Doria Pamphili

Last week, one day after class, we had the option of going to into the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. This gallery is in the same building as our school here in Rome. And considering it is one of the best art galleries in the city, I definitely took the advantage of going for free courtesy of Penn State. So a few of us went with Mike and Jenny, and it may be my favorite gallery I’ve been to yet. The audio guide here is free, and that helped a lot. This gallery has more paintings than any other one in Rome, and I don’t know much about art, but it was awesome. The most famous painting we saw was a portrait of Pope Innocent X. It was an amazing painting, but what I liked better was the sculpture of Innocent X. There was actually two of them there by Bernini. There is two because one of them broke before, and then Bernini boasted about how he could make another one in just ten days, and he did it and it was just as beautiful. There were so many paintings there with awesome stories behind them. Another one that sticks out in my mind was the painting of St. John the Baptists head on a silver plate. It actually made me sad and angry looking at considering the story behind it and how genuine it looked.