Rebuilding The Renaissance

Episode 359 - Rome: The Borghese Gallery (Part III)

Dec 3, 2025

This episode takes you through the 1st-floor rooms of the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Italy. It discusses the breathtaking early statues by Gian Lorenzo Bernini - “Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius,” “Pluto and Persephone,” “Apollo and Daphne,” and “David,” as well as Antonio Canova’s sublime Neoclassical...

Episode 358 - Rome: The Borghese Gallery (Part II)

Nov 26, 2025

This podcast takes you into the extraordinary building and collection of the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Italy. From the great hall with its beautiful ceiling fresco, ancient Roman floor mosaics depicting gladiators and beast hunters, and ancient/Baroque statue of “Marcus Curtius,” to the adjoining Caravaggio room...

Episode 357 - Rome: The Borghese Gallery I

Nov 19, 2025

Shortly after his election, Pope Paul V Borghese decided to transform his land outside the Porta Pinciana in Rome, Italy, into the city’s greatest villa complex. The result was one of the most beautiful and majestic examples of traditional and landscape architecture. The building, today known as the Borghese Gallery,...

Episode 356 - Answers to Open Questions XXVI

Nov 12, 2025

From my opinion on the recently discovered paintings attributed to Caravaggio, to the influence of Hadrian’s Villa on Borromini’s architecture, to a possible connection between Caravaggio’s “Burial of St. Lucy” and the movie "Schindler’s List,” to why Michelangelo’s “David” is more famous than...

Episode 355 - Rome - The Doria Pamphilj Gallery

Nov 5, 2025

Located in the Doria Pamphilj Palace (where the Doria Pamphilj family still resides) on the Via del Corso in the heart of Rome, Italy, the gallery houses one of Italy’s most important art collections. It includes portraits of Pope Innocent X by Velasquez and Bernini, as well as two of Caravaggio’s earliest...