Villa Borghese

The first place that we went to in Rome was the Villa Borghese; it was a very large villa that had been converted into a gallery for mostly renaissance art. It was completely surrounded by a huge sprawling garden full of statues by various famous artists such as Bernini. Every room had an impressive and colorful fresco on the ceiling and the walls were covered with paintings that I could easily recognize from my art history classes. The ground floor was reserved for sculptures while the second floor was all frescos, paintings and mosaics. The piece that stood out to me the very most I have to admit was not originally because of the artwork or the skill, but rather the subject that caught my attention. This was a beautifully dressed woman with her eyes fixed right on you, that seem to follow you where ever you go thought out the room. But the thing I notice first and had to let out a little giggle of joy for was a tiny baby unicorn sitting in her lap. This brought me more happiness than any famous piece of art ever could I'm afraid, it’s a BABY UNICORN! The subject matter is not a good reason to pick a painting to talk about, I know. But after looking further at this piece of art I began to like it more and more for aspects that I did not originally notice.
This painting was titled, “Lady with a Unicorn” painted by Raffaello it showed a very beautiful blond haired, pale skinned woman set in front of perfectly arranged architecture that framed her into the picture perfectly. Two columns on either side of her helped to frame the perfect blue sky around her head; this sky was almost the same stunning blue as her eyes. The color only occurred these two times, making it that much more stunning and attention grabbing. Another very stunning color that was used is a dark maroon that was used both on the very large puffy sleeves of her dress and on a jeweled pendant that hung around her neck. The folds and shifts in the material is done so perfectly, it looked so realistic and one thing that really amazed me was the fact that you could recognize that her dress was made of satin or something with an equal amount of sheen. I’m always so impressed when I see a painting have qualities that I thought could only be captured in a photograph or in life.
The color and shades of light and dark are balanced quite nicely between top and bottom and the two sides. The brilliant blue of the sky and her eyes balances the very attention grabbing color of the woman’s dress out. That creates a very nice effect that makes it easier on your eyes to look around the painting and it also makes it easier for the artists to control where you’re eyes will travel to next. Between the two sides, left and right, the painting is almost symmetrical, the only thing that is really different between the two sides is the fact that she holds the tiny unicorn in her lap on the left side. I feel that doing this makes your eye travel directly to that one thing that is different, the unicorn. He wants you to stop and to notice this little mythical creature and think about it and how it doesn’t really fit because it’s a completely made up animal, maybe there is a story behind it that we don’t know. You are forced to think about these things and to try to find the deeper meaning behind why there is a unicorn and where this woman may have gotten it.
I first picked this painting because of the subject matter and the fact that it is not common to see a mythical creature in renaissance art. Then after looking closer at the piece of art I was able to appreciate its much more subtle aspects that make it pleasing to look at and the true skill that went into creating such a true to life portrait of a woman.