The Borghese Gallery, Rome

The Borghese Gallery (Italian: Galleria Borghese) in Rome is an art gallery housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana, a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens. The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese ollection of paintings, sculpturCardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). The Villa was built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio developing sketches by Scipione Borghese himself, who used it as a villa suburbana, a party villa at the edge of Rome.Scipione Borghese was an early patron ofBernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection by his Boy with a Basket of Fruit, St. Jerome, Sick Bacchus and others. Other paintings of note include Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, aphael's depiction of the Entombment of Christ and works by Peter Paul Rubens and Federico Barocci.The Casina Borghese lies on the outskirts of seventeenth-century Rome. By 1644, John Evelyn described it as an Elysium of delight with Fountains of sundry inventions, Groves and small Rivulets of Water. Evelyn also described the Vivarium; that housed ostriches, peacocks, swans and cranes and divers strange Beasts.