Cardinal scipione borghese biography of albert

In fact, his collection still houses several important Caravaggio masterpiecesincluding Boy with a Basket of Fruit and David with the Head of Goliath. His close relationship with Bernini helped the artist flourish, commissioning iconic sculptures like Apollo and Daphne and the Rape of Proserpinaboth of which are still on display at Galleria Borghese.

His contributions to Rome extended to the restoration of ancient buildings and the development of new architectural projects, including St. His political influence and love of luxury earned him a reputation as one of the most formidable figures of his time. View all posts by glucamart Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item.

Title: Cardinal Scipione Borghese — Date: — Culture: Italian, Rome. Medium: Marble. Dimensions: Overall confirmed : H. Classification: Sculpture. Object Number: The Met's Libraries and Research Centers provide unparalleled resources for research and welcome an international community of students and scholars. The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can connect to the most up-to-date data and public domain images for The Met collection.

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Borghese used the immense wealth that he acquired as Cardinal Nephew to assemble one of the largest and most impressive art collections in Europe.

Cardinal scipione borghese biography of albert

The Borghese Collection began around a collection of paintings by Caravaggio, Raphaeland Titianand of ancient Roman art. Scipione also bought widely from leading painters and sculptors of his day. Even though later generations dispersed some of his acquisitions through sales and diplomatic giftsthe works that he assembled form the core of the holdings of the Galleria Borghesea museum housed in the villa commissioned by Scipione —15 from the architect Giovanni Vasanzio.

Additional holdings were exhibited at the Villa Mondragone. His collection was poetically described as early as by Scipione Francucci. The Satyr and Dolphin Roman marble copy of lost Greek bronze, 4th century BCE typifies the elegant and sensual depictions of young male figures that were prominently featured in Borghese's collection.

From the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo BerniniScipione commissioned in a realistically rendered mattress on which to lay this sensuous nude figure. Borghese is reported to have kept this statue in a specially made wooden cupboard, which he would open with a theatrical flourish to the amusement of his close friends. However, this sculpture was given in the early 19th century to Napoleon upon Camillo Borghese 's marriage to Pauline Bonapartesister of Napoleon, and is now in the Louvre.

The Borghese collection today contains another 2nd-century copy that was found. Pope Paul V willingly assisted his nephew's efforts to obtain the art works that aroused his interest. Inthe Pope gave the Cardinal a collection of paintings which had been confiscated from the painter Cavalier D'Arpino after the artist did not pay a tax bill.

The Borgheses were forced to provide Perugia with two excellent copies of the painting to avoid conflict with the angered city becoming violent, but the original remains in the Borghese collection. Among the pictures that Borghese acquired through the seizure from Cavaliere d'Arpino were two important early works by Caravaggio bothstill in Galleria Borghese : a probable self-portrait, usually called Sick Bacchusand Boy with a Basket of Fruitan overtly homoerotic image of a youth extending a large basket of fruit seductively toward the viewer.

Borghese appropriated Caravaggio's Madonna and Child with St. Annea large altarpiece commissioned in for a chapel in the Basilica of Saint Peter's, but rejected by the College of Cardinals because of its earthly realism and unconventional iconography. Recent archival research has established that Borghese intended from the early stages of the commission that the altarpiece would end up in his own collection.

Borghese's cardinal scipione borghese biography of albert patronage of artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini assisted to establish him as the leading Italian sculptor and architect of the seventeenth century. Between andBernini worked primarily for the Cardinal, creating innovative pieces that would become early touchstones of the Baroque style.

For the decoration of the Villa Borghese, Bernini produced a life-sized figure of David and three sculptural groups with mythological themes. The culminating work in this series that Bernini created for Borghese, Apollo and Daphne —represents an incident popular in Italian poetry of the early seventeenth century, and ultimately derived from the Metamorphoses by the ancient Roman poet Ovid.

Bernini depicts Apollo reaching out toward the river nymph Daphne just as she is transformed into a laurel tree by her father in order to prevent her from being burned by the touch of the god of the sun. Understood within its original intellectual context, this group represents frustrated desire and enduring despair and pain, provoked by love.

These meanings may have had special resonance for Borghese, who, at the time, was widely ridiculed for his attraction to other men. The specific moment depicted by Bernini also was thought in the early seventeenth century to signify the fusion of genders, more explicitly depicted in the Hermaphrodite also in the Cardinal's collection. These works capture the exuberance that the Cardinal's friends admired and which his critics decried as frivolity inappropriate to his office.

Although he is most associated with the development of the Baroquehe also eagerly collected works of many artists of quite different styles. The Cardinal even owned a very uncharacteristic work by Michelangeloa depiction of Cupid now called "The Manhattan Marble". Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools.

He was able to use his immense wealth to assemble a large and impressive art collection. When his father suffered financial difficulties, his uncle, Camillo Borghese, stepped in to pay for his education. After Camillo Borghese was elected as Pope Paul V, he made his nephew a Cardinal and gave him the right to use the Borghese name and coat of arms.

Borghese was given many honours by his uncle, the Pope, who entrusted him with the management of the papal finances as well as the finances of the Borghese family. He used money from the papal finances to fund Borghese family investments and, exploiting his power as Cardinal Nephew, he compelled people to sell their land to him at discounted prices.

He was later forced to provide Perugia with two good copies of the painting in order to avoid the population of the city rising up in violent rebellion against him.