My Favorite Artworks at Galleria Borghese, Rome

After the miracle of the Musei Vaticani (Vatican Museums), it might be tempting to say that I was saturated and couldn't take in any.  But my greediness knew no bound, therefore, my pilgrimage continued, in the eternal city itself.

The other major art museum in Rome, besides the Vatican and the Musei Capitolini, is Galleria Borghese - the Borghese Gallery, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. "The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621)." [Wikipedia]

I remembered that during my visit to Roma, in late September, it was very still quite hot and I was very grateful to be inside the cool villa after long trek in the endless garden ground.  The museum's arrangement was like that in someone's own home - a supremely rich person's home.  I saw the art collections as the residents or guests would have seen, only need to remind myself that they ought not to be touched.

The scale of the villa, though big, was not as big as a palace, therefore deeply deceptive.  I was constantly amazed at how many treasures it had held.  It had a hugely important sculpture collections and some very important paintings.  Flipping through the materials I collected and browse online, I zoom in for these two my favorites:


Apollo and Daphne Carrara's marble cm. 243 | Gian Lorenzo Bernini

This tall marble sculpture by the great sculpture Gian Lorenzo Bernini, was a marvel, vividly captured the moment Daphne, fleeing from the passion of Apollo, transformed into a laurel tree.  Look at how the barks started to encase her lithe body and how her flowing hair and the tips of her hands were turning into leafy branches, therefore the obvious characteristics of Baroque epoch. 

The official website of the Galleria provided further details on this masterpiece: "This life-size marble sculpture, begun by Bernini at the age of twenty-four and executed between 1622 and 1625, has always been housed in the same villa, but originally stood on a lower and narrower base set against the wall near the stairs. Consequently anyone entering the room first saw Apollo from behind, then the fleeing nymph appeared in the process of metamorphosis: bark covers most of her body, but according to Ovid's lines, Apollo's hand can still feel her heart beating beneath it. In 1785, when Marcantonio IV Borghese decided to place the work in the centre of the room, Vincenzo Pacetti designed the present base by using the original pieces, adding plaster to the plinth and another cartouche bearing the Borghese eagle, sculpted by Lorenzo Cardelli."

The second piece of my favorite in this Gelleria is an enigmatic painting by the great Titian (Tiziano), Sacred and Profane Love:


Sacred and Profane Love (1514 ca.) oil on canvas cm. 118x279 | Titian

This painting, made when Titian was about twenty-five to celebrate the marriage of the Venetian Nicolò Aurelio (coat of arms on the sarcophagus) and Laura Bagarotto in 1514, was actually a celebration of beauty of perfection and the chaste and stern woman in white was the bride herself, accompanied by Cupid and Venus, in her most alluring pose and attire. The strong contrast of these two evocative and provocative figures, the wonderful Arcadian landscape, and the playful putto, constituted an enchanting lyrical poetry.

According to the Galleria's description, the current allegorical title "is the result of a late 18th-century interpretation of the painting, which gives a moralistic reading of the nude figure, whereas the artist intended this to be an exaltation of both earthly and heavenly love. Titian's Sacred and Profane Love has virtually become the symbol of the Borghese Gallery itself."


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My Favorite Paintings at National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is the second major art museum I've visited, after the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.

It was long time ago and I had to admit that the museum didn't leave much an impression on me.  Yet, dig into my memory and the official website from the Gallery, it was not hard to remember those two paintings made the most impressions on me.

My first pick is an oil painting, Ranuccio Farnese, by the incomparable master, Tiziano, or Titian.


Titian, Italian, c. 1490 - 1576
Ranuccio Farnese, 1542
oil on canvas
overall: 89.7 x 73.6 cm (35 5/16 x 29 in.) framed: 124.8 x 126.4 x 9.5 cm (49 1/8 x 49 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.)

This portrait of the delicate youth captured the first bloom of him wonderfully. The complexity of the expression on this precocious boy's face is beyond his age and one pains for him.  Titian, a true master of Venetian school, excelled in his handling of the oil paints and his colors, particularly those on the doublet of the boy, simmered, and one wants to feel the silky surface of the fabric, revealing the master's signature technique of applying numerous layers of translucent oil glazes.

National Gallery stated that the painting was "commissioned as a gift for the boy's mother, this portrait of twelve-year-old Ranuccio was painted in Venice just after he had been made prior, or religious director, of San Giovanni dei Forlani, an important property belonging to the Knights of Malta. The grandson of Pope Paul III, Ranuccio was the youngest member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Italy. He became cardinal of Santa Lucia in Sicily at the age of fifteen, and he was granted several bishoprics before his untimely death at the age of thirty-five."

My second favorite work there was another portrait, in the same melancholic vein.  This portrait, by the Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden, of the ethereal young lady was as delicate and beautiful as those by the more renown Botticelli.  The artist created wonderful linear contours of the woman - her high-cheek-boned face, her gauzy headdress, her swan-like thin, long neck, her small waist and her delicate facial features, all contributed to the otherworldliness of this young lady.

More over, the colors Van der Weyden employed were sparse, austere, yet exceptionally beautiful.  The large central area was in pale skin tone and creamy colors of the headdress, framed by rich black robe and deep greenish-blue flat background.  Echoing a pale golden hair band on the top of the panel, a richly-accented red belt broke the dark areas of the robe and the background, and added some weight to the bottom of the panel, therefore gave the figure and the work more balance.


Rogier van der Weyden, Netherlandish, 1399/1400 - 1464
Portrait of a Lady, c. 1460 oil on panel
painted surface: 34 x 25.5 cm (13 3/8 x 10 1/16 in.) overall (panel): 37 x 27 cm (14 9/16 x 10 5/8 in.) framed: 60.9 x 53.3 x 11.4 cm (24 x 21 x 4 1/2 in.)

The National Gallery informs us that Rogier was among the greatest painters of northern Europe. His inventiveness and emotional intensity had great and lasting influence.

It also pointed out that the painting has "a severe balance of pattern and form -- notice the interlocking triangles in her veil and neckline -- creates a brittle, abstract elegance that is typical of Rogier's portraits. Details are reduced to geometric clarity, and the face is painted in a restrained, linear manner."



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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

My Favorite Paintings at Cincinnati Art Museum

The first American city I lived after graduation from an American university was Cincinnati and its art museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, became my first home museum I have explored multiple times.  This happened after I'd visited some wonderful museums in the US, including Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and National Gallery in Washington, D.C., but a home museum is a home museum and the easy access made it special.

The Cincinnati Art Museum features an unparalleled art collection of more than 60,000 works spanning 6,000 years and boasts of works by Andrea Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Thomas Gainsborough, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase and Paul Cezanne, etc. Amongst works by these renowned masters and other worthy artists, I chose two paintings as my favorites from that museum.

The first choice is a painting by Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) - Portrait of Philip II.  It is a quite disturbing painting.  We see the king of Spain sat uneasily in his armchair, in wonderful slashed gown and chain of knight order, and a crown on head.  But he was hardly regal.  His weasel like feature and his furtive side glance made one wince and cowed.  This is a sickly monarch tormented by some inner conflict.  Only after some mental adjustment, one could move away from gazing into his penetrating eyes and wander about to see the surroundings of this king, and realized the wonderful touches Titian had.  This painting is the manifestation of wonders of those venetian masterpieces - buoyant color palette and lively brushstroke, etc.  It also had the hallmark of the psychological insight of Titian.  It is a marvelous piece.


Portrait Of Philip II, Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) (Italian, b.Circa 1488-Circa 1490, d.1576), Circa 1550-Circa 1551
42 3/16 x 36 1/2 in. (107.2 x 92.7 cm), framed 60 1/4 x 54 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. (153 x 137.8 x 13.3 cm), oil on canvas

The second favorite of mine is a unfinished piece by the French painter Honoré Daumier - the equivalent of a social-realist writers like Émile Zola or Theodore Dreiser.  Even in the unfinished stage, this painting had great beauty to recommend it.  The delicate profile of the character on the forefront, the flowing lines and the moody atmosphere gave me an impression that any extra paint would be unnecessary.  For a painter, it is often hard to judge when to stop.  Sometimes, the inability to complete did result in a wonderfully complete piece as this.  It also revealed, at least partially, the process of Daumier and that always holds special interest for me, therefore, I chose this my second favorite, despite many other more polished pieces.

 
Orchestra Stalls, Honoré Daumier (French, b.1808, d.1879), Circa 1865
23 1/2 x 33 1/4 in. (59.8 x 84.3 cm), oil on canvas


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First Time Italian Renaissance Sounded in My Ear

The first time I heard the pronunciation of Italian Renaissance (in Chinese) with my own ears was a watershed moment for me.

I had read about Renaissance at that time but this word had never entered into the vocabularies of the people I had any conversation with. The sound of Italian Renaissance (Yi-Da-Li Wen-Yi-Fu-Xing Shi-Qi) sounded like the best wine to my years.

I was in elementary school but had been a veteran of museum and art exhibition going, thanks to my well-educated parents, and particularly my father, who was working in the province culture bureau, therefore, we were able to visit galleries, museums, movies, theaters, dances at least weekly, if not more. However, most of the exhibitions were in the line of socialist realism, which became boring rather quickly and I was never too enamored with sweaty steel mill workers or peasants. The relieves from all these are in the form of pastoral landscape and idyllic lies didn't really existed in then China, and those relieves soon grew into banality.

One can imagine how I responded when suddenly I was confronted with artworks (reproductions, alas) from Italian Renaissance time. It was a special exhibit hosted in Liaoning Province Fine Art Museum in Shenyang. I believe that the show was curated by Italian Culture Ministry and though all the works were reproduction only, mounted in lightboxes, like the advertising boxes we see daily now, they really shook me to the core at an impressible age.



Those images truly opened my eyes and I was absolutely smitten by masterpieces originated in Florence, Vatican, Rome, Padua, Milan, etc. Finally, I was gratified to know that beyond the banality existed something of true beauty.

At that humble time, I never thought that I might have chance to see many of these amazing works with my own eyes! Such as the Birth of Venus by Botticelli in Uffizi!


The Birth of Venus, c. 1486, by Sandro Botticelli, collection of Uffizi Gallery, Florence

"Gomorra"

Last Saturday, I saw an Italian movie "Gomorra," (Gomorrah) directed by Matteo Garrone, based on book by Roberto Saviano. The screenplay was credited to Maurizio Braucci, et al.

It contained a series of brutal and heart wrenching tales in gangster- and drug-infested Naples, Italy, concentrated on a housing project compound that had the character of a human dump. Watching people trapped in the hopeless situations was difficult and sobering experience. The movie was brutal but not nauseating. Violence was portrayed as a matter of fact, not depicted as sensual experience as Hollywood might have done, or pornographic sadism, à la Mel Gibson.

Such a hard life, trapped in eternal hopelessness reminded me a Romanian movie: "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, which told a story that takes place in Romania in 1987. Different culture, different class of people, different variety of trap, yet the same bleakness. Inevitably, I also think about the many human tragedies happening everywhere.

Humankind is damned, but some people are more damned than others.