Rome, Villa Farnesina hosts exhibition dedicated to Raphael and Agostino Chigi

The anniversary of the death of Raphael, who disappeared on April 6, 1520, coincides with another anniversary: the passing of the pope’s very rich banker, the Sienese Agostino Chigi, on April 11, 1520, only five days after the Urbino master. As is well known, the two great protagonists of the Renaissance, in different capacities, were united by a very close relationship based on friendship and animated by the humanistic ambition of magnum facere: besides Popes Julius II and Leo X, Agostino Chigi was Raphael’s most assiduous and munificent patron. The latter frequented the Chigi residence, today’s Villa Farnesina, not only as the artist commissioned to execute the famous fresco in the Loggia di Galatea and decorate the vault of the Loggia di Psiche, but also as a “family member” of the master of the house, admiring and studying the antiquarian collections that the banker was gathering in the villa and its gardens (not only statues, but reliefs, medals and spectacular cameos), authoritative models for the inventions that theUrbinate with his school and other artists disseminated through paintings, tapestries, prints, and pottery.

To commemorate this anniversary, theAccademia dei Lincei based in the Villa Farnesina had been planning since 2020 an exhibition, postponed to this year because of the health emergency. Entitled Raphael and Antiquity in the Villa of Agostino Chigi, curated by Lincean member Alessandro Zuccari and art historian Costanza Barbieri, it intends to highlight a crucial aspect of the Renaissance that has so far not been sufficiently highlighted: while Raphael’s classical turn in the second decade of the sixteenth century is well known, little attention has been paid to the influence that the prestigious collection of statues, sarcophagi, reliefs, cameos and ancient coins collected by Agostino Chigi in his Villa had on theUrbinate.

In-depth investigations now make it possible to reconstruct in a more circumstantial way those “magnificent collections,” which were dispersed after the Sienese banker’s death and transmigrated to other great Roman and European collections. Thanks to important loans of works from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Capitoline Museums and the Palazzo Altemps Museum in Rome, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen-Skulpturensammlung in Dresden, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Vatican Museums - it will be possible to set up again, at least in part, the Chigi collection in its original place and to have a full understanding of how much it was a source of inspiration for the classical style of Raphael and his school, Peruzzi, Sebastiano del Piombo and Sodoma, contributing to the development of the full Renaissance.

For all information, you can visit the official website of Villa Farnesina.

Rome, Villa Farnesina hosts exhibition dedicated to Raphael and Agostino Chigi

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