Galleria Borghese, 2

Our visit to the Borghese continues...

Among the many incredible ancient mosaics; this, a scene from
gladiator school...

Canova's Venus; actually, Napoleon's sis

Reni's Paul Rebukes the Repentant Peter; they 
were always rebuking and repenting all the time

Roman sarcophagus and assorted other sculpture

Bernini's action-oriented David

Reni's David and Goliath

The Apollo and Daphne everyone comes to see;
does any sculpture surpass it?; created for this
very room in the galleria

Bernadino Luini, La Flora; Luini was a disciple
of Leonardo; Luini's works have sometimes been
misidentified as Leonardo's; not this one

Nice door treatment; all the dozens of doors in the
building are so decorated

Reni's Country Dance...documented as part of the Borghese
family collection as early as 1650, in private collections in the
18th and 19th centuries, then acquired in the London antiques
market in 2008 (Fake or Fortune?!) and returned "home" just
lately: the occasion for the Reni exhibition we have been
enjoying

There are two flies depicted in Country Dance: a symbol of
death, melancholy...

Formal garden out back

Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, 1514, muy famoso

Botticelli, Madonna and bambino, with infant (toddler) St. John
(note skins), 1488

Side garden

Oh yes, the trompe-l'oeils: in most every room, worth the price 
of admission by themselves

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...