The Galleria Borghese is among the most famous art galleries in Rome. This museum complex houses a large part of the Borghese Collection of paintings, sculptures and antiquities, initiated by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection with the Boy with Basket of Fruit, Saint Jerome Writing, Sick Bacchus and others.
Note of merit for the marvellous Salone: this, in fact, features a large fresco on the ceiling of the first room, the work of the Sicilian artist Mariano Rossi, who makes such good use of foreshortening that it seems almost three-dimensional. The fresco depicts Marcus Furius Camillus relieving the siege of the Capitol by the Gauls.
The first room of the Salon is the Chamber of Ceres, with a marble vase depicting Oedipus and the Sphinx. The second room has a ceiling frescoed by Francesco Caccianiga with the Fall of Phaeton. The third room houses Bernini's Apollo and Daphne.
It is precisely the works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini that make up a significant percentage of his production of secular sculpture, starting with early works such as the Goat Amalthea with Child Jupiter and Faun (1615) and Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (1618-19) up to the dynamic Rape of Proserpine (1621-22), Apollo and Daphne (1622-25) and David (1623) , considered seminal works of Baroque sculpture.
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