At the Colosseum, but looking out into the city, I liked the way the colors of these buildings coincided.

[above is a bust of Scipione Borghese - please see the comments for information about the sculptor]

Galleria Borghese is named for the man who put most of the gallery’s collection together - the man who owned the property and building where the art is housed. His original name was Scipione Caffarelli and he was the nephew of Pope Paul V (originally named Camillo Borghese). This pope made Scipione into a cardinal, at which point he earned the right to take on the Borghese family name and coat of arms. He was then known as Cardinal Scipione Borghese and acted as the pope’s secretary. This position and proximity to the pope gave Cardinal Borghese tremendous power, a power that he used and abused to put together what is now one of the world’s renowned art collections.

The gallery does not try to hide this fact. In the gallery a description of Borghese states that he used his powers to confiscate art works or to force people to make donations. A history of the Borghese gallery I found online seems to mirror a sign I read in the gallery. It reads:

The collection’s character was influenced by the capricious nature of its owner who had little love of affairs of state and was more inclined to indulge his personal whims and, above all, his passion for art. The original core is characterised by Scipione’s interest in every form of antique and Classical art - to be exclusion of medieval works - and his openness to the most innovative artistic movements of his times. Its richness was the result of unscrupulous appropriation and tyrannical extortion by the “cardinal nepote” leading the inclusion of the collection of the Cavalier D’Arpino with paintings by Caravaggio, of Domenichino’s Diana (1613), of the paintings from the Ferrara School including works by Garofalo and Dosso Dossi, and Raphael’s Deposition (1507). These were joined by gifts and acquisitions such as the antique sculptures of Tiberio Ceuli (1607), the collections of the sculptor Giovanni Battista della Porta (1608), of the Patriarch of the Aquileia (1609), of Cesare d’Este with paintings by Dosso (acquired with the help of Cardinal E. Bentivoglio, and of Cardinal Sfondrato 1608, with Ventian works by Titian and G. Reni).

In a sense, as I understand it, being a cardinal and the pope’s nephew conferred upon Cardinal Borghese the power of ‘eminent domain‘ and he used it ruthlessly. People have used state power to do things that are a lot worse than amassing great art collections - but reading about this theft and plunder early on our trip left me pondering the degree to which the abuse of state power may have contributed to all the wonders we were seeing.

I wonder if anyone could go through Galleria Borghese and leave without being a fan of the sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. His works are amazingly detailed and beautiful.

One of the factors at play in Rome is that you see a lot of statues/sculptures of people who are part of the Christian narrative. However, there are still a good number of pieces that reflect ancient Rome’s dedication to the gods and characters that appear in the Greek myths. Some of these statues/sculptures are at least as interesting (if not more so) than those depicting Christian stories. That may sound heretical to some. But while I’m intrigued and awed by the lives of Christian religious figures such as Peter, Paul and Mary - I still feel a strong enthusiasm for the Greek and Roman myths I read as a child. Let’s just say that a statue of Theseus beheading Medusa is going to catch my attention and interest very quickly - more quickly perhaps than a static standing figure holding a cross or a key or a sword. As I walked through Rome, at times I found myself wishing there were more of the mythology-based statues and sculptures to look at.

The Borghese Gallery has a wonderful sculpture depicting a climactic moment in the story of Apollo and Daphne. In the story, Apollo criticizes Cupid, and Cupid then starts using his arrows to create some mischief on Apollo. Consequently, the ardent Apollo is pursuing Daphne but she has no interest in him. As he is about to overcome her by force, she feels that her beauty has become a curse. She appeals to her father (a river God) that her form will be changed and he changes her into a laurel tree.

Imagine trying to sculpt a statue of a person changing into a laurel tree. That seems like it would be ridiculously hard. Bernini took on that challenge and created something that is truly beautiful. Again, the Borghese Gallery did not allow us to take photographs, so I had to pull an image from the internet.

A sculpture is, of course, a three-dimension work of art. This is one of the reasons that Michelangelo felt that sculpture was a superior art form to painting - and one of the reasons that Michelangelo expressed scorn for Leonardo da Vinci, who favored painting.

In his statue of Apollo and Daphne, Bernini uses that three-dimensional dynamic to its full potential effect. This is a sculpture of a chase - and if you approach it from the Apollo side you can see very clearly that Apollo is doing his utmost to capture her and she is doing everything she can to escape him.

One of my favorite details of the statue was seeing how the toes and feet and fingers of Daphne were turning into a tree trunk, tree roots and tendrils.

The ultimate effect and detail of his work is spectacular. I’m afraid a picture and my words here aren’t doing it much justice.

Last week Diane and I had a very nice vacation in Italy - visiting both Rome and Florence. We were very excited to take this trip - our first time leaving the United States together and ‘going abroad.’ Neither of us had been to Italy before. In fact my experiences in Europe have been very limited up until now.

I’ll be writing up posts about things we learned and enjoyed doing and also I’ll also include some of the 674 digital pictures we took while we were there.

This blog might be about our Italy trip for awhile … so I hope people will be patient with me on that score. This morning we sat down together and wrote up some basic notes about our trip. I plan to use my blog to fill in those notes a little bit - but it may take awhile since there was so much that was new and exciting for us in that part of the world.

We left on Friday afternoon (11/9/07) for JFK airport and got back last night (11/16/07).

While in Rome we stayed at Hotel Gambrinus.

I really liked this hotel. The staff there was very quick to help out with requests and to provide directions to places we wanted to go. One time I picked up some food and brought it back to the hotel and asked them if we could “borrow a plate.” Right away someone dashed down to the dining area and grabbed a couple of plates and some forks and brought them to me. It was a simple thing, but I appreciated how friendly and responsive they were.

The hotel location was pretty good as well.

The hotel also provided a computer with free internet access. Sometimes a person had to wait to use the computer - but I was surprised that it was free. We did not bring a laptop along with us and we were not using our cell phones (though we had them with us) - so that service came in handy for sending quick notes to family and friends.

On the adjoining streets near our hotel there were some orange trees. I’ve never seen fruit trees in such a busy urban landscape before and thought that was pretty cool. I imagine an orange might occasionally fall on the windshield of a parked car - but I doubt it causes any damage. I wonder if anyone ever eats the oranges. Regardless, it’s a very nice thing to see.