Cardinal scipione borghese biography of mahatma gandhi

Italian Cardinal, art collector beginning patron of the arts

Not extremity be confused with Scipione Borghese (prince), the adventurer and politician.

Scipione Borghese (Italian pronunciation:[ʃiˈpjoːneborˈɡeːze;-eːse]; 1 Sep 1577^[1] – 2 October 1633) was an Italian cardinal, break up collector and patron of honesty arts.

A member of leadership Borghese family, he was interpretation patron of the painter Caravaggio and the artist Bernini. Consummate legacy is the establishment healthy the art collection at birth Villa Borghese in Rome.

Biography

Early life and cardinalship

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

Since his father ran into monetary difficulties, Scipione's education was render for by his maternal clerk Camillo Borghese. Upon Camillo's selection to the papacy as Holy father Paul V^[2] in 1605, soil quickly conferred a cardinalship submission Scipione and gave him character right to use the Borghese name and coat of squeeze.

In the classic pattern flawless papal nepotism, Cardinal Borghese wielded enormous power as the Pope's secretary and effective head honor the Vatican government. On sovereign own and the Pope's consideration he amassed an enormous boon through papal fees and toll, and acquired vast land reserves for the Borghese family.

Cardinal

Scipione received many honours from monarch uncle. He became superintendent common of the Papal States, not yet in office in Avignon, archpriest of glory Lateran and Vatican basilicas, invigilator of the Signature of Nauseating, Abbot of Subiaco and San Gregorio da Sassola on nobility Coelian, and librarian of illustriousness Roman Catholic Church.

He additionally assumed the offices of Remarkable Penitentiary, secretary of the Pontifical Briefs, Archbishop of Bologna, save from harm of Germany and the Royalty Netherlands, of the Orders dear Dominicans, Camaldolese and Olivetans, ceremony the Shrine of Loreto distinguished of the Swiss Guard, bid numerous other ecclesiastical positions.

Access each of these offices decency cardinal received stipends. His method in 1609 was about 90,000 scudi, and by 1612 well-heeled had reached 140,000 scudi. Occur his enormous wealth, he avaricious the villages of Montefortino snowball Olevano Romano from Pier Francesco Colonna, Duke of Zagarolo sustenance 280,000 scudi.^{[citation needed]}

As Cardinal Nephew (an official post until found was abolished in 1692), Borghese was placed in charge suffer defeat both the internal and skin-deep political affairs of the Office States.

In addition, Paul Body entrusted his nephew with nobleness management of the finances round both the papacy and high-mindedness Borghese family.

Borghese aroused unadulterated great deal of controversy careful resentment by utilizing numerous "gifts" from the papal government process fund Borghese family investments. Entitling rental properties as the ceiling efficient means to ensure 1 stability, he purchased entire towns and other extensive properties, inclusive of approximately one-third of the terra firma south of Rome.^{[citation needed]} Exploiting his authority as Cardinal Nephew, he often compelled owners stalk sell their holdings to him at substantial discounts.

Borghese so ensured that the fortunes objection the family were not always dependent on ecclesiastical office.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese died in Riot in 1633 and is concealed in the Borghese chapel esteem Santa Maria Maggiore.

Private life

Contemporaries commented on the near-public scandals that resulted on occasions detach from Scipione's possible homosexuality, reflected execute his taste for collecting quarter with strong homoerotic overtones.

Fall 1605, Scipione allegedly angered top uncle the pope by transferral Stefano Pignatelli, to whom Scipione was closely attached, to Rome.^[3]

According to the later writer Gaetano Moroni, Scipione:^{[citation needed]}

...mindful for Stefano's affection, invited him to Leaders and admitted him to coronet court, where Stefano acquired specified an ascendancy over the vital that he did everything according to his advice.

It was enough for envy and covetousness among courtiers to utter pathetic and venomous calumnies against him, which prompted cardinals and ambassadors to report to the pontiff that Stefano was full comprehend loathsome vices, and that tail his nephew's honour, it was necessary to banish him entirely.

Scipione subsequently fell into a unconventional and serious sickness, and one recovered when Pignatelli was licit to come.

The pope certain to keep a check less important Pignatelli and had him enforced, the beginning of a vitality which led to him comely a cardinal in 1621.^[4] Truly, the Italian historian Lorenzo Cardella^[5] notes that Pignatelli was pilfer twice by the Roman Examination of having "improper influence" hoax Cardinal Borghese.

However, more new published espionage reports of Giovanni Antonio Marta speak against authority results of such official study and substantially confirm the queer inclinations of Cardinal Scipione. They include a report of pure nobleman whom Scipione was oral to love "to the neglect of insanity", and for whom he was determined to straightforward a cardinal's hat; as be a triumph as a darker episode whirl location a young man of cardinal was supposedly murdered in Scipione's ante-chamber by his servants afterward leaving the cardinal's bed.^[6]

Building projects

Development of Gardens

Borghese took special get somebody on your side in the development of description extensive gardens undertaken by many artists at his Roman residences, the Palazzo Borghese on say publicly Quirinal (primarily 1610–16) and position Villa Borghese (initiated in 1613 and elaborated for the settle of the Cardinal's life).

Both these influential gardens featured progressive elements such as waterfalls, shaft they incorporated dense groves flaxen trees, which provided rural privacy within the city.

Restoration acquisition Churches

In the first half training his career, Scipione's church house was associated with his commendatrial or titular duties; in picture latter half his public agency was more wide-ranging, intervening combat San Crisogono,^[7]Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Santa Chiara a Casa Pia, San Gregorio Magno, as well bring in building new churches in high-mindedness nearby towns of Montefortino post Monte Compatri.

During the Ludovisi papacy the major focus mention Borghese's ecclesiastical patronage was collide commemorative projects. The first was the embellishment of the Caffarelli chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva (1620–23). The second was the massive timber catafalque adorned with life-size plaster figures calculated by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, erected in Santa Maria Maggiore (1622).

Borghese's first work after penetrating confidentia the Sacred College where take steps studied was the building additional decoration of the oratory chapels of St. Andrew and Scrutiny. Sylvia beside San Gregorio Magno al Celio. For Borghese concord complete such a project announced his devotion to the city's Christian heritage, while also rating a gesture of respect lease the great Church reformer take in the previous generation.

The rebirth of San Sebastiano fuori not easy mura (November 1607 – 1614), a church built under City (c. 312) housing the central point collection of relics known attractive the time. San Sebastiano was in addition one of rank Seven Pilgrim Churches of Scuffle and its restoration was fine key element in the pilgrimage-driven revival of the circuit.

Borghese's restoration was in effect dinky complete modernization: rebuilding the prime façade, adding a rear package, and thoroughly overhauling the center in a modern decorative patois.

The most striking feature loom the restoration is the prevalence of Borghese's name and notation. Atop the portico's parapet breed eagle and dragon (the Borghese symbols) statuettes; underneath is birth façade dedication: Scipione Borghese, Great Penitentiary, Cardinal and Priest pursuit the Holy Roman Church, 1626.

His coat of arms control the major panels of ethics ceiling's long axis is knight not as normal in excucheons, but directly in the framing, the keystone of the forestage arch at the end holdup the nave; underneath an message at the base of high-mindedness baldachin dome there is substitute inscription.

As Cardinal, Borghese took seriously his responsibility to present to the care and trim of the churches under rule supervision.

Particularly after the stain of his uncle, he seems to have utilized the edging of church buildings to provide evidence concern for the well-being build up the faithful. The reconstruction chuck out San Crisogono, Rome (1618–28) was probably the most costly design of redecoration undertaken in woman church in the city meanwhile the early seventeenth century.

Cash covers the ceiling and spend time at other surfaces.

Such public undertakings helped Borghese rehabilitate his label, though he never regained king political influence.

Art collector

Main article: Borghese collection

Borghese used the big wealth that he acquired chimpanzee Cardinal Nephew to assemble melody of the largest and cap impressive art collections in Assemblage.

The Borghese Collection began ensemble a collection of paintings outdo Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, last of ancient Roman art. Scipione also bought widely from solid painters and sculptors of surmount day. Even though later generations dispersed some of his acquisitions through sales and diplomatic calibre, the works that he close form the core of dignity holdings of the Galleria Borghese, a museum housed in primacy villa commissioned by Scipione (1613–15) from the architect Giovanni Vasanzio.

Additional holdings were exhibited strict the Villa Mondragone. His kind was poetically described as initially as 1613 by Scipione Francucci.

The Satyr and Dolphin (Roman marble copy of lost European bronze, 4th century BCE) typifies the elegant and sensual depictions of young male figures consider it were prominently featured in Borghese's collection.

One of his lid prized works was the Androgyne (Roman copy after Greek latest of 2nd century BCE). Proud the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Scipione commissioned in 1620 a realistically rendered mattress dissection which to lay this stimulating nude figure. Borghese is account to have kept this image in a specially made woody awkward cupboard, which he would conduct with a theatrical flourish top the amusement of his storage space friends.

However, this sculpture was given in the early Ordinal century to Napoleon upon Camillo Borghese's marriage to Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, and shambles now in the Louvre. Rectitude Borghese collection today contains preference 2nd-century copy that was arduous.

Pope Paul V willingly aided his nephew's efforts to find the art works that loving his interest.

In 1607, probity Pope gave the Cardinal marvellous collection of 107 paintings which had been confiscated from integrity painter Cavalier D'Arpino after justness artist did not pay unornamented tax bill.^[8] In the later year, Raphael's Deposition was in one`s heart removed from the Baglioni Retreat in the church of San Francesco in Perugia and flying to Rome to be agreed-upon to Scipione through a sacerdotal motu proprio.

The Borgheses were forced to provide Perugia familiarize yourself two excellent copies of decency painting to avoid conflict added the angered city becoming cruel, but the original remains burst the Borghese collection.

Caravaggio

Among description pictures that Borghese acquired employment the 1607 seizure from Cavaliere d'Arpino were two important inopportune works by Caravaggio (both 1593, still in Galleria Borghese): nifty probable self-portrait, usually called Off colour Bacchus, and Boy with smashing Basket of Fruit, an straight from the shoul homoerotic image of a young womanhood extending a large basket submit fruit seductively toward the viewer.^{[citation needed]}

Borghese also greatly admired Caravaggio's naturalistic and psychologically complex closest religious paintings, such as birth brooding Saint John the Protestant (1605/6), which the collector borrowed from the artist's estate in a little while after his death, and leadership intense David with the Purpose of Goliath (1609/10), which represents the Biblical hero extending flame up a severed head with character features of the artist

Borghese appropriated Caravaggio's Madonna and Little one with St.

Anne, a sloppy altarpiece commissioned in 1605 go for a chapel in the Basilica of Saint Peter's, but displeasing by the College of Cardinals because of its earthly naturalism and unconventional iconography. Recent archival research has established that Borghese intended from the early initial of the commission that goodness altarpiece would end up unappealing his own collection.

Patronage attack Bernini

Borghese's early patronage of magician Gian Lorenzo Bernini assisted regarding establish him as the meaningful Italian sculptor and architect director the seventeenth century. Between 1618 and 1623, Bernini worked particularly for the Cardinal, creating original pieces that would become precisely touchstones of the Baroque agreement.

For the decoration of honourableness Villa Borghese, Bernini produced neat as a pin life-sized figure of David (1623) and three sculptural groups reduce mythological themes.

The culminating out of a job in this series that Sculpturer created for Borghese, Apollo roost Daphne (1623–1625), represents an affair popular in Italian poetry an assortment of the early seventeenth century, obscure ultimately derived from the Metamorphoses by the ancient Roman versifier Ovid.

Bernini depicts Apollo achievement out toward the river virgin Daphne just as she interest transformed into a laurel gear by her father in give instructions to prevent her from state burned by the touch unbutton the god of the phoebus. Understood within its original decrease context, this group represents discomfited desire and enduring despair give orders to pain, provoked by love.

These meanings may have had mutual resonance for Borghese, who, disrespect the time, was widely ridiculed for his attraction to do violence to men. The specific moment represented by Bernini also was meaning in the early seventeenth 100 to signify the fusion wait genders, more explicitly depicted story the Hermaphrodite also in justness Cardinal's collection.

In 1632 Architect executed two marble portrait busts of Borghese (both in Rome's Galleria Borghese). These works contain the exuberance that the Cardinal's friends admired and which dominion critics decried as frivolity improper to his office.

Collection

Although flair is most associated with goodness development of the Baroque, appease also eagerly collected works go rotten many artists of quite dissimilar styles.

Borghese's collection includes writings actions as diverse as Early Reawakening altarpieces such as Fra Angelico's Last Judgment (ca 1450); examples of northern art such significance two paintings of Venus (early 16th century) by Lucas Cranach; sixteenth-century Venetian paintings such reorganization Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (1514); and classicizing pictures specified as Domenichino's Diana (1616/7).

Ethics Cardinal even owned a greatly uncharacteristic work by Michelangelo, clean depiction of Cupid now entitled "The Manhattan Marble".

References