SAINT JEROME – Caravaggio 1606

This painting was made by Caravaggio for Scipione Borghese, now a faithful admirer of the artist. He was among the first works of the artist to become part of the collection of the powerful cardinal. Probably Caravaggio wanted to thank him with this painting for intervening in solving some of his judicial troubles. The painter was in fact known for his impulsive temperament, easy to clash and anger that caused him many problems during his short life. The protagonist of the picture is […]

DIANA ET ACTAEON – Bernardino Cesari 1610 ca.

According to a Greek myth, Actaeon, the son of Aristaeus and Autonoe, surprises Diana, the Greek Artemis, while she was bathing with her nymphs. As a punishment she turned him into a stag and, no longer recognized by his pack of 50 hounds, she was torn to pieces by them. His tragic story is narrated in the third book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but this painting represents a more playful aspect: Diana is splashing water towards a Acteon, while the nymphs […]

MELISSA – Dosso Dossi 1518

Giovanni di Niccolò Luteri, known as Dosso Dossi, was the main artist active in the early sixteenth century at the Este court in Ferrara, a city in the north-east of Italy. He was the interpreter of the fantastic and evocative evocations of the same age Ludovico Ariosto, poet and playwright, author of the Orlando Furioso.
This painting is part of the works sent by Ferrara to the cardinal collector Scipione Borghese, creator of the Borghese Gallery.
The protagonist of the work is a female figure […]

APOLLO AND DAPHNE – Dossi 1525

The painting preserved today at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, actually comes from Ferrara, and according to some critics it would have been made, perhaps by the same Duke of Este, for the Palazzina della Rosa, which Alfonso I had built for his new lover Laura Dianti, after the death of Lucrezia Borgia in 1519; while according to others it was actually in the castle of Ferrara. After the death of Dianti, the building passed into the hands of Cesare d’Este, who donated […]