Villa Farnesina
Villa Farnesina is an artistically and architecturally influential Renaissance villa in Via della Lungara, in the central district of Trastevere in the centre of Rome.
The villa was built by Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and treasurer of Pope Julius II. Between 1506–1510, the Sienese artist and pupil of Bramante, Baldassarre Peruzzi, aided by Giuliano da Sangallo, designed and built the villa. The novelty of the villa design can be discerned from its differences from that of a typical urban palazzo (palace). Renaissance palaces were decorated versions of defensive castles: rectangular blocks with rusticated ground floors and enclosing a courtyard. This villa, meant to be a summer pavilion, was airy and the rear wings open to a garden towards the river. Initially, the entrance loggia was open; luckily for the frescoes therein, it now is enclosed.
Chigi also commissioned the fresco decoration of the loggias, by artists such as Raffaello, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano, and Il Sodoma. The themes were inspired by the Stanze of the poet Angelo Poliziano, a key member of the circle of Lorenzo de Medici. Best known are Raphael's frescoes in Loggia depicting the classical and secular myths of Love and Psyche, and The Triumph of Galatea. One of his few purely secular paintings, which pictures a near-naked nymph on a shell-shaped chariot amid frolicking servants in painting reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus. Additional trompe-l'œil frescoes were completed by Peruzzi himself.
The villa became a property of the Farnese family in 1577 (hence the name of Farnesina), later belonged to the Bourbon of Naples and in 1861 to the Spanish Ambassador in Rome. Today, owned by the Italian State, it hosts the Accademia dei Lincei, a long-standing and re-known Roman academy of sciences, and the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (Department for Drawings and Prints). Some claim that the Farnese once contemplated linking their two palaces across each other on the Tiber with a private bridge.
The Palazzo and Loggia are open to visitors (see [1]).
See also
- Murray, Peter (1963). The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. Schocken Books, New York. pp. 151–153.
Images
- Loggia di Psiche by Raphael
- Street Facade and Frescoes
- Garden Facade
- Architecture
- Satellite 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.