular coverage of the Borghese
as seems fit; thus, two episodes; above, Reni's very Caravaggian
Atalanta and Ipomene

The Borghese has three big draws: its numerous Berninis,
including his biggest hits; its four Caravaggios, more than
any other venue; and the numerous ancient Roman mosaics and
sculptures strewn all over the place; above, "we need a bigger
boat!"; wait, no, four big draws: all the trompe-l'oeil all over the
place ("nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!")

Alas! Alack! To accommodate the Reni exhibition, the hermaphrodite
has been turned around so that you can't see it's ((s)he?) a hermaphrodite!

Bernini's Truth Unveiled; why is she laughing, we
always ask?

And his Aeneas and dad escaping from Troy

The Borghese identifies this as Caravaggio's
Self-Portrait as a Sick Bacchus; self-portrait?
really?

His David and Goliath; the Goliath is more
traditionally identified as a self-portrait

And his Mary and Son stomping the serpent;

done as a commission, but rejected; note,

among many other things, Mary is not dressed 

in her traditional blue

Reni's Lot and His Daughters; Reni was a contemporary of
Caravaggio and was influenced by him

Caravaggio's St. Jerome; note that there is no lion, an attribute
always painted with the saint; Caravaggio had little use for
conventions; personally I think a lion's butt as the focal point
of the painting would have worked

St. John the Baptist; seriously; painted without his 

traditional skins, the only such instance in all of 

Christian art; didn't hold with conventions

Carravaggio's Special Gentleman Friend with Fruit

Among the dazzling ceiling treatments through the gallery