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Le ‘Magnificenze’ di Agostino Chigi. Collezioni e Passioni Antiquarie nella Villa Farnesina

2015; Oxford University Press; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jhc/fhv041

1477-8564

Piers Baker‐Bates,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

This handsome volume fills a long-felt want: it is extraordinary that there has been no book-length study of any aspect of that seminal figure of High Renaissance Rome, the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi (1466–1520), since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Cugnoni that was published in 1878. It is appropriate too that it has been published by the Accademia dei Lincei as they are the custodians of the most tangible remains of Agostino’s legacy. That is the building, now famous as the Villa Farnesina, that was once Chigi’s Palazzo del Giardino and which, for all its reputation, can appear today almost municipal at first sight. Despite a lack of concrete evidence, Chigi’s significance as patron and collector in the High Renaissance is regarded all too often as a given. It was described by contemporaries such as Pietro Aretino and has been mentioned in passing by modern scholars such as Roberto Bartalini, but has never before been paid the detailed attention that it deserves. In Costanza Barbieri’s new book, not only is Chigi’s role expounded and explicated for the first time in a modern, scholarly manner but the richness of his lifestyle and its social goals are brought vividly to life.