The touch of Pygmalion. Rubens and sculpture in Rome

This volume is the catalogue of the exhibition “The touch of Pygmalion. Rubens and sculpture in Rome” at the Galleria Borghese in Rome (14 November 2023-18 February 2024).

The publication reveals Rubens’s intense dialogue with sculpture: not only that of antiquity, passionately ‘restored to life’ by the Flemish artist in the drawings he made during his very important stay in Italy (1600-1608), but above all modern sculpture. Rubens was a tenacious observer of Renaissance sculpture (primarily Michelangelo) and he was a fervent inspiration for the works of contemporaries and often provided an unexpected frame of reference for Italian sculptors as well.

Thanks to its extraordinary heritage, the museum in Rome stages comparisons that would be impossible elsewhere, starting with those between Rubens’ graphic works and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s marbles. In addition, the exhibition and the catalogue highlight the importance of the model of Titian to Rubens, still studied by his Flemish followers in the 1620s in the spaces of the residence on the Pincian.
With an unprecedented layout, offering occasional insights into Leonardo and Caravaggio, the publication celebrates Rubens and his touch as Pygmalion, in quest of a new definition of 17th-century naturalism.

English edition, translations by Oona Smyth and Lauren Sunstein for Scriptum, Rome.