Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi (7 March 1481 – 6 January 1536) was an Italian
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
and
painter, born in a small town near
Siena
Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.
The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centuri ...
(in Ancaiano, ''frazione'' of
Sovicille
Sovicille is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Siena in the Italian region Tuscany, located about south of Florence and about southwest of Siena.
Sovicille borders the ''comuni'' of Casole d'Elsa, Chiusdino, Monteriggioni, Monteroni ...
) and died in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. He worked for many years with
Bramante
Donato Bramante ( , , ; 1444 – 11 April 1514), born as Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio and also known as Bramante Lazzari, was an Italian architect and painter. He introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style ...
,
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
, and later
Sangallo during the erection of the new
St. Peter's. He returned to his native Siena after the
Sack of Rome (1527) where he was employed as architect to the Republic. For the Sienese he built new fortifications for the city and designed (though did not build) a remarkable dam on the Bruna River near
Giuncarico
Giuncarico is a village in Tuscany, central Italy, administratively a frazione of the comune of Gavorrano, province of Grosseto. At the time of the 2001 census its population amounted to 399.
History
The village dates back to the Early Middle A ...
. He seems to have moved back to Rome permanently by 1535. He died there the following year and was buried in the Rotunda of the Pantheon, near Raphael.
He was a painter of frescoes in the ''Cappella San Giovanni'' (Chapel of St John the Baptist) in the
Duomo of Siena
Siena Cathedral ( it, Duomo di Siena) is a medieval church in Siena, Italy, dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church, and now dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.
It was the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Siena, and ...
.
His son
Giovanni Sallustio was also an architect. Another son, Onorio, learned painting from his father, then became a Dominican priest in the convent of
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. He then stopped painting until requested by his superiors at San Romano di Lucca to paint the organ doors of the church.
Design and decoration of Villa Farnesina
Almost all art critics ascribe the design of the Villa Chigi in Rome, now known more commonly as the
Villa Farnesina
The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa in the Via della Lungara, in the district of Trastevere in Rome, central Italy.
Description
The villa was built for Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and the treasurer of Pope Julius II. Be ...
, to Peruzzi. In this villa, two wings branch off from a central hall with a simple arrangement of
pilaster
In classical architecture
Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...
s, and a decorative
frieze
In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...
on the exterior of the buildin
Some of the frescoed paintings which adorn the interior rooms are by Peruzzi. One example is the Sala delle Prospettive, in which Peruzzi revived the perspective schemes of
Melozzo da Forli and
Mantegna, possibly under the influence of both. The walls of the room are painted so that when one stands toward the left, one has the illusion that one is standing in an open-air terrace, lined by pillars, looking out over a continuous landscape. The decoration of the façade, the work of Peruzzi, has almost entirely vanished, but it is documented by an anonymous French artist in a drawing, now held by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Ar
To decorate this villa on the
Tiber
The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest List of rivers of Italy, river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where ...
many artists were employed, and just as the style of the villa in no wise recalls the old castellated type of country-house, so the paintings in harmony with the pleasure-loving spirits of the time were thoroughly antique and uninspired by
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
ideas.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
designed the composition of the story of
Amor and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from ''Metamorphoses'' (also called ''The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyc ...
as a continuation of the
Galatea
Galatea is an ancient Greek name meaning "she who is milk-white".
Galatea, Galathea or Gallathea may refer to:
In mythology
* Galatea (Greek myth), three different mythological figures
In the arts
* ''Aci, Galatea e Polifemo'', cantata by H ...
. On a plate-glass vault Peruzzi painted the
firmament
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent ...
, with the
zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the Sun path, apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. ...
al signs, the
planet
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...
s, and other heavenly bodies. The interior room has a striking use of illusionistic perspectiv
Other work
Peruzzi had produced a mosaic ceiling for the church of
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome; the mosaic depicts the Saviour. Other paintings ascribed to him are to be found in
Sant'Onofrio and
San Pietro in Montorio
San Pietro in Montorio (Saint Peter on the Golden Mountain) is a church in Rome, Italy, which includes in its courtyard the ''Tempietto'', a small commemorative '' martyrium'' (tomb) built by Donato Bramante.
History
The Church of San Pietro in ...
. That Peruzzi improved as time went on is evident in his later works, e.g., the "Madonna with Saints" in
Santa Maria della Pace
Santa Maria della Pace is a church in Rome, central Italy, not far from Piazza Navona. The building lies in rione Ponte.
History
The current building was built on the foundations of the pre-existing church of Sant'Andrea de Aquarizariis in 1482 ...
at Rome, and the fresco of ''Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl'' in
Santa Maria in Portico a Fontegiusta at Siena. As our master interested himself in the decorative art also, he exercised a strong influence in this direction, not only by his own decorative paintings but also by furnishing designs for craftsmen of various kinds. While primarily known as an architect, one of his great loves was drawing. His extraordinary pen and ink drawings for the basilica of St. Peter's are preserved in the Prints and Drawings Collection of the
Uffizi Gallery
The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...
in Florence. He was especially well known for his extraordinary studies of antique buildings, as seen in The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (1502–1503) in the
Allen Memorial Art Museum
The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is an art museum located in Oberlin, Ohio, and it is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, the collection contains over 15,000 works of art.
Overview
The AMAM is primarily a teaching museum and is aimed at ...
.
His final architectural masterpiece, the
Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne
The Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne is a Renaissance palace in Rome, Italy.
History
The palace was designed by Baldassarre Peruzzi in 1532–1536 on a site of three contiguous palaces owned by the old Roman Massimo family and built after arson de ...
(1535) located now on the 19th-century Corso Vittorio Emanuele, is well known for its curving facade, ingenious planning, and architecturally rich interior. The exterior details display a
Mannerist
Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...
-style.
He left drawings to a pupil,
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio (6 September 1475 – c. 1554) was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treat ...
, who used them in several of his ''Books of Architecture'', published in Venice beginning in the early 1530s.
[Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Books I-V of Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press: 1996).]
References
*
External links
Web Gallery of Art: Perspective View of the Sala delle Prospettive''Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools'' a collection catalog containing information about Peruzzi and his works (see index; plates 86–107).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peruzzi, Baldassare
1481 births
1536 deaths
15th-century Italian architects
15th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
16th-century Italian painters
Painters from Siena
Italian Renaissance painters
Italian Mannerist architects
Burials at the Pantheon, Rome
16th-century Italian architects
Architects of Roman Catholic churches
Catholic painters
Catholic decorative artists