The Galleria Borghese exhibition Metamorphoses is the second incarnation of the innovative collaboration between the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Here in Rome, the exhibition arises from the very heart of the collection, which showcases art from the finest masters and iconic works spanning two millennia. The exhibition in Rome is an autonomous and original configuration, bringing together over 80 works from leading European and American museums.
The Galleria Borghese is the perfect setting for this ground-breaking exhibition, Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses was the inspiration for much of the seventeenth century Italian art, gardens and villas and the Villa Borghese is the finest example of these ideals. Scipione Borghese, one of history’s most passionate art collectors, built Villa Borghese to house his immense collection of classical antiquities and Renaissance paintings and sculptures.
Identifying himself with Apollo the god of sun and light, music and poetry, prophecy and knowledge, Scipione Borghese was drawn to him. Consequently, his villa and gardens were heavily influenced by Ovid’s Metamophoses. you only have to gaze around you to see how the frescos on the walls and ceilings of the villa are interpretations of Apollo’s places in Book ll.
Installation view of the “Chaos and Creation” section, featuring works by Auguste Rodin, Hendrick Goltzius,
Herri met de Bles, Constantin Brâncuși and Louis Finson. Photo: A. Novelli © Galleria Borghese.
Like a treasure hunt of artistic genius, you wander through the rooms, your eyes feast upon much more than the exquisite exhibits in the show. The Renaissance ideals harmonising the natural world with the concepts about beauty, power, time and transformation are interwoven with Ovid’s myths, providing the symbolic language which men like Scipione imagined their relationship with nature, the cosmos and the power they held.
The exhibition starts with the creation of the world and the opening verses of Ovid’s poem. Works by Louis Finson, Rodin and Brâncuşi visually render the transformation from formless matter to the order of the cosmos.
The Poet and the Book is the theme of the next room, exploring the artistic interpretations of the poem through the centuries. You can see the poem’s ability to adapt to different cultural contexts, literary and figurative translations, from light Christian morality to the philological recovery in the Renaissance.
Moving on to the ‘Rape of Proserpina’, Book V, is dominated by the extraordinary intensity of Bernini’s sculpture, turning marble into flesh, the strength and violence of Pluto’s grip and you can see the horror and fear in Proserpina’s face. The frenzied verse of the poem is brought alive by the material quality of the sculpture.
Metamorphoses, Ovid and the Arts: Installation view showing the 16th-century copy of Michelangelo’s lost
Leda and the Swan (after 1530) in the centre, accompanied by Vincenzo Danti/Bartolomeo Ammannati’s
Leda and the Swan (1535) and Bartolomeo Ammannati’s, Leda and the Swan (c. 1535–40) © A. Novelli ļ Galleria Borghese, Roma.
Each room of the exhibition explores a myth from the poem, both visually and intellectually. Tintoretto’s (1518-1594) Minerva and Arachne and a visual metaphor of words to transformed into threads with tapestries weaving the stories of Bacchus and Ariadne, Pan and Syrinx. This draws you to Leda and the Swan, book VI, although only a few lines in Ovid’s poem, it was an enormously popular myth in Renaissance courts. Works by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Bartolomeo Ammannati’s (1535-1540) sculpture, Leda and the Swan, brings alive the intense passion Jupiter had for Leda at their most intimate moment.
You wander in to feast on the myth of Pygmalion, a tale of falling in love with a statue. This shift of focus explores the intimate relationship between art and life. As Rodin and Gérôme capture matter at the very moment it seems to come alive, the theme becomes a profound meditation on the power of art itself.
The exhibition continues with the stories of Perseus and Medusa. Works by Rubens, Ricci and Manetti all explore how a metamorphosis can be both an instrument of destruction and a means of salvation, capable of irreversibly altering human destiny.
Narcissus (c. 1500), tapestry by an unknown French artist in wool and silk. Installation view of Metamorphoses,
Ovidio and the Arts. Galleria Borghese, Rome. © A. Novelli © Galleria Borghese.
The power of love puts the final crescendo to the show: Titian, Poussin, and a late medieval tapestry devoted to the myth of Narcissus and Echo, a tale that metaphorically explores the creative and destructive power of love and interprets the fundamental emotions of human experience.
Metamorphoses, Ovid and The Arts is a treasure hunt of visual delights and an intellectual journey that offers a symbolic and sensory re-reading of transformation. This is a must-see exhibition that will challenge ideas on the relationship between time, space, matter and form.
Metamorphoses, Ovid and the Arts
Galleria Borghese
23 June – 20 September 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.
Author: Rebecca Dickson
Lead image: Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Baroque marble masterpiece, Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625). Metamorphoses: Ovidio and the Arts (installation view). © A. Novelli ļ Galleria Borghese, Roma.
Read our review of this exhibition’s first chapter at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, featured on I-M Magazine, HERE.
Other current exhibitions reviewed by I-M Magazine include Jacques Henri Lartigue: Life in Colour, at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes; Ed van der Elsken. Up Close, at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and Barbara Hepworth: Reshaping the Rhythm of Art, at the Courtauld Gallery, London.
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