RUBENS AND TITIAN
During his sojourn in the Spanish court between 1628 and 1629, Rubens made many copies of works by Titian, a painter whom he never tired of observing, in his journey of discovery in Italy in the first decade of the 1600s and any time he managed to have the chance. In this room, Sacred and Profane Love, Titian’s early masterpiece, and Venus Blindfolding Cupid, among other paintings by the artist, immediately clarify one of the reasons for which the collection was so coveted by artists. When passing through Rome in the early 1620s, Anthony van Dyck also drew them and reused specifically the figure of the nude and the contrast between the white skin and the red drapery. His fascination for other works in the collection, such as the Three Sleeping Putti attributed to the Flemish Gillis van den Vliete, also known as Egidio della Riviera, appears in his notebook of Italian drawings, as visitors can appreciate digitally.
The study of Titian-like babies – which appeared in quantity in Rome with the transfer of the Bacchanalia from the castle of Ferrara to the collection of Pietro Aldobrandini, was crucial to the realization in sculpture of chubby babies playing and dancing in nature. On display in the Galleria is the Bacchanalia of Putti in black marble on lapis lazuli. The design was long attributed to François Duquesnoy, a Flemish sculptor active in Rome in the 1620s, who several times transposed Titian’s putti in reliefs, one of which can be admired in this section in the rare piece on loan from the Rubenshuis of Antwerp. Following Titian did not exclude the imitation of proper ancient nudes. One of the most admired pieces in the Borghese collection, brought back to Rome for this exhibition, was the group of the Three Graces, which gave its name to one of the rooms of the building. The interplay between Renaissance painting, examples of ancient sculpture and invention is beautifully manifested, in this section, in the Judgment of Paris from the Prado.