Misplaced Pages

#651348

19-537: The sculpture was likely excavated in the early sixteenth century, since it is recognizable in an inventory made after the death of Agostino Chigi in 1520 of his villa in Trastevere , which would become the Villa Farnesina . Later the sculpture formed part of the garden of sculptures and antiquities that Paolantonio Soderini inherited from his brother, Monsignor Francesco Soderini , who had arranged them in

38-629: A first-century BC copy from a Hellenistic original. It is on display in the Tribuna of the Uffizi , alongside Old Master paintings, as it has been since the 18th century. [REDACTED] Media related to Arrotino at Wikimedia Commons Agostino Chigi Agostino Andrea Chigi (29 November 1466 – April 11, 1520) was an Italian banker and patron of the Renaissance . Born in Siena , he

57-510: A reputation for unworldliness until he was elected pope in 1471. As Sixtus IV he was both wealthy and powerful, and at once set about giving power and wealth to his nephews of the Della Rovere and Riario families. Within months of his election, he had made Giuliano della Rovere (the future pope Julius II) and Pietro Riario both cardinals and bishops ; four other nephews were also made cardinals. He made Giovanni Della Rovere , who

76-816: The Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo ; and the suburban villa known since 1579 as the Villa Farnesina , all of them intended to give substance to his legend. His splendid villa that he built on the shore of the Tiber , in Trastevere, bears the name of its later owners: Villa Farnesina ( illustration ). For its design, Chigi employed the Sienese painter Baldassare Peruzzi , virtually untried as an architect. Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano, Sodoma and Raphael were called upon to provide

95-509: The Duchy of Urbino in 1504, this through the intercession of Julius II. In 1508, Francesco Maria inherited the duchy thereby starting the line of Rovere Dukes of Urbino. That dynasty ended in 1626 when Pope Urban VIII incorporated Urbino into the papal dominions . As compensation to the last sovereign duke, the title only could be continued by Francesco Maria II , and after his death by his heir, Federico Ubaldo . Vittoria , last descendant of

114-799: The Mausoleum of Augustus ; Paolantonio noted in a letter of 1561 that il mio villano — "my peasant"— had gone away, and it is known that a member of the Mignanelli family sold the Arrotino to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici . It was removed to the Villa Medici , where it was displayed until it was removed in the eighteenth century to the Medici collections in Florence . In the Medici collections

133-701: The Sistine Chapel , which was named after him. Julius II was patron to Michelangelo , Raphael and many other Renaissance artists and started the modern rebuilt of St. Peter's Basilica . Also the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome was the family church of the Della Rovere. Members of the family were influential in the Church of Rome , and as dukes of Urbino , dukes of Sora and lords of Senigallia ;

152-636: The della Rovere family, and creating him treasurer and notary of the Apostolic Camera . The personal bond between the Pope and his banker remained close: Agostino accompanied Julius in the field in both his great military campaigns of 1506 and 1510. In 1511 Agostino was sent to Venice to buy Venetian support for the papal forces in the War of the League of Cambrai . Agostino established economic ties with

171-655: The salt monopoly of the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples , as well as that of the alum excavated in Tolfa , Agnato and Ischia di Castro . Alum was an essential mordant in the textile industry. After the death of the Borgia pope Alexander VI and his short-lived Sienese successor Pius III Piccolomini , he helped Pope Julius II in the expenses attendant upon his election. The latter rewarded him, linking Chigi to

190-446: The villano was reinterpreted as a Scythian , or divorced of its genre associations entirely by becoming a royal barber or butler overhearing treasonous plotting against the state, raising it to the level of moralised history, which ranked higher in the contemporary hierarchy of genres . Only since the seventeenth century has it been recognized as having formed one part of a Hellenistic group of " Apollo flaying Marsyas " (akin to

209-599: The better-known multiple figures of Laocoön and his Sons , the Odyssean groups at Sperlonga , or the Pergamene group of which the Dying Gaul was once a part). The identification with a Marsyas group was introduced in 1669, in a publication by Leonardo Agostini , who recognized the theme in antique engraved hardstones . The Arrotino was also for a long time thought to be an original Greek sculpture, and one of

SECTION 10

#1732776083652

228-561: The decoration. Here Raphael frescoed his Triumph of Galatea . Here Chigi held sumptuous repasts. In order to show his contempt of money, he was said to have all the silver dishes thrown into the river after the end of the parties; however, his servants were secretly ready to recollect them with nets draped under the windows. The villa called the Viridario in Chigi's time served as banking facility as well as residence, setting Chigi apart from

247-591: The finest such sculptures to have survived. As such, plaster copies were made for show and for art instruction (one made for the Royal Academy is now on view at the Courtauld ). The original was often displayed beside one of the variants of the other great ancient sculpture of a crouching figure, the Crouching Venus also in the Uffizi collection. However, the Arrotino is now recognised simply as

266-753: The ordinary run of bankers in Rome, who normally resided in a piano nobile directly above but unconnected to their street-level botteghe ( it:bottega , place of business). Della Rovere The House of Della Rovere ( pronounced [della ˈroːvere] ; literally "of the oak tree") was a powerful Italian noble family . It had humble origins in Savona , in Liguria , and acquired power and influence through nepotism and ambitious marriages arranged by two Della Rovere popes: Francesco Della Rovere, who ruled as Sixtus IV from 1471 to 1484 and his nephew Giuliano, who became Julius II in 1503. Sixtus IV built

285-408: The title of Urbino was extinguished with the death of Francesco Maria II in 1631, and the family died out with the death of his granddaughter Vittoria , Grand Duchess of Tuscany . Francesco Della Rovere was born into a poor family in Liguria in north-west Italy in 1414, the son of Leonardo della Rovere of Savona . A Franciscan who became Minister General of his order, then cardinal, he had

304-405: The whole of Western Europe, at one time having up to 20,000 employees, receiving from Siena the title of Il Magnifico ("Magnificent"). Chigi, "indisputably the richest man in Rome", became also a rich patron of art and literature, the protector of Pietro Aretino among others, though his own education suffered many lacunae, notably his lack of Latin . His Venetian mistress Francesca Ordeaschi

323-521: Was not a priest, prefect of Rome , and arranged for him to marry into the da Montefeltro family, dukes of Urbino . Sixtus claimed descent from a noble Della Rovere family, the counts of Vinovo in Piemonte , and adopted their coat-of-arms . Guidobaldo da Montefeltro adopted Francesco Maria I della Rovere , his sister's child and nephew of Pope Julius II . Guidobaldo I, who was heirless, called Francesco Maria at his court, and named him as heir of

342-411: Was the son of the prominent banker Mariano Chigi, a member of the ancient and illustrious Chigi family . He moved to Rome around 1487, collaborating with his father. The heir of a rich fund of capital, and enriched further after lending huge amounts of money to Pope Alexander VI (and to other rulers of the time as well), he strayed from common mercantile practice by obtaining lucrative monopolies like

361-454: Was the toast of Rome. His artistic protégés included almost all the main figures of the early 16th century: Perugino (from whom he commissioned the eponymous Chigi Altarpiece ), Sebastiano del Piombo , Giovanni da Udine , Giulio Romano , Sodoma and Raphael . In Rome, Chigi's three artistic commissions involving Raphael remain the most prominent monuments of his contemporary fame: a chapel in Santa Maria della Pace ; his mortuary chapel,

#651348