Anyone walking into the Galleria Borghese already knows what they came to see: Apollo and Daphne, the Rape of Proserpina, the David, Aeneas and Anchises. Four sculptures, all on the ground floor, all in the first half hour of the visit.
The museum catalogue, however, lists thirteen works by Bernini: ten sculptures and three paintings. Everyone walks past the other nine without stopping, and five of them stand in a single room, room 14, which is upstairs and usually crossed at speed because by then the two-hour slot is running out.
Here I cover six of them: the Goat Amalthea, the bust of Paul V, the Louis XIV model and the three paintings. The other three, the Truth and the two busts of Scipione, have a page each and you will find them linked at the end.
They have one thing in common that the famous four do not: nearly all of them are works that have been argued over, and some still are.
The Goat Amalthea, the work that may not be his
It is a small group, 45 centimetres of marble, inventory CXVIII, datable to before 1615. A reclining goat looks towards the infant Jupiter as he milks her; behind her, a young faun identified as Pan drinks the milk from a bowl. The subject is rare even in ancient art, and the composition carries echoes of Hellenistic sculpture that scholars recognised at once.
If it really is by Bernini, it would be one of the first things he made, at sixteen or seventeen.
The problem is that «if». No payment document exists in the Borghese records, which has led to the suggestion that it was not a commission but a gift, made by a boy to show what he could do. From 1650 onwards the work is listed in the inventories with no author given. Bernini’s name appears for the first time in 1675 with Joachim von Sandrart, but the link between that reference and this sculpture was established by Roberto Longhi only in 1926.
The museum puts it without softening: part of the scholarship remains unconvinced about the authorship. It is an attribution, not a fact, and it is worth looking at the group knowing that.
The bust of Paul V and the dating that changes everything
In the same room there is a small bust in Carrara marble, 35 centimetres high, inventory CCXLVIII: Pope Paul V Borghese, Cardinal Scipione’s uncle.
For a long time it was considered an early work carried out between 1617 and 1618, that is, with the pope still alive. Then a re-reading of some payment documents proposed moving it to 1622-1623, immediately after the pontiff’s death. The museum states that the question remains open.
This is not a specialist’s quibble. In the first case it is a portrait from life, with the sitter present; in the second it is a commemorative portrait, made from memory and from other likenesses, of a man who was no longer there. They are two different objects, and we do not know which one we are looking at.
The big bust, the one that left
There is a second portrait of Paul V, and it is not here.
In 1621, at twenty-three, Bernini carved for Scipione Borghese a life-size bust of the pope, posthumously. It was his first official papal portrait, that is, his entry into a genre he would go on to dominate for sixty years.
That bust stayed in the Borghese collection until 1893, when it was sold at auction. Then it vanished. For more than a century art historians knew it only through a photograph in the 1893 auction catalogue and through a bronze version cast by Sebastiano Sebastiani.
It resurfaced in 2015: the owner put it up for sale through Sotheby’s, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles bought it in a private sale, putting it on display from 18 June that year.
So when you look at the small bust in room 14, you are looking at what stayed. The other one is eight hours away by plane, and has only been visible again for eleven years.
The terracotta horse and the king who refused it
Also in room 14, under glass, there is a rearing terracotta horse 76 centimetres high, inventory CCLXIX, from 1669-1670. In the saddle is a young man with long hair and a cuirass: it is Louis XIV.
It is the preparatory model for a large equestrian statue the king of France had commissioned from Bernini. How it ended is one of the most instructive episodes in his career.
The finished sculpture was only completed in 1677 or 1678, and in 1680, when Bernini died, it had still not been shipped to Paris. When it finally arrived and the king saw it, he did not like it. He asked for it to be destroyed.
In the end he accepted a compromise: that it be transformed. The French sculptor François Girardon reworked it into the Roman hero Marcus Curtius, throwing himself and his horse into a chasm. In that altered form the statue is still in the Orangerie at Versailles today.
The model in room 14 is therefore the only place where you can see what Bernini actually had in mind, before a displeased king and a French sculptor turned it into something else.
Bernini the painter
The museum catalogue lists three paintings by Bernini. Nobody knows this, and it is not the public’s fault: almost nobody talks about Bernini as a painter, although he knew the craft and used it.
The Self-portrait as a Young Man, oil on canvas, 38 by 30 centimetres, inventory 554, is from around 1623, when he was twenty-five. It is the face by which Bernini is reproduced practically everywhere, and you have probably already seen it without knowing where it hangs.
It has an attribution history of its own. The gallery bought it in 1919 from the Alvise De Ruggeri collection as a work by Andrea Sacchi. Bernini’s name had been proposed by D’Achiardi in 1908 and was confirmed by Corrado Ricci at the time of purchase.
There is one detail that repays the climb upstairs. The expression in the self-portrait is tense, almost aggressive, and scholars explain it as the result of a study of expression Bernini carried out on himself, in the mirror. In those same years he was carving the David, the one biting his lip in concentration, downstairs. It is the same face, studied for two different works: one painted, one in marble.
The other two paintings are the Self-portrait in Maturity, from around 1635-1640, and a Portrait of a Boy from around 1623-1625.
The thread that ties them together
Reading back over the list, something comes out.
The Goat Amalthea is attributed, and part of the scholarship does not believe it. The bust of Paul V has a contested dating that changes what it is. The large bust of the same pope was lost for 122 years. The model documents a work the patron had turned into a different one. The self-portrait entered the collection under another painter’s name.
The four famous sculptures downstairs have none of this: they are documented, dated, paid for, undisputed. The works nobody looks at are exactly the ones about which there is still something to say, and that is a good reason to go up to the first floor with ten minutes in hand rather than two.
What to see alongside these
In the same room 14 are the two busts of Scipione Borghese, which are reason enough to go upstairs even if you are short of time. On the ground floor, in room 6, is Truth Unveiled by Time, the other Bernini almost nobody goes looking for.
The full route through the museum is in the guide on what to see at the Galleria Borghese, and Bernini’s whole career is in the portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Practical information
The Goat Amalthea, the bust of Paul V and the Louis XIV model are all in room 14, the Loggia di Lanfranco, on the first floor, together with the two busts of Scipione.
You cannot enter the Galleria Borghese without booking, for any kind of ticket, not even a free one, and capacity is 180 people per slot.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 7pm. Entry is by timed slot and the visit lasts two hours. The last slot is at 5.45pm, costs less than the others and is shorter. The only two annual closures are 25 December and 1 January.
The full ticket costs 16 euros, the 5.45pm slot costs 11 euros, the reduced ticket for ages 18 to 25 costs 2 euros and under-18s go free. Every ticket carries a further 2 euros of compulsory booking fee. Details checked on 29 August 2026 on the official Galleria Borghese ticket page.
Book at least a week ahead and turn up half an hour early. If you would rather secure your place without going through the museum site, the ticket is also available online with an audioguide and an optional guided tour.
The practical advice, given that you have two hours: go straight up to the first floor, give room 14 twenty minutes, and come down to the famous sculptures afterwards. Doing it the other way round, which is what everyone does, means reaching room 14 with ten minutes left and the closing announcement already running.
