AGOSTINO CHIGI

Agostino Chigi of Siena, entrusted the design of the Villa to the promising Sienese architect Baldassarre Peruzzi.

This was supposed to represent the consecration of Agostino Chigi as patron and, why not, as the richest man in Rome.
Agostino Chigi, who was sent by the Father in Rome in 1487, entered into the good graces of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, becoming the banker of the Pope.
Be a coincidence but the only Chigi Pope took the name Alexander and he was the seventh.
the connections of Agostino with the Popes who succeeded on the throne of Peter: Julius II, Leo X, were always excellent and his luck continued to prosper.

In his work as a banker he was not limited to the Roman horizon, among others financed Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Piero dè Medici and the king of France, Charles VIII.
It must be said that unlike the bankers of our time his claims were all "due".
Why is the great of the earth were so solicitous with Agostino Chigi?
The fact is that Augustine was not limited to finance, he was also entrepreneur, thereby often traded loans with concessions.

Holds for all the question of alum, that, to be a mineral that prevents putrefaction of materials of animal origin, was essential in the leather industry.
The alum mines were near Constantinople, but when in 1453 fell into the hands of Islam, the West stood suddenly devoid of the precious commodity.
It was then that was discovered near Rome, in that place which not coincidentally was called Allumiere, large alum mines.

First, the Popes requisitioned mines, later Pope Alexander VI Borgia, in return for the loans received by his son Cesare Borgia, the "Valentino", awarded to Agostino Chigi operation of mines of alum, in other words Agostino became the monopolist of alum for all Europe.
Agostino was also a great patron of the arts, one of the greatest of the Renaissance.
The Villa Farnesina is the proof, but we must not forget the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace and the other Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.

His favorite artist was Raphael.
The Villa Farnesina was supposed to be a place of joy, in which Augustine served his guests great banquet in unique environments in the world.
The gardens of the villa were splendid, so that designing the Loggia of Psyche, which then constituted the main entrance to the villa and was not protected by glass, Raphael drew the festoons of flowers and fruit that Giovanni da Udine frescoed and that seemed an extension of the gardens, which sloped down to the Tiber, where Raphael had created a pavilion dedicated to summer banquets, which unfortunately when at the end of XIX century Tiber was canalized was shot down.

The love life of Augustine was complicated, first lived with Francesca Ordeaschi, defined by the chronicles as a courtesan, on the other hand, the ambition led him to conclude a prestigious marriage.
In order had pointed Margherita Gonzaga, but she showed herself reluctant. At last he married the Ordeaschi, as a kind of consolation Pope Leo X celebrated the marriage, in short, a pope without prejudice.
In the villa the room of Alexander and Roxane, frescoed by Sodoma, was the bridal chamber of Augustine.

As we said in 1580, Alessandro Farnese bought the villa, which, as faces with the Palazzo Farnese, suggested to the cardinal the idea of joining the two buildings with a bridge over the Tiber, but it was never built.

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