RAPHAEL AND AGOSTINO CHIGI

Says Giorgio Vasari (1511 - 1574) in the "Lives of Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Italian Architects" that Agostino Chigi:

“Merchant of Siena rich and great had taken great friendship with Raffaello”.

In the name of friendship he asked Raphael to make his mark in the Villa that Baldassarre Peruzzi had built in Trastevere, which we now call the Villa Farnesina, where Raphael first painted the Triumph of Galatea (1511) and later the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche (1517).

But the prescient Agostino, who had acquired for the Chigi family, two chapels, one in Santa Maria del Popolo, the other in Santa Maria della Pace, of course asked Raphael to design the first (1513) and to paint the second (1514).

Incidentally the frescoes of Santa Maria della Pace, along with the Prophet Isaiah (1512) in St. Augustine, are the only two paintings by Raffaello we can see in the Roman churches.

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