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

Piazza Navona And The Spanish Steps

Still suffering from jet lag, we undertook another light day, visiting the Piazza Navona and then the Spanish Steps.

Entering the Piazza Navona; we often wonder whether there are any
obelisks left in Egypt

Unusual dorsal view of Neptune in the the Fountain of Neptune

Standard view

The Piazza was originally the Stadium of Domitian in classical times,
then the city market in the later Renaissance; later the giant and
beautiful piazza it is now; the extreme Baroque church of Sant'Agnes
in Agone is on the right

The major attraction is Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers,
the obelisk rising from the sculpture

The River Nile veiled because its source was
unknown at the time (1651); "Dr. Livingstone,
I presume?"

Other fountain: the Fontana del Moro, (1575), with a later

addition by Bernini (the standing figure: to balance the one 

at the other end...)

Longer view from north side

Moving right along, we are now at the foot of the Spanish Steps,
at the Fountain of the Long Boat (1629), attributed to Bernini's
dad, who happened to be the Pope's architect

Looking up the 135 steps to the Trinita dei Monti church; the city
has covered much of the stairway with shrubbery ("bring us a shrubbery!"),
presumably to discourage loitering by tourists

And every now and then a member of the local constabulary
arrives to get tourists on their feet and out of the way

A nice smile a moment later suggested she enjoys her job

And now, we are doing something we've never done: climb the 

Spanish Steps

Vicki, resting

And now at the top

The reason for all the unusual exertion: Vicki
wanted to see the Zuccari Palace with its monster
doors and windows

Mission accomplished! And now, tired puppies, back home...

Two Churches: St. Louis Of The French And SM Sopra Minerva

Both are only a few blocks from the Pantheon and we traditionally do them all the same day. (Traditionally=maybe once or twice before, I think). Again, there were surprises along the way, things new to us.

Now we are in the church of St. Louis (Luigi) of the French [sic];
ever seen an austere Baroque church?

The feature attraction, however. is Caravaggio's Matthew cycle;
above, the calling of Matthew (I usually caption this as "who's
driving the green Plymouth...?" but since it's Holy Week, I won't
do that and also won't refer to Caravaggio as Mr. Frutti Butt Pants)

Matthew taking dictation from the angel (Guido
Reni's Matthew is the best)

Martyrdom of St. Matthew

On the other side of the church, in the St. Cecelia chapel, are
several Domenchinos, which I'll skip, and two Renis of note;
above his fresco (!) copy of Rafael's St. Cecelia distributing her
clothes to the poor

And Reni's St. Cecelia in Ecstasy...quoting from
the description "Saint Cecelia in ecstasy, participates
in the angels' song, surrounded by St. Paul, St. John,
St. Augustine, and St. Mary Magdalene"...
I guess this would be an example of the sacred
conversation genre, but it could be of the sacred
sing-along genre

Another reason to like this church is its
tribute to Claude Lorrain, the 17th century
French landscape painter who spent nearly
all his career in Rome; Turner's favorite

Now we are approaching SM Sopra Minerva; "above Minerva"
because it was thought to have been built over a temple of Minerva;
now argued to have been built over a temple of Isis

The elephant-supported obelisk in the piazza has its own story...
brought from Egypt in the second century for the temple of Isis,
found in the Dominican garden many centuries later; its current
composition designed by Bernini...note kids playing futbol in
the piazza...two adults against about ten kids...note also a rare
dorsal view of the Pantheon, left

So we get to the construction fence at the front of the church 
and notice it is dark inside and empty...oh no!

It's open after all, well the apse anyway, and all you have to do
is follow the yellow arrows down the road, turn after a few blocks,
turn again up an alley, and you're there at the back door of the
church (note ecclesiastical use of Google Earth)

En route, I look up a cross street and see this,
a giant sandaled foot in marble; just standing 
there

I was thinking what a strange place for a "Just Do It!" ad when
Vicki pointed out the signage below

Which explains that this area contained several Egyptian temples
and that the foot in the alley was all that was left of a colossal
statue of Isis from one of the temples; again, for us, another 
completely new find 

So now we have gotten into SM Sopra Minerva through the
back door and are appreciating as well as we can the architecture
of one of Rome's few Gothic churches, as well as some of its
major art

Filipino Lippi's Annunciation with St. Thomas Aquinas, another
sacred conversation, of sorts

Michaelangelo's Christ the Redeemer; not one of his
biggest hits; the bronze loin cloth was a later addition

One critic wrote that the knees alone were worth more than
anything else in Rome; probably not a good idea mixing knee
fetish with art criticism

Tomb of Fra Angelica, 15th century mostly
Florentine painter of note