Four Masterpieces in a Single Museum
No other museum in the world holds four major Bernini sculptures in the same room for which they were created. The Galleria Borghese contains the four early works by the master that, together, redefined the very concept of marble sculpture.
Bernini was under thirty when he completed all four works. Their commission spans from 1618 to 1625 — seven years in which a young artist transformed marble into narrative, emotion and movement.
Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (1618–1619)
The first major work commissioned by Scipione. Bernini was nineteen or twenty years old.
The subject is the Virgilian episode of the flight from Troy: Aeneas carries his aged father Anchises on his shoulders, who holds the Penates (household gods), while the young Ascanius carries the sacred flame.
Technically, the group still shows the influence of his father Pietro Bernini in the smooth surface and frontal conception. But in the psychological rendering — the visible weight of the old man, the muscular tension of Aeneas, the grace of the child — the traits of the future Bernini are already recognisable.
The Rape of Proserpina (1621–1622)
Here Bernini makes a qualitative leap that still astonishes today. Pluto, god of the underworld, seizes Proserpina to bring her to his realm. The young goddess struggles, pushing against the face of her captor with her hand.
The technical miracle is in Pluto's fingers sinking into Proserpina's flesh: the marble behaves like living flesh under pressure. The effect is staggering because marble is the most resistant material that exists, yet it seems to yield to the touch.
Bernini was twenty-three years old. The work was completed in less than a year.
Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625)
The absolute masterpiece. The moment Bernini chose is that of the metamorphosis: Apollo reaches Daphne, who implores her father Peneus as she transforms into a laurel tree. Her fingers become leaves, her feet roots, her skin bark.
Bernini captures the precise instant when the transformation is halfway: Daphne is still a woman in the upper part of her body, already a tree below. The sculpture must be circled to see the complete group — an innovation that breaks with the tradition of sculpture conceived for frontal viewing.
The speed of movement, the lightness of the figures (Apollo's feet barely touch the ground), the differentiated texture of flesh, leaves and bark: this is the work that led Winckelmann to say that Bernini was the greatest sculptor since antiquity.
A scroll added to the base by Maffeo Barberini (the future Urban VIII) reads: Quisquis amans sequitur fugitivae gaudia formae / fronde manus implet, baccas seu carpit amaras (Whoever, loving, pursues the joys of a fleeting form, fills his hands with leaves, or gathers bitter berries) — a moralistic gloss that served to justify the pagan subject in an ecclesiastical setting.
David (1623–1624)
The last of the four groups is also the most personal. Bernini's David is not the serene and triumphant David of Michelangelo: he is David in the instant immediately before slinging the stone at Goliath.
The face is contorted with effort, the lips pressed together, the eyes fixed on the enemy. It is said that Bernini studied his own face in a mirror while sculpting to reproduce his own expression of intense concentration — and that Scipione Borghese himself held the mirror.
The body is tensed like a spring. The sculpture introduces the concept of implicit space: Goliath is not physically present, but the trajectory of the stone creates a void that the viewer is invited to imagine.
Where to Find Them
The four sculptures are distributed in the first rooms on the ground floor of the Galleria Borghese:
- Room II: The Rape of Proserpina
- Room III: Apollo and Daphne
- Room IV: Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius and David
With a Private Driver
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Frequently Asked Questions
How old was Bernini when he sculpted Apollo and Daphne? He was between twenty-three and twenty-six years old: the sculpture was executed between 1622 and 1625.
Where are Bernini's sculptures in the Galleria Borghese? In Rooms II, III and IV on the ground floor, exactly where they were originally placed for Scipione Borghese.
Is Bernini's David similar to Michelangelo's David? They are completely different: Michelangelo portrays a serene David before the battle; Bernini captures him at the tense moment of slinging the stone.
Article no. 162 — TIER S — MON-09 Galleria Borghese Type: HISTORICAL Words: ~750