Art and Rome: The Gallery Borghese

We traveled to the Borghese Gallery today--which requires not just a ticket, but a reservation. Which would be irritating if you didn't know it, or couldn't get one, but keeps the crowds to a minimum and turns out to be a good thing (although I thought it might have been contrived that we could not go when we wanted, which was 10 am--9 am or 11 am. Ah well, that turned out to be for the best anyway. The Gallery is a bit far, and to get there on time, which is essential, it was better to reserve a bit later than we initially thought. It turns out they knew best.

This is an art gallery that was built as such. Cardinal Borghese, the nephew of Pope Borghese, was much more of a lover of the arts than a religious man (the cardinal thing was more for power than religion). He built the gallery around his art collection, and it is really pretty impressive. Both the ground and first floor have high ceilings and they are all painted (did he have Sistene Chapel envy?). Which makes viewing a bit challenging. All the craning upward, room after room, left me kind of dizzy. I am not sure is I have an intolerance of that much magnificence, or some kind of insufficiency whereby hyper-extending my neck allows little to no blood to get to my brain. Either way, the 2 hour limit in the gallery was not a constraint on our enjoyment. Nor did it appear that they actually enforced it. Joel was pleased that we were tapped to go in early, and I was pleased to leave after a second viewing of the things we like best. One thing I was struck by--there is so much there that I think I could go back tomorrow and the next day and wonder at the things I missed on the first visit. Even a second run through, I saw thtings I would have sworn were not there just an hour before.

I have included my three favorite pieces that I saw today--The Titian 'Sacred and Profane Love', both for the relative brightness and the levity of the painting amidst a sea of reigiousity as much as my enjoyment of it, and the two Bernini sculptures ths I was impressed with, both of which he did in his 20's. Although in some ways, the sculpture he carved of two children milking a goat at age eleven is the most impressive, these were done by a young man with a well honed talent. 'David' is said to be a self-portrait (so not a modest man, in either sense of the word). But perhaps modesty would be false, as Berrnini is said to have invented the baroque style, that he had a hand in not just the rendering of it but in it's architecture. He created an age. And there are a startling number of examples of it here in one place. Not to be missed. The gallery is in a beautiful location, well worth walking around in order to regain one's balance after so much ceiling-gazing, and Al Ceppo, a wonderful Roman restaurant, is nearby on Via Panama, north of the Villa Borghese.