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Once again I return to Rome, the city of Romulus, the Eternal City, it is like a trip to the past and getting to know the relics inherited from its different eras. As the capital of the Republic and the Roman Empire, it became the first great metropolis in history.
In the Villa Borghese Gallery, Bernini’s beautiful sculptures The Abduction of Proserpina (1621) and Caravaggio’s Daphne and Apollo, Saint Jerome Writing (1605) are on display. In its beautiful gardens I will greet Asclepius, the god of healing, and I will say goodbye in front of the Trevi Fountain.
Rome has 13 places recognized as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Its history begins when Romulus, a descendant of the legendary Aeneas, founded the city on the banks of the Tiber River. Capital of a vast empire for five centuries, the city is considered the cradle of the West.
The most fruitful period in its history was its development in antiquity. He was the head of a great imperial State and spread Latin culture mixed with Greek throughout all the provinces. It influenced society, culture, music, art, architecture, philosophy, politics, religion, law and morals in subsequent centuries.
Walking towards medieval Rome I arrive at Piazza dei Fiori. In this square there was in ancient times a temple dedicated to Venus, goddess of love and it was part of Pompey’s theater. When those old buildings fell into ruins, their place was taken by a flower-covered slope that gently descended towards the Tiber, which gives its name to the square. “field of flowers.”
It’s a lively, busy square dominated by the somber statue of Giordano Bruno, the Renaissance philosopher and mathematician who was burned alive at the stake for his “heretical” ideas in the 1600s.
The bas-reliefs on the pedestal show vivid images of the trial: a haughty and intelligent Bruno refuses to obey the dictates of the president of the court.
Giordano Bruno (1548, Nola – 1600, Rome) was a martyr of heliocentric ideas. He was an independent thinker, astronomer, philosopher, theologian, mathematician and poet.
At the age of 24 he was ordained a priest and at the age of 28 he obtained his degree as a reader of theology in his Neapolitan convent. He was interested in the emerging scientific literature of his time from the alchemists to the new astronomy of Copernicus, which rejected the Earth as the center of the cosmos.
He traveled to Paris, Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstedt, Frankfurt and Zurich. He met thinkers, philosophers and poets who became true friends. After returning to Italy he is imprisoned and judged as a heretic and sentenced to death “without shedding blood”, that is, to the stake.
His books were burned in St. Peter’s Square and included in the index of prohibited books. Bruno said: “The fear you feel when imposing this sentence on me is perhaps greater than the one I feel when accepting it. Dying like this is life; your living is death. That is why there will be someone who triumphs, and it is not Rome. It is me! “Tell your Pope, your lord and master, tell him that I surrender to death like a dream, because death is a dream that leads us to God.” Once the sentence was fulfilled, his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.
I continue my walk through the streets of Rome because walking is not only exploring an ancient city full of archaeological remains; Rome is the memory of gladiators fighting for life or death in the Colosseum, chariots undertaking fast races in the Circus Maximus, and also the vision of Roman wise men walking through the forum while talking about democracy.
It could be said that Rome invented a unique type of beauty: that of magnitude and power, decadence, the ancient and historical, the beauty of the warm colors of its walls, the cold ones of its stones and statues, the palettes of its numerous paintings distributed among its museums, its gardens such as Villa Borghese where you can stop and pay tribute to Aesculapius, the god of medicine in a small temple surrounded by a lake.
The gardens of Villa Borghese were designed according to the standards of the English garden: lush groves that simulate wild nature; ponds with piers and small bridges, buildings whose facades are reflected in the water; delicate rose gardens… everything in it responds to the romantic taste. Among the park’s paths we are accompanied by interesting sculptures by Goethe, Victor Hugo and the romantic poet Lord Byron.
At the entrance to the Gallery I am surprised by Bernini’s David, perhaps his own self-portrait… It represents the future King David, one of the characters of the Old Testament in the scene in which he defeats the Giant Goliath by throwing a stone with a sling. Compared to other versions of the theme, such as Michelangelo’s famous David statue, qualities of Baroque sculpture are shown. On classical and Renaissance placidity, Bernini introduces emotion and dynamism.
The Abduction of Proserpina is a sculptural group (1621-1622), based on a story from Greek mythology. Considered Bernini’s most dramatic and realistic sculpture, it was commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The myth gives rise to the four seasons. It revolves around the kidnapping of Proserpina, the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, by Pluto the god of the underworld, who was driving a chariot drawn by four black horses. Proserpina was forced to live between the earth and the underworld.
Daphne and Apollo (1622-1625) is another sculptural group made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, one of the most important figures of Italian Baroque sculpture. The theme developed in this sculpture has its origin in the Roman poet Ovid, in a passage from his work The Metamorphosis.
The drama, expressiveness and dynamism, typical of the baroque, are a constant in this work. Bernini chooses the precise moment when Apollo catches up with Daphne and she begins to turn into a laurel tree. The drama of the moment can be seen in the faces of the characters: Daphne is horrified at what is happening to her and Apollo, astonished, cannot believe what her eyes are seeing.
Bernini managed to do something with Daphne’s body that seemed to be out of reach of marble. Her figure seems to be floating in the air.
The work acquires an important volumetric treatment with different points of view that allow the viewer to observe different details as they surround the sculpture. Viewed in this way from Apollo’s back, the figure of Daphne seems almost hidden and only the incipient tree can be seen. This resource is also developed in other works by Bernini such as The Abduction of Proserpina.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598, Naples – 1680, Rome), was a multifaceted creator, painter, sculptor and architect, who had the ability to create in his sculptures very dramatic narrative scenes, capture intense psychological states and compose sculptural groups that transmit a magnificent greatness. Bernini’s long life allowed him to impose a true artistic “dictatorship.”
Saint Jerome writing is one of the last paintings from Caravaggio’s Roman period, which is related to Saint Jerome in meditation in the magnificent Montserrat Museum.
This saint was widely represented among the artists of the Counter-Reformation, because he spread the cult of the Virgin Mary, which was a sign of Catholicism. The lion is not represented here, which is one of his attributes and comes from a medieval legend. He lived in an austere environment with the books he studied as a scholar. He translated the Bible, known as the Vulgate, into Latin.
As is typical of Caravaggio’s painting, the representation of the saint has been reduced to the essentials: the desk, the books and a skull as a “memento mori”, a reminder of the transience of life and the inexorable end of everything earthly.
Caravaggio paints a not idealized, aged Saint Jerome, showing that the years pass, even for a divine saint. The only trace of divinity is just a thin halo, common in Caravaggio.
In an attitude of absolute concentration and dedication, Saint Jerome consults a gigantic book, and prepares to write with his other hand. The painting space is black. The only piece of furniture in the room is an austere wooden desk that accumulates heavy volumes and a skull, it is the object that attracts the most attention in the entire composition.
In 1984 the painting was stolen and fortunately two years later it was recovered.
Caravaggio (1571, Milan – 1610, Porto Ercole) was an Italian painter with a tormented and controversial life. Very few authors have shouted his own inner conflict so loudly with his brushes.
Although he has not left more than forty paintings, each one of them reveals a personal vision of art, an inner struggle, a debate between light and darkness and an innovative spirit capable of mixing divine holiness and human misery in the same scene.
Attracted by the young painter, Cardinal Francesco María del Monte, an expert musician, alchemist, astrologer, scientist and promoter of the arts, welcomed Caravaggio into his palace.
The large number of temples that were erected in Rome as a result of the counter-reformation represented an opportunity for painters. Faced with Protestant sobriety, the baroque churches proposed to show the humanity of faith and true Christian doctrine.
Caravaggio, faced with the idealism of the biblical characters, represents them, without idealizing them, with their physical deformations. He represents them as elderly, filthy, he focuses on the psychological strength of these characters, highlighting their faces with sometimes impossible lights and enveloping the background decorations in darkness. These lights and shadows helped to highlight the drama of the compositions. After a tumultuous life he was forced to flee to Malta. After several years he died in Porto Ercole.
Before leaving Rome I say goodbye at the Trevi Fountain. The place is lonely, I hear the murmur of the water falling between the travertine cliffs, the newts, the seashells, the seahorses and the representation of the ocean in the magnificent central figure.
On both sides are two statues that represent Abundance and Healthiness. On the pediment, the figures representing the four seasons. At the top, two angels guard the coat of arms of Pope Clement XII, promoter of the fountain.
Immersed in the contemplation of the rocks, I cannot help but evoke the unforgettable scene from Fellini’s La dolce vita in which, as if in a dream, Anita Ekberg, in a kind of ritual bath, enters the waters of the Fontana at night, like a Botticelli’s Venus in lunar version.
