Originally from Siena, the Borghese are one of the most celebrated Roman aristocratic families, who first rose to prominence under Camillo Borghese (1550-1621), who served as Pope Paul V from 1605, and his nephew Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), a great patron of the arts who collects ed works by Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio and supported prominent Roman artists of the period, notably Bernini. The family is best known today for the Villa Borghese, a sumptuous villa suburbana and park commissioned by Scipione in 1607 from the architect Flaminio Ponzio on grounds then just outside of the old Roman city centre and now site of the Galleria Borghese, but no less impressive is their principal city residence, the Palazzo Borghese, built in c.1560-1614 in the Campio Marzio district to an unusual trapezoidal plan that earned the edifice the nickname Il Cembalo (the harpsichord) [fig,1]. The most important artworks in the family collects ions were housed in the palazzo prior to their acquisition by the Italian State in 1891 and transfer to their current location in the Villa Borghese.

This extraordinary pair of mirrors was created during the significant refurbishments undertaken in both the Palazzo and Villa Borghese in the second quarter of the nineteenth century by Francesco Borghese, VII Prince of Sulmona and younger brother to Camillo Borghese, husband of Pauline Bonaparte, and Francesco's son and heir Marcantonio, VIII Prince of Sulmona.

A PAIR OF MIRRORS, ROMAN, CIRCA 1836
By Enrico Colle

This pair of mirrors is in carved and gilt wood exquisitely decorated along the internal borders with grotesque motifs in the manner of Raphael, punctuated by rosettes carved in relief at the four corners and middle of the sides. This elegant composition of decorative elements in a relatively simplified architectural structure, typical of the neoclassical revival of the Restauration, displays strong similarities with a drawing discovered in the papers of the Borghese Archives, part of a group of three designs for frames, one of which [fig.2], likely intended for a painting of a religious subject as indicated by the sketched figures inside the frame, bears an inscription in the margin approvato da Minardi, presumably referring to the artist and drawing professor Tomasso Minardi (1787-1871) (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Archivio Borghese 103-105).

The designs may have been commissioned by the Borghese family from the architect Luigi Canina (1795-1856), who was charged with refurbishing several rooms in the Palazzo Borghese in connection with the 1835 marriage of Marcantonio V Borghese [fig.3] with Lady Catherine Gwendoline Talbot, daughter of the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. The grotesque style of ornament on the frames closely resembles the the ceiling decoration of the apartments occupied by the young coupled painted between 1835 and 1841 by the Roman painter Pietro Carrarini (E. Fumagalli, Palazzo Borghese committenza e decorazione privata, Rome 1994, p.202 fig.238-241). Canina, who had been working on both the palazzo and other Borghese properties for several years, is recorded approving a payment to the frame-maker Luigi Siotto for the delivery of 'tre grandi cornici'(three large frames) in 1836 (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Archivio Borghese 8101, c.38).

Given the stylistic affinities shared by the decoration on the frames, the drawing and also the arabesques painted by Carrarini surrounding the landscape vedute by Eugenio Landesio on the vaults in the Borghese palace [fig.4], it seems reasonable to suggest this pair formed part of the group of three frames delivered in mid-October 1836 by Siotti, probably executed in conjunction with the woodcarver Giovan Battista Canini and the gilder Giuseppe Granieri, whose names frequently appear in the princely family's accounts (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Archivio Borghese 4193, cc.21-27).