19 Facts About Scipione Borghese

Scipione Borghese's legacy is the establishment of the art collection at the Villa Borghese in Rome.

Scipione Borghese was born in Artena with name Scipione Caffarelli, the son of Francesco Caffarelli and Ortensia Borghese.

Scipione Borghese became superintendent general of the Papal States, legate in Avignon, archpriest of the Lateran and Vatican basilicas, prefect of the Signature of Grace, Abbot of Subiaco and San Gregorio da Sassola on the Coelian, and librarian of the Roman Catholic Church.

Scipione Borghese assumed the offices of Grand Penitentiary, secretary of the Apostolic Briefs, Archbishop of Bologna, protector of Germany and the Habsburg Netherlands, of the Orders of Dominicans, Camaldolese and Olivetans, of the Shrine of Loreto and of the Swiss Guard, and numerous other ecclesiastical positions.

Scipione Borghese aroused a great deal of controversy and resentment by utilizing numerous "gifts" from the papal government to fund Scipione Borghese family investments.

Scipione Borghese thus ensured that the fortunes of the family were not permanently dependent on ecclesiastical office.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese died in Rome in 1633 and is buried in the Borghese chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore.

In 1605, Scipione Borghese allegedly angered his uncle the pope by bringing Stefano Pignatelli, to whom Scipione Borghese was closely attached, to Rome.

Scipione Borghese subsequently fell into a long and serious sickness, and only recovered when Pignatelli was allowed to come.

Scipione Borghese's restoration was in effect a complete modernization: rebuilding the main facade, adding a rear entrance, and thoroughly overhauling the interior in a modern decorative idiom.

Scipione Borghese used the immense wealth that he acquired as Cardinal Nephew to assemble one of the largest and most impressive art collections in Europe.

The Scipione Borghese Collection began around a collection of paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art.

Scipione Borghese bought widely from leading painters and sculptors of his day.

Scipione Borghese's collection was poetically described as early as 1613 by Scipione Francucci.

Scipione Borghese is reported to have kept this statue in a specially made wooden cupboard, which he would open with a theatrical flourish to the amusement of his close friends.

Scipione Borghese greatly admired Caravaggio's naturalistic and psychologically complex later religious paintings, such as the brooding Saint John the Baptist, which the collector acquired from the artist's estate shortly after his death, and the intense David with the Head of Goliath, which represents the Biblical hero extending outwards a severed head with the features of the artist.

Scipione Borghese appropriated Caravaggio's Madonna and Child with St Anne, a large altarpiece commissioned in 1605 for a chapel in the Basilica of Saint Peter's, but rejected by the College of Cardinals because of its earthly realism and unconventional iconography.

Recent archival research has established that Scipione Borghese intended from the early stages of the commission that the altarpiece would end up in his own collection.

Scipione Borghese's collection includes works as diverse as Early Renaissance altarpieces such as Fra Angelico's Last Judgment ; examples of northern art such as two paintings of Venus by Lucas Cranach; sixteenth-century Venetian paintings such as Titian's Sacred and Profane Love ; and classicizing pictures such as Domenichino's Diana.