At any rate, the experience of the Borghese Gardens, a gigantic estate that covers a goodly portion of the upper-right hand corner of the city (if you conceptualize Rome in terms of the Lonely Planet map, which I do), was exceptional. When I went there three years ago with my roommates, Sara, and Tess, we had an early entrance time (my fault) and rushed to get there to pick up our tickets on time, 30 minutes before entry (my fault again, because I believed the warning on the reservation that claimed they erased your reservation if you weren't there 30 minutes prior on the dot--as I discovered from my current roommates, who rolled up at 2:55 today, that is not the case) so we didn't spend that much time enjoying the grounds. Today, I was there an hour early, so I strolled around the lake, which has a picturesque Grecian temple in the center, as well as a multitude of ducks, geese, and swans, and a plethora of turtles. There was a musician playing jazz near the courtyard of the museum, as well, so I listened to him as I waited for my roommates and Sanaz, another girl in our group, to arrive. You can rent this little covered carts that are actually double bicycles in the park, so they were zipping around all over the place; it looked like a lot of fun, but alas! I was by myself at the time.
The gallery itself is much smaller in scale than the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Capitoline, the largest museums I've been in lately, but somehow I felt completely worn out in my two hours. Possibly it was the anticipation of 200 people all waiting to cram themselves through the doors at the scheduled time, only to mill about en masse in the first large gallery. Most people went left, so I went right, and got a few precious seconds with Bernini's David, Apollo and Daphne, and Rape of Persephone before people trickled into each of their rooms. Then I darted upstairs to the picture gallery, and managed to get a lot of my 'looking' done while the rooms were relatively uncrowded. Some favorites: Perugino's St. Sebastian, Raphael's Deposition, Savoldo's portraits, Fede Galizia's Judith and Holofernes, Canova's Paolina Buonaparte, and of course, all of the imperial portraits in the Hall of the Emperors, with their heads carved in porphyry and their busts in alabaster.
I've begun to feel that I'm being over-exposed to Bernini in Rome, but the statues in this museum always bring me back to that depth of expression and vibrant realism that makes him such a master. The delicacy of the laurel leaves sprouting from Daphne's fingertips, the roots forming on her toes, and the carefully distinguished texture of her flesh and the bark she is becoming, amaze me. In front of the Rape of Persephone, I was shocked to hear a woman tell her companion that she felt that the faces lacked emotion. Emotion! Hades' face is filled with triumph, savage and gloating, and the way his fingers are digging into the flesh of his victim's thigh is, my opinion, one of the unparalleled moments of Baroque art:
Meanwhile, Persephone is fighting so hard to get away that even her toes are contorted, and there are delicately sculpted tears on her grief-stricken face. So I don't understand how you could consider this "blank." Finally, the David has a warm place in my heart both for being the only representation of him in the act of flinging the stone that will kill the giant and for looking an awful lot like a young, pre-crazy Tom Cruise!
Tomorrow we head to Naples, a city I've never been to before, so I'm pretty excited. Buffalo mozzarella and real pizza, here I come (forget the art...)
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