Making a Prince’s Museum - Drawings for the Late- Eighteenth-Century Redecoration of the Villa Borghese

A discussion of the designs by Antonio Asprucci for the redecoration of the Borghese Palace as a semi-public museum. The author shows that the new designs not only created a unified space for the Count’s extensive collection of Greek and Roman antique and modern sculpture, they also presented a set of scenes for the edification of the Borghese prince. She also asserts that the redecorated villa was a turning point in the transition from a space for privately held collections to the modern public museum. A second essay by Alberta Campitelli discusses the sketches for another antiquities museum at the villa.