A pleasure place created by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, this magnificent building was erected as a showcase for his fabulous antiquities collection. The Casino Borghese, as the building is known, was built in 1613 partly to house the cardinal's rich collections of painting and sculpture and partly to provide an elegant venue for summer parties and musical evenings. Today, it's a monument to Roman 17th-century interior decoration at its most extravagant: room after room opulently adorned with porphyry and alabaster and topped with vast ceiling frescoes make for an eye-popping spectacle unequaled in Rome. With the passage of time, the building has become less celebrated than the collections housed inside, which includes one of the finest collections of Baroque sculpture anywhere.

Like the gardens, the casino and its collections have undergone many changes since the 17th century. Camillo Borghese, the husband of Napoléon's sister Pauline, was responsible for most of them. He sold off a substantial number of the paintings to Napoléon and swapped 200 of the classical sculptures for an estate in Piedmont, in northern Italy, also courtesy of Napoléon. These paintings and sculptures are all still in the Louvre in Paris. At the end of the 19th century a later member of the family, Francesco Borghese, replaced some of the gaps in the collections and also transferred to the casino the remaining works of art housed in Palazzo Borghese. In 1902 the casino, its contents, and the park were sold to the Italian government.

The most famous work in the collection is Canova's Neoclassical sculpture of Pauline Borghese. It's technically known as Venus Victrix, but there has never been any doubt as to its real subject. Pauline reclines on a Roman sofa, bare-bosomed, her hips swathed in classical drapery, the very model of haughty detachment and sly come-hither. Camillo Borghese seems to have been remarkably unconcerned that his wife had posed for this erotic masterpiece. Pauline, on the other hand, is known to have been shocked that her husband took such evident pleasure in showing off the work to guests. This coyness seems all the more curious given the reply Pauline is supposed to have made to a lady who asked her how she could have posed for the sculpture: "Oh, but the studio was heated." Much to the dismay of Canova, after Camillo and Pauline's divorce, the statue was locked away for many years, though the artist was occasionally allowed to show it to a handpicked few. This he would do at night by the light of a single candle.

The next two rooms hold two key early Baroque sculptures: Bernini's David and Apollo and Daphne. Both illustrate Bernini's extraordinary technical facility. Both also demonstrate the Baroque desire to invest sculpture with a living quality, to transform inert marble into living flesh. Whereas Renaissance sculptors wanted to capture the idealized beauty of the human form that they had discovered in ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, Baroque sculptors such as Bernini wanted movement and drama as well, capturing not an essence but an instant, infused with theatricality and emotion. The Apollo and Daphne shows the moment when, to escape the pursuing Apollo, Daphne is turned into a laurel tree. Leaves and twigs sprout from her fingertips as she stretches agonizingly away from Apollo, who instinctively recoils in terror and amazement. This is the stuff that makes the Baroque exciting. There are more Berninis to see in the collection, notably a very uncharacteristic work, a large unfinished figure called Verità, or Truth. Bernini had started work on this brooding figure after the death of his principal patron, Pope Urban VIII. It was meant to form part of a work titled Truth Revealed by Time. His successor as pope, Innocent X, had little love for the ebullient Urban, and, as was the way in Rome, this meant that Bernini, too, was excluded from the new pope's favors. However, Bernini's towering genius was such that it gained him the patronage of the new pope with almost indecent haste.

The Caravaggio Room holds works by this hotheaded genius who died of malaria at age 37. The disquieting Sick Bacchus and charming Boy with a Basket of Fruit are naturalistic early works, bright and fresh compared with a dark Madonna and the David and Goliath, in which Goliath is believed to be a self-portrait of the artist.

In the Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery) on the first floor of the casino, three Raphaels, a Botticelli, and a Pinturicchio are only a few of the paintings that the cardinal chose for his collection, which includes an incisive Cranach Venus and a shadowy Del Sarto Madonna. Probably the most famous painting in the gallery is Titian's allegorical Sacred and Profane Love, with a nude figure representing sacred love. Admission is by reserved ticket. Visitors are admitted in two-hour shifts 9 AM to 5 PM, and, to be on the safe side (since prime time slots in peak season can sell out days in advance), you can reserve by phone or through www.ticketeria.it (note you need to collect your reserved ticket at the museum ticket office a half-hour before your entrance). In practice, however, when it's not busy you can go to the museum before the next entrance appointment and buy a ticket to be let in then.

Member Reviews & Ratings: