Villa Farnesina

From Freepedia

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 story of the villa started when Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and treasurer of Pope Julius II, commissioned the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi to design and build the villa between 1506-1510. Also engaged in designing the villa was Giuliano da Sangallo.Chigi also commissioned the fresco decoration of the loggias, by artists such as Raffaello, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano, and Il Sodoma inspired to the "Stanze" by the poet Angelo Poliziano. Best known are Raphael's frescoes in Loggia depicting the classical and secular myths of Love and Psyche, and the The Triumph of Galatea. One of his few purely secular paintings, which pictures a near naked nymph on a shell-shaped chariot amid frolicing servants.

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 Lincei Academy, one of the most ancient academies in Rome, and the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (Department for Drawings and Prints).