The Villa Farnesina is a

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

suburban

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

in the Via della Lungara, in the district of Trastevere 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 ...

, central

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Description

The villa was built for

Agostino Chigi Agostino Andrea Chigi (29 November 1466 – April 11, 1520) was an Italian banker and patron of the Renaissance. Born in Siena, he was the son of the prominent banker Mariano Chigi, a member of the ancient and illustrious Chigi family. He moved ...

, a rich

Sienese 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 ...

banker and the treasurer of

Pope Julius II Pope Julius II ( la, Iulius II; it, Giulio II; born Giuliano della Rovere; 5 December 144321 February 1513) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1503 to his death in February 1513. Nicknamed the Warrior Pope or th ...

. Between 1506 and 1510, the Sienese artist and pupil of

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 ...

, Baldassare Peruzzi, aided perhaps by

Giuliano da Sangallo Giuliano da Sangallo (c. 1445 – 1516) was an Italian sculptor, architect and military engineer active during the Italian Renaissance. He is known primarily for being the favored architect of Lorenzo de' Medici, his patron. In this role, Giulia ...

, designed and erected the villa. The novelty of this suburban villa design can be discerned from its differences from that of a typical urban

palazzo A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

(palace). Renaissance palaces typically faced onto a street and were decorated versions of defensive castles: rectangular blocks with rusticated ground floors and enclosing a courtyard. This villa, intended to be an airy summer pavilion, presented a side towards the street and was given a U-shaped plan with a five-bay loggia between the arms. In the original arrangement, the main entrance was through the north facing loggia which was open. Today, visitors enter on the south side and the loggia is glazed. Chigi also commissioned the

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

decoration of the villa by artists such as

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 ...

Sebastiano del Piombo Sebastiano del Piombo (; c. 1485 – 21 June 1547) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance and early Mannerism, Mannerist periods famous as the only major artist of the period to combine the colouring of the Venetian School (art), Venetian ...

Giulio Romano Giulio Romano (, ; – 1 November 1546), is the acquired name of Giulio Pippi, who was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-cent ...

, and

Il Sodoma Il Sodoma (1477 – 14 February 1549) was the name given to the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. Il Sodoma painted in a manner that superimposed the High Renaissance style of early 16th-century Rome onto the traditions of ...

. The themes were inspired by the ''Stanze'' of the poet

Angelo Poliziano Agnolo (Angelo) Ambrogini (14 July 1454 – 24 September 1494), commonly known by his nickname Poliziano (; anglicized as Politian; Latin: '' Politianus''), was an Italian classical scholar and poet of the Florentine Renaissance. His scho ...

, a key member of the circle of

Lorenzo de Medici Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (; 1 January 1449 – 8 April 1492) was an Italian statesman, banker, ''de facto'' ruler of the Florentine Republic and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Also known as Lorenzo ...

. Best known are Raphael's frescoes on the ground floor; in the loggia depicting the classical and secular myths of

Cupid 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 ...

, and '' The Triumph of Galatea''. This, one of his few purely secular paintings, shows the near-naked nymph on a shell-shaped chariot amid frolicking attendants and is reminiscent of

Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...

's ''The Birth of Venus''. This same "Galatea" loggia has a horoscope vault that displays the positions of the planets around the zodiac on the patron's birth date, 29 November 1466. The two main ceiling panels of the vault give his precise time of birth, 9:30 pm on that date. At first floor level, Peruzzi painted the main ''salone'' with ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' frescoes of a grand open loggia with an illusory city and countryside view beyond. The perspective of the painted balcony and

colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

is very accurate from a fixed point in the room. In the adjoining bedroom, Sodoma painted scenes from the life of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...

, the marriage of Alexander and Roxana, and Alexander receives the family of Darius. The villa became the property of the Farnese family in 1577 (hence the name of Farnesina). Also in the 16th century,

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

proposed linking the

Palazzo Farnese Palazzo Farnese () or Farnese Palace is one of the most important High Renaissance List of palaces in Italy#Rome, palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian Republic, it was given to the French government in 1936 for a period of 99 years, and cur ...

on the other side of the

River Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest 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 it is joined by the Ri ...

, where he was working, to the Villa Farnesina with a private bridge. This was initiated, as remnants of a few arches are present in the back of Palazzo Farnese towards via Giulia on the other side of the Tiber, but was never completed. Later the villa belonged to the

Bourbon Bourbon may refer to: Food and drink * Bourbon whiskey, an American whiskey made using a corn-based mash * Bourbon barrel aged beer, a type of beer aged in bourbon barrels * Bourbon biscuit, a chocolate sandwich biscuit * A beer produced by Bras ...

s of

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

and in 1861 to the Spanish

Ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...

in Rome, Bermudez de Castro, Duke of Ripalta. Today, owned by the Italian State, it accommodates the

Accademia dei Lincei The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rom ...

, a long-standing and renowned Roman academy of sciences. Until 2007 it also housed the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (Department of Drawings and Prints) of the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Roma. The main rooms of the villa, including the Loggia, are open to visitors.

References

External links

Villa Farnesina: official site

Images

Garden FacadeArchitectureSatellite photo
— The bracket-shaped building southwest (lower) of the Tiber, in the centre of photo, is the Villa Farnesina. The Palazzo Farnese is the massive almost square, courtyarded structure to the North of the Tiber.

{{authority control Buildings and structures completed in 1510 Houses completed in the 16th century Farnesina, Villa Farnesina Fresco paintings in Rome Renaissance architecture in Rome Raphael Rome R. XIII Trastevere 1510 establishments in the Papal States Farnese residences

Description

See also

References

External links

Images