Rome Villa Borghese

Ple. Scipione Borghese 5. A-Spagna; take exit labeled “Villa Borghese,” walk to the right past the Metro stop to V. Muro Torto, and then to P. Pta. Pinciana; Vle. del Museo Borghese is ahead and leads to the museum. Or take bus #116 or 910 to V. Pinciana. ☎06 84 13 979; www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/it/default.htm. Open Tu-Su 8:30am7:30pm. Entry every 2hr.; last entry 5pm. Limited capacity; reservation required. Guided tours in English at 9:10 and 11:10am. Tickets for high season may be booked a month in advance. Reservations ☎32 810, group reservations ☎06 32 65 13 29 M-F 9am-6pm, Sa 9am-1pm; easiest to book through www.ticketeria.it. The ticket office and a bookshop share the villa’s basement. Also go there for the mandatory bag check; it’s best to get it over with 10-15min. before your shift. €8.50, including reservation and bag charge; EU citizens ages 18-25 €5.25; EU citizens under 18, over 65, and art students €2. Ticket prices increase dramatically when a special exhibition is up; check before you book. Audio tour €5. Tours €5. MC/V.

The crown jewel of the Villa Borghese packs more great art into less space than any other collection in Rome—maybe more than any in the world. This treasure trove of Western works was begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 1600s and now fills the former Borghese residence. It includes masterpieces by Bernini, Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Rubens, among many others.

The novelist Stendhal wrote that a place of overwhelming beauty can trigger psychosomatic symptoms like confusion, dizziness, and hallucinations. He was onto something about the Galleria Borghese. (Actually, he was writing about Florence, but we can forgive this frequent visitor to the Eternal City.) You might experience the syndrome that bears his name when faced with so many breathtaking works of art crammed into so relatively tight a space. Matters are further complicated by the Galleria’s admission policy: one ticket, purchased in advance, entitles the bearer to two strictly-timed hours in the museum—and they’re taken in shifts, so you’d better not be late. Once they’ve seen the extent of the collection, visitors with more than a passing interest in painting or sculpture will find this limit almost impossibly short. It’s frustrating for sure. Just remember two things. First, limited admission helps keep the galleries relatively uncrowded, which allows viewers more one-on-one time with the art. Second, the collection has been around for a few centuries; it’ll still be here tomorrow, and chances are it’s not going anywhere in the next three to five years. Better to relax, slow down, and spend time with the works you find most appealing. Otherwise you’ll find yourself dazed and dizzy—and while it worked for Stendhal, you’re no Romantic novelist.

If you want instant art gratification, you can always splurge on two tickets. Take a lunch break on the nearby V. Ofanto, or else power through four non-stop hours of Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque culture. Just be sure to reserve all your tickets ahead of time. Depending on the time of year, the museum can sell out a month ahead; often spots are still available on the day of admission, but if you have a tight schedule, you should play it safe and think in advance. The Galleria is organized in a series of chambers, and visitors move through counterclockwise. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the Berninis in the first few rooms, but don’t forget the Pinacoteca upstairs! Your path to Painters’ Paradise is a rather poorly-marked stair towards the back of the museum.

Good luck, art lovers. Remember, if you start to experience chills, hallucinations, etc., you can always take a breather in the lovely garden behind the Galleria. It’s always free and always open.

Entrance Hall.  Pass the ancient statuary that guards the door and get ready to rumble, because the incredibly ornate foyer of the Galleria will hit design and art fans like a slap to the face. (Imagine you’re into S&M.) At ground level, you’ll see mostly Classical sculpture, including some cool and slightly creepy ritratti colossali, or massive portrait busts. Look up for Mariano Rossi’s ceiling fresco Apotheosis of Romulus.

Room 1. Crack any art history textbook and you have a pretty good chance of finding Antonio Canova’s Venus statue of a half-nude Paolina Borghese Bonaparte. Up close and personal, this paragon of Neoclassical art appears to have a vaguely pink sheen; Canova supposedly applied wax to give the figure a slightly rosy hue. The work was considered kind of kinky in its day. Paolina’s husband Napoleon—yup, that Napoleon—found it so alluring that he forbade anybody else to see it. Now, of course, thousands of visitors eye up Mrs. Bonaparte every year.

That piece of fruit in Paolina’s hand is the famous golden apple of Greek and Roman myth. Paris gave it to Venus in a divine beauty contest and made off with mortal lovely Helen as his reward. If you’ve read the Iliad, you know how that one turned out. The pageant and ensuing carnage at Troy are depicted in a series of ceiling and wall frescos by Domenico de Angelis.

Room 2.  The first of many Borghese Berninis will greet you as you enter “The Room of the Sun.” It’s a crouching David with slingshot, and many art scholars place it among the sculptor’s greatest early works. The figure’s face is tense with exertion as he winds up his rock and rope. It’s both a wonderfully lifelike touch and a little inside joke: the expression is supposedly modeled on Bernini’s own as he went at the block of marble with his tools. A few portrayals of the infant Hercules are here to cheer the biblical hero on.

Room 3.  Greek myth takes center stage again with Bernini’s   Apollo and Daphne, a delicately rendered and incredibly dynamic depiction of the god and his unwilling beau. The chase scene you see here is about to end: Apollo has almost trapped his beloved, but the wood sprite’s father has already begun to transform her into a tree in order to protect her chastity. The sculptor originally counseled Cardinal Borghese to position the work so that the figure of Daphne is at first hidden from the viewer. The Galleria’s curators haven’t followed his advice, but a slow walk around the sculpture will reveal Bernini’s original intent—the figure of Daphne really does seem to morph into a tree and back again. The Pietro Angeletti frescoes on the ceiling further reference the mythical theme.

Room 4.  There is little of note in Cardinal Borghese’s surprisingly diminutive chapel-hallway. Feel free to step on through to the Sala degli Imperatori , which features Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina. As the Roman version of the Greek myth goes, Pluto—you may know him as Hades—carried off the young daughter of Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, as the maiden picked flowers in a field. This little abduction didn’t go over too well with her mommy, who withheld the earth’s harvest in a brilliant act of collective bargaining. Zeus got into the act and demanded that Pluto return the girl to her frantic mother. Unfortunately, a hungry Proserpina had already eaten six pomegranate seeds, the specialita della casa of Hades, and so was eternally bound to her new husband. The Olympian divorce court eventually decided on joint custody: Proserpina would spend six months on earth with her mother (summer) and the remainder of the year in Hades as queen of the underworld (winter). The 17th-century porphyry and alabaster busts that line the walls give the room its name. This would be a good time for you to mount the stairs to the Pinacoteca, since you’ve seen most of the key works on the first floor. The steps are located off to the side of the Sala.

Rooms 5-7.  Room 5 is dedicated to the enigmatic figure Hermaphrodite, depicted here in marble and paint. His/her sculpture was completed in Rome in the first century but has a modern head. Unless you have a thing for gender theory, you won’t spend more than a few seconds in here. Move on to Room 6, where you’ll find one of Bernini’s earliest commissions. Aeneas and Anchises portrays the mythical warrior Aeneas as he carries his father from the burning city of Troy on his shoulders; his son Ascanius follows behind. Bernini executed the piece when he was just 21 with some help from his own father, Bernini the Elder. The figures are remarkably well-coiffed for refugees. The room is nicknamed the Gladiator Room after its former tenant, an Ancient Roman sculpture that Renaissance greats considered one of the best in art history. An unwilling Cardinal Borghese sold the work to Napoleon after the diminutive Frenchman put some pressure on his brother-in-law. Italian art critics at the time complained that the Borgheses were losing the jewel of their collection, but the work still headed off to Paris. Room 7 is another walk-through: it’s got an Egyptian theme going on, with little of note besides a sprinkling of sphinxes and a Roman figure of the goddess Isis in black marble.

Room 8.   This room is notable not for its central sculpture—it’s a pirouetting second-century Roman satyr, if you care—but for the six Caravaggios that line its walls. Among these famous works is the self-portrait Sick Bacchus, which the artist painted during a stay in the hospital. He was recuperating either from depression or a horse kick to the head, depending on whom you ask. The Sick Bacchus bears a striking resemblance to its neighbor Young Boy with Basket of Fruit. (The Galleria has it labeled as Young Girl, for reasons that may be quite apparent to the viewer.) The questionable gender of the main subject and his/her pose of nonchalant suggestiveness (slightly parted lips, tenderly revealed shoulder) make a fun game for art historians, who have spilled gallons of ink over Caravaggio’s sexuality. Resist the temptation to psychoanalyze the dead master and focus instead on later, greater works like St. Jerome and David and Goliath. The latter may be another self-portrait of sorts: after killing Ranuccio Tommassoni in a 1605 duel, Caravaggio supposedly sent the painting to the Pope with a plea against capital punishment.

Pinacoteca   The Pinacoteca is kind of a painting free-for-all. There are too many works to see and never enough time to see them in. All we can do for you is recommend a few of our faves. When you march upstairs to the Pinacoteca, you’ll pop up in the Dido Room, whose name comes from its ceiling frescos. Do take a look at Raphael’s   Deposition, painted in 1507 to ease the pain of Atalanta Baglioni. (She lost her son in a war with Perugia.) A couple of Bernini portrait busts of Scipione Borghese also make for interesting viewing—look for subtle differences in the cardinal’s portrayal. Check out the portrait of another Borghese in the little room off to the left—that’s not brushwork you’re looking at, but mosaic! Props go to the little-known Marcello Provenzale for his meticulous (if slightly off-kilter)   Retrato di Paolo V Borghese. Hang a right from there into an adjacent chamber and you’ll see some fantastic Rafaels and Botticellis. Keep going straight into the next room for Cranach the Elder’s   Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb. The Flemish-trained German painter depicted the sultry goddess wrapped only in transparent linens. Inexplicably, Venus remains unscathed by the swarm of bees that surrounds her son.

Other Museums

Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna. This museum holds a sizeable and interesting collection of 19th- and 20th-century art, ranging from nationalistic Italian paintings and pastoral scenes to abstract works. The 19th-century galleries to either side of the entrance can safely be skipped. Fans of Canova, however, might peek into the one on the left to take in the sculptor’s massive depiction of Hercules swinging Lica by the ankle. The museum’s central hall, meanwhile, features Italian art from the past 50 years; sometimes temporary shows take up residence here.

This gallery deserves your attention, but the most interesting works in the museum’s collection are concentrated in the early to mid-20th-century galleries to the back and right of the museum. Of particular interest to art history buffs is the selection of work by Marcel Duchamp displayed in a long vitrine. Duchamp is one of the bêtes noirs of modern art: he’d experimented with Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism by age 20; presented the abstract Nude Descending a Staircase to a skeptical Parisian art world when he was 25; and stopped painting before he was 30. Most of the works on display are Readymades, objects abstracted from their mundane contexts and installed in gallery settings, meant as a sort of middle finger to the art world. They include the artist’s celebrated Fountain, a urinal that he submitted under the name R. Mutt to what was supposedly an open art show. (It was rejected.) After the inevitable first wave of critical whompings, commentators began to accept and find beauty in many of the articles that Duchamp had selected. This was exactly the opposite of what the artist wanted. He had hoped to profoundly unsettle the art establishment; he found he couldn’t win. Eventually he gave up art altogether in favor of chess. Fountain apparently used to hang from the ceiling of the gallery, but now it’s behind glass with its fellows. You have to wonder if someone has ever tried to use it for its original purpose.

These rooms also contain a number of Fascist-era paintings with nationalistic themes and subjects. Pictures of grain, machinery, and well-fed peasants don’t sound scintillating, but the assortment of works on view is interesting nonetheless. Elements of Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Cubism—all progressive movements in art—were incorporated by state-approved painters into politically reactionary works. American art buffs might note that some of the paintings of rural land and peoples bear comparison to Regionalist works painted at roughly the same time. If all this ideological and conceptual stuff starts to get a little bit heavy, there’s a really pretty Klimt in one of the far right-hand galleries. (Vle. delle Belle Arti 131, in Villa Borghese, near Museo Nazionale Etrusco. A-Flaminio; then tram 30 or 225, bus 19 from P. Risorgimento, or bus 52 from P. San Silvestro. From Galleria Borghese, follow V. dell’Uccelliera to the zoo and take V. del Giardino to V. delle Belle Arti. ☎06 32 29 82 21; www.gnam.arti.beniculturali.it. Open Tu-Su 8:30am-7:30pm. Last entry 6:45pm. €10, EU citizens ages 18-25 €8, EU citizens under 18 or over 65 free. Ticket prices include special exhibitions. Cash only.)

Museo Nazionale Etrusco Di Villa Giulia. This 16th-century villa was built under Pope Julius III. Today, it houses one of the most extensive collections of Etruscan artifacts in the world. Highlights include the sarcophagus of a married couple in Room 9; it’s by the same artist who crafted the Louvre’s Sarcofago degli Sposi. Upstairs, archaeologists have put together fragments of a facade of an Etruscan temple, complete with terra-cotta gargoyles, chips of paint, and a relief of the warrior Tydaeus biting into the brain of a wounded adversary. (Yum?) The museum is also home to a scrambled collection of Greek artifacts found in the region, evidence of the extensive trade relationships that once existed between the Etruscans and the Greeks.

More interesting than the jewelry, ceramics, and other artifacts is the villa itself. It was built in 1552 by Pope Julius III, who was criticized by contemporaries for leading a frivolous life while the Council of Trent erupted. Julius wasn’t much impressed by the accusations, and hired Vignola to construct a Roman pad. The villa’s decorative sculpture, which Vignola designed with some help from Michelangelo, was partially scraped away by more conservative popes. Luckily, they preserved the nymphaeum, a sunken goldfish pond with leafy ferns and mermaid columns. Today it’s a refuge for goldfish; go for a stroll around the grounds and check it out. (P. Villa Giulia 9, just north of Villa Borghese, near P. Thorvaldsen. A-Flaminio; then tram #30 or 225, or bus #19 from P. Risorgimento or 52 from P. San Silvestro. From Galleria Borghese, follow V. dell’Uccelliera to the zoo and then take V. del Giardino to V. delle Belle Arti. Museum is on the left after Galleria d’Arte Moderna. ☎06 32 26 571, reservations 82 45 29. Open Tu-Su 8:30am-7:30pm. €4, EU citizens ages 18-25 €2, EU citizens under 18 and over 65 free. Mandatory bag check. English audio tour €4.)