Classical Sculpture in Rome’s Galleria Borghese

 by Anya Shankar

Galleria Borghese is one of Rome’s most spectacular art galleries. Having visited over the Christmas break, I had the opportunity to see some of the most beautiful sculptures and paintings in Italy’s capital. Containing works of Bernini, Caravaggio and Rafael, Galleria Borghese is an art lover's dream. The palace dates back to the seventeenth century when it was the private home of art enthusiast Scipione Borghese, who was an Italian Cardinal and had the villa built to replicate an Ancient Roman villa. 

My favourite piece in the gallery was Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s ‘Apollo and Daphne’, a life-sized Baroque marble sculpture depicting the God Apollo and Nymph Daphne as told in Ovid’s metamorphoses. The story behind the sculpture is captured in transformation, sexual appetite, and terror. After Eros shoots his arrow at Apollo, he falls desperately in love with Daphne who fearfully avoids his advances. When he catches up to her, she sacrifices her human body to give way to a laurel tree. Bernini shows this mid-way through her transformation, with rough bark climbing its way up Daphne’s legs, leaves growing from her fingers and roots trailing from her toes. I was completely mesmerised by this sculpture for its intricate details. Bernini explored formal imbalance within his work - arching bodies, billowing robes, and howling faces - to challenge his carving abilities and convey drama and human emotion. Bernini expertly captures the raw emotion of terror on Daphne’s face and the blank admiration of Apollo, while showing all the curls on the girl's head and the body’s growth of bark. The longer you look, the more details you discover and its creation becomes increasingly inconceivable to the mind.

Another of Bernini’s sculptures is featured in one of the first rooms in the gallery. Called ‘the Abduction of Proserpina’, the sculpture shows the God Pluto carrying Goddess Proserpina with Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld at his feet. Bernini was only twenty-three years old when he made this artwork, having been commissioned by the cardinal. As described in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the story that unfolds is one of desperation and fear. Proserpina was the daughter of Ceres and Jupiter, once when she was collecting flowers, Pluto, God of the underworld saw her and fell in love with her, thus he took her with him into the underworld. Ceres was furious, so she made all the land on earth dry and barren, starving mortals on Earth. Jupiter made a deal with Ceres, that Proserpina would return to Earth for half a year to be with her mother and the other half she would spend with Pluto. The characters of the sculpture have easily readable emotions and expressive faces. Proserpine struggles to avoid Pluto’s excessive fury, while Pluto is powerful and strong. Many stood to marvel at the sculpture, the way Pluto’s large hands grip the soft marble of Proserpina’s thigh, giving the illusion of genuine human flesh. The curls on the sculptures’ hair are masterfully executed, having been captured in motion, along with the natural lines and curves of the body and Pluto’s defined muscles, showing Bernini’s mastery of anatomy. Bernini evokes emotion and drama in the piece through the frozen tear on Proserpina’s cheek and the desperation in her eyes, making this a particularly poignant sculpture. 

Bernini’s ‘Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius’ depicts a scene from Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas, the hero of the poem, carries his family fleeing from burning Troy. The sculpture was created when Bernini was only twenty years old. It is assumed that Pietro Bernini, father of Gian Lorenzo, helped his son in the sculpture’s creation. This life-sized group represents three generations of the Aeneas family, with the elderly Anchises on Aeneas’ shoulders, who carries two figures in his hands, known as the Trojan penates or household gods and his son Ascanius trailing behind. Aeneas and his family fled Troy after its fall at the hands of the Greeks and the Trojan horse. The subject was potent for the Cardinal because it confirmed a dynastic celebration, Aeneas being considered an ancestor of the Borghese family, while simultaneously representing the birth of Rome. The Aeneid sets the scene for the narrative that this sculpture intends to invoke, through this quote: ’So come, dear father, climb up onto my shoulders! I will carry you on my back. This labour of love will never wear me down.’” Aeneas’ facial expression portrays a determination with a twinge of worry, and it was duty that drove him forward. His devotion to his father and to the gods represented his respect for traditional Roman values and displayed his pietas. Ascanius carries the eternal flame of Troy which represents the future of Rome which Aeneas would later found.

Classical sculpture is often hailed as the cornerstone of western art. Sculpture told mythic narratives as well as community history, gave access to the divine and often commemorated victories and individuals.