Entrance Hall And Marcus Curtius Leaping Into Chasm
In the beautiful welcome area of the palace, you’ll find ancient Roman mosaics roped off on the floors. They are believed to have come from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.
You’ll also see an amazing rococo-style vaulted ceiling, depicting different pagan scenes. If you stand with your back to the door and look up to where the wall meets the ceiling, you’ll see a wonderful relief sculpture by Pietro Bernini, father of the great Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
It is much more than a simple relief: This sculpture shows Marcus Curtius famously throwing himself into a chasm. An earthquake in the fourth century B.C. is responsible for creating the chasm. As the story goes, the pagans, who believed nothing happened by chance, searched for a reason why this earthquake would form such a deep chasm right in the center of Rome.
They consulted an augur, who said that the gods required the Romans to fill the chasm with their most precious possession. Marcus Curtius responded that courage was Rome’s most valuable possession. He mounted his horse fully decorated and leapt into the chasm, which closed around him saving Rome.
Boy With A Basket Of Fruit By Caravaggio (Room VIII)
Boy with a Basket of Fruit is an oil on canvas from 1593 by Caravaggio (also known as Michelangelo Merisi) at just 22 years old in Milan. The work now lives in Room VII of the Borghese Gallery for your viewing pleasure.
Caravaggio utilized an art form known as chiaroscuro, which simply means “light-dark”. He used shadows to accentuate the details of his subject. This art form started around the time of Raphael’s Transfiguration in 1520 but did not become popular until the baroque period with Caravaggio and Rembrandt championing chiaroscuro.
This is an early Caravaggio painting but among the first where you can sort of see sickness in him. Caravaggio lost both his parents at an early age and abused many substances. A large number of his subjects were prostitutes or the homeless, which you can see by the amount of dirt on their bodies. However, this painting is an exception.
Perdue famously studied the fruit in this painting and made various remarks about the stunning accuracy of Caravaggio’s paintbrush. He didn’t miss a detail. You could compare this level of accuracy in a subject holding a bowl or basket of fruit to scoring a three-pointer in basketball from all the way across the court or landing a hail mary in American football.
Why? Because all the curves and color combinations make it extremely difficult to paint. One wrong brush stroke and the picture is no longer believable.
Young St. John The Baptist (Room VIII)
Right next to Boy with a Basket of Fruit is Caravaggio’s John in the Wilderness, depicting a tired and frail St. John the Baptist. The overwhelming sadness of this painting both draws you in and pushes you away.
An art critic off the street would say that John is grief-stricken thinking of the imminent sacrifice of Jesus Christ. However, anyone who knows the work of Caravaggio would probably say that he hired a poor boy off the street to sit for the painting, who became bored, and Caravaggio painted it.
According to history, Scipione Borghese and his uncle Pope Paul V stole this painting, along with Sick Bacchus and Boy with a Basket of Fruit. They belonged to Giuseppe Cesari, who allegedly had been wrongfully imprisoned—an opportune moment for the Borghese duo to confiscate the art.
Be sure to notice the general dirtiness of the boy, especially across his chest and shoulders. Accustomed to the streets, Caravaggio often found models in the lowest of places to save money.
St. Jerome By Caravaggio (Room VIII)
St. Jerome is a wonderful painting that shows one of the most important events in Christian history: the translation of the Bible from Greek to Latin.
Many take for granted how difficult it was to spread knowledge for a very long time. Today, we have Google to do everything for us, as scary as that is. But if you were a Christian living in Rome in the fourth century and didn’t speak Greek, you really weren’t much of a Christian until St. Jerome.
His Latin translation allowed the people of Rome who only spoke Latin to read and adopt the bible.
David With The Head Of Goliath (Room VIII)
The figure David is often the subject of works of art due to his importance in biblical history. This particular version by Caravaggio shows David beheading Goliath as he looks down in triumph.
Caravaggio painted his own likeness in the face of Goliath, which was the seed of many theories about the meaning behind this work. Many of Caravaggio’s paintings are extremely sexual in nature and this one is no exception. Notice the placement of the boy’s sword in his crotch.
Some believe the boy is the likeness of “Cecco” who was a studio assistant and possibly a lover of Caravaggio. Others believe that David is also a self-portrait of Caravaggio, and so the painting displays a younger and older version of Caravaggio.
However, the most popular explanation by tour guides is that the painting was a gift for Pope Paul V. Caravaggio killed a man in a bar fight a few years early and fled Rome. He had been on the run for some time with a death sentence on his head. He may have painted it as a gift to Paul V when he was granted a pardon.
Unfortunately, he never returned to Rome. Caravaggio, plagued with illness due to his lifestyle, died on his return in 1610. This was one of his last paintings.
Sick Bacchus By Caravaggio (Room VIII)
Sick Bacchus is another famous painting by Caravaggio found in Scipione Borghese’s former estate. You may be wondering, “How many paintings did he paint?” He has over 300 known works in existence. He could paint one in two to three weeks—extremely fast even for a great artist.
Not a self-portrait, Sick Bacchus could be a portrait of Caravaggio’s inner-self. Widely known to be the Roman god of agriculture, wine, and fertility, this immediately makes Bacchus one of the world’s most beloved gods!
The oil on canvas shows a very sick and depleted Bacchus. Caravaggio struggled with substance abuse—drinking in particular. The image clearly portrays this, leaving very little to be missed. This is the last painting by the baroque master in room VIII before moving on to sculptures by Bernini.
Aeneas, Anchises, And Ascanius By Bernini (Room VI)
Completed in 1619, Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius is one of Bernini’s lesser-mentioned sculptures. It beautifully portrays Aeneas’ flight from Rome, as described in the Aeneid after Troy was sacked by the Greeks.
Aeneas leaves with his father, Anchises, on his shoulder and son Ascanius in tow. They would leave Troy and land in Italy where later their lineage, Romulus, would come to found the city and people of Rome. His father carries a pot with the ashes of their ancestors and two Roman household gods.
As you can see, the people of Rome were obsessed with and defined by their Roman lineage in the 17th century. Who wouldn’t be?
The sculpture is an incredible sign of Bernini’s future talent. From the engineering feat of carrying so much weight with such little support to the details in the body. Be sure to take a look at the difference in the skin of the father, son, and child. The older father’s skin hangs and sags. The son is in his prime with tight skin. And the toddler son still has baby fat. This is a very difficult thing to realize when working with stone—all the while trying to make sure the entire thing doesn’t topple over on you.
The Rape Of Proserpina By Bernini (Room IV)
This really shows Bernini’s engineering marvel. Designed for Borghese’s largest entertaining room and the attention of his guests, the statue features a violent twisting scene of Pluto coming to claim his wife Proserpina.
It was completed around 1622, a few years after the last statue. Today, Bernini’s most famed statue in the gallery is Apollo and Daphne, and for good reason. But in the 17th century, this was undoubtedly the prize of Borghese’s collection.
The story is that Pluto, the god of the dead and underworld, came to abduct Proserpina, goddess of agriculture and daughter of Jupiter, the god of gods, while she was picking flowers one afternoon.
Out of sadness, Proserpina stopped making the world bloom and all things died. Jupiter intervened and made a deal with Pluto. Proserpina would spend half the year with Pluto and half the year above ground. In this incredible story, we see how early people struggled with the idea of the seasons and how to explain them. A story of gods makes it easier to digest.
The statue behind it is phenomenal and was met with rave reviews upon its completion. An incredibly violent twisting action shows Pluto in all his strength taking Proserpina from the world.
Make sure you look for three things. First, Pluto’s fingers gripping into Proserpina’s thighs (above). You get the feeling and texture of our legs and how they differ from Pluto’s hand. His fingers grip into what we recognize as the thigh of a woman. It is all obviously an illusion by the master, Bernini, because they are literally cut from the same stone.
Also, look for the sweat dripping from Pluto’s back. No, it’s not a watermark or stain—it is Bernini giving life to stone. Finally, look for light shining through the cloak of Proserpina. Bernini sanded it down so thin it is almost transparent. Incredible!
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