Day 32 - Borghese Museum

The Borghese Museum is a little bit of a diamond in the rough type deal. I knew you had to book in advance to get in and was able to do this eventually. Staff at the hostel hadn't really heard of it, let alone been in it and didn't really know too much about the whole booking side of it. This would mean that it would 'weed out' a lot of the tourists as you can't just rock up on the day.

Basically Cardinal Borghese during the 17th century was the uncle of the pope. Thus if he liked art pieces and you didn't give it to him, he'd threaten you with prison or death and just take the art pieces anyway.

Thus he was able to build up a great collection of artworks and he was the main patron for Bernini when he was starting out (main sculpturor of the Baroque period - 100 years after Michangelo). The downside was that they only let you into the museum for 2 hours before asking you to leave - hence why you have to book in advance, high demand, low supply of places.

That being said, it was absolutely amazing! The sculptures by Bernini were fantastic as he really does have a way of making marble have the texture of flesh or whatever is appropriate. There were numerous works by Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Correggio and an early Rubens painting (thus was fascinationg to see how 'immature' his work started off and developed over the course of his life).

So after quickly skimming the surface of each work for about an hour and a half, I went and made a couple of sketches of the statutues in the remaining time - how I'd love to have more time! The place was just unbelieveable as I knew a significant number of the pieces in detail but even if you didn't, the sculptures would be brilliant to view.