If you are an art lover, it helps to get a collection going if your uncle is the pope and nepotism is the order of the day. Becoming a cardinal, getting the necessary income and influence happen just like that – and before you notice, you have a huge collection, a large villa and a reputation.
This was the approach of Scipione Borghese (above left, a drawing of Bernini’s bust at the Galleria Borghese), whose uncle was pope Paul V (above right in a mosaic by Marcello Provenzale). He collected Caravaggio, Bernini, Bassano and others, had the pope’s favourite architect to draw a villa for the collection, and bequested all of this to his heirs. The collection has been added to, and has also lost items – some were given to Napoleon after his sister married a Borghese (these ended up in the Louvre). Soon afterwards, the remaining collection was preserved as a whole, and taken over by the state in 1902. It has stayed in Villa Borghese, described as ‘delizia di Roma’.
Key items of the Galleria Borghese are currently visiting Paris. They include Caravaggio’s well-known ‘Boy with a Basket of Fruit’ (above left), Bernini’s self-portrait (above right), Rubens’s ‘Susanna and the Elders’ (below left), Lorenzo Lotto’s ‘Madonna and Child with Saints Ignatius of Antioch and Onuphrius’ (below center), and a copy of Leonardo’s ‘Leda and the Swan’ (below right) – here the original has been lost to the mists of time. Not to forget Raphael’s ‘Young Woman with Unicorn’ (title picture) – unicorn being a symbol of chastity, of all things.
The exhibition ‘Chefs-d’oeuvre de la Galerie Borghèse’ is at the Musée Jacquemart-André until 5 January 2025.
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