Chigi Chapel

About

The Chigi Chapel or Chapel of the Madonna of Loreto (Italian: Cappella Chigi or Cappella della Madonna di Loreto) is the second chapel on the left-hand side of the nave in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. It is the only religious building of Raphael which has been preserved in its near original form. The chapel is a treasure trove of Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and is ranked among the most important monuments in the basilica.

In 1507 Julius II granted assent to the acquisition of a chapel in the church to his friend, the wealthy Sienese banker and financier of the Roman Curia, Agostino Chigi. Chigi had bought the second chapel in the north aisle, and its dedication was changed by a papal bull on 3 December 1507 from Saints Sebastian, Roch and Sigismund to the Madonna of Loreto, whose shrine Agostino was passionately devoted, and Saints Augustine and Sebastian. The bull also stated that the chapel was meant to be a mausoleum for Agostino and his heirs, "wishing to trade earthly things to heavenly and transitory to eternal by fortunate exchange."

The chapel was most probably rebuilt from scratch with Raphael as the architect. A ground plan attributed to the artist was preserved in the Uffizi in Florence, it was presumably drawn at the beginning of the work around 1512. An inscription on the dome marked the completion of the mosaics in 1516. In the following years Lorenzetto worked on the architectural decoration of the chapel and the statues under Raphael's patronage. The main iconographic theme of the chapel was the Resurrection; and visually it represented a marriage between Christianity and classical antiquity.

Agostino Chigi was buried in the half-finished chapel on 11 April 1520, and Raphael himself had died a few days before Agostino. Agostino Chigi's widow, Francesca Ordeasca commissioned the mosaicist, Luigi da Pace on 31 May 1520 to create another set of mosaics for the planned decoration of the tambour and the spandrels, but she died in the same year on 11 November. The simultaneous death of the artist, the patron and the patron's widow stymied work on the chapel. Agostino's younger brother, Sigismondo Chigi commissioned Lorenzetto to go on with Raphael's plan in 1521. But the work advanced slowly and the death of Sigismondo in 1526 left everything in limbo. Vasari records in his Lives, speaking about the statues of Jonah and Elijah :

"... the heirs of Agostino, with scant respect, allowed these figures to remain in Lorenzetto's workshop where they stood for many years. [...] Lorenzo, robbed for those reasons of all hope, found for the present that he had thrown away his time and labor."

The main altar-piece, a mural depicting the Birth of the Virgin by Sebastiano del Piombo was begun in 1530 but it was left unfinished in 1534. Work on the chapel resumed in 1548 when Francesco Salviati was commissioned to create frescoes on the drum and the spandrels, although Raphael intended mosaics on these surfaces. He also completed the mural above the main altar. In 1552 Lorenzo Chigi paid his debt towards the heirs of Lorenzetto, and the two statues were finally placed in the chapel. After this the chapel was unveiled for the first time in 1554.

After Lorenzo Chigi's death and his burial in the chapel in 1573 the family disappeared from Rome, and their chapel became abandoned. In 1624 the funeral monument of Cardinal Antoniotto Pallavicini was moved into the chapel from the crossing and placed in front of the left wall by the friars. Sigismondo Chigi's great-grandson, Fabio made his first visit to the neglected chapel in 1626. He found it in a state of serious disrepair and complained about the presence of the Pallavicini monument in a letter to his uncle. Later he managed to transfer this tomb to the nearby baptistery but it was still in the chapel in 1629. Fabio Chigi regained the ownership after a three year long litigation with the Augustinians. Although the debate was settled in 1629, due to Chigi's long absence from Rome as he pursued his ecclesiastical career, the chapel remained neglected in the next decades.

More important changes were carried out by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1652 and 1655. The works began in earnest when Fabio Chigi became cardinal-priest of the basilica. Bernini finished the pyramids, laid the present floor, raised the altar, slightly enlarged the windows, renewed the lead roof, regilded and cleaned the dome. Painted wood panels by Raffaello Vanni were placed in the lunettes above the tombs. In 1656 and in 1661 Bernini filled the remaining niches with two new statues, depicting Daniel and the Lion and Habakuk and the Angel. Another restoration campaign was launched in 1682-88.

The exterior of the chapel is very simple: an oblong cube of exposed brick, surmounted by a cylindric tambour pierced with large rectangular windows. The cube is finished with a stone cornice while the tambour is decorated with a brick modillion trim. The low conical roof is covered with tiles but originally it was leaded. The dome is crowned by a small stone lanternino which has niches instead of windows between Tuscan pilasters and its base is decorated with four scrolls. This miniature round temple is topped with the symbols of the Chigi family, the mountains and the star with a cross. The exterior is practically invisible due to the location of the chapel behind the city wall, the Porta del Popolo and the main body of the basilica. Its simplicity and severe appearance was based on the reception of ancient Roman central-plan buildings for example the Temple of Minerva Medica.

Raphael's centralized plan was inspired by the designs of Bramante for the new St. Peter's Basilica. Another source of inspiration was the Pantheon with its dome, marble revetments and Corinthian pilasters. The simple cube is surmounted by a hemispherical dome resting on a high drum which is penetrated by a row of windows that allow light into the chapel. The trapezoidal pendentives were the characteristics of Bramante but the whole conception of space, which requires the viewer to look at from several points of view to capture its splendor, is new and unique. The side walls are made up of round-headed arches, of which only the entrance arch is open, the others are blind; they are alternated with canted corners in which shell-headed niches are framed between Corinthian pilasters. The subtle use of coloured marbles emphasizes the individual elements of the classical architecture.

The portal of the chapel is a Renaissance reinterpretation of the entrance bay of the Pantheon. It has a monumental effect with double transverse arches resting on huge Corinthian pilasters. The marble pilasters have cable-fluted shafts and beautifully carved, vivacious capitals which were practically copied from the much admired classical model. Raphael had studied the ancient building and created a precise architectural drawing of the entrance which is now preserved in the Uffizi. The entablature and the cornice is decorated with egg-and-dart, bead-and-reel and flower-patterned enrichments. The pilasters are of polished white Carrara marble with faint grey veins while the capitals are of unpolished pure white Carrara marble. The surfaces between the pilasters are covered with a coloured marble revetment, their slabs divided by white marble panels.

The surfaces of the arches are decorated with Renaissance ornaments; on the intrados of the outer arch there is a meander, the archivolt of the inner arch is decorated with rich garlands of fruit and a mask, while the intrados of the inner arch has a central band of alternating rosettes and rectangles with grotesques, framed by two interlacement bands with six-pointed stars in the middle. The stucco Chigi coat-of-arms (quartered with the oak and the six mountain with the star) above the portal was added by Bernini in 1652. The inscription "Unum ex septem" on the cartouche hanging from the coat-of-arms indicates that this is one of the privileged altars which are devotionally equivalent to visiting the Seven Churches of Rome.

The entrance of the chapel is marked by a marble railing. It is made of a yellow giallo antico marble frame with dark red portasanta balusters. The railing was enlarged and the turgid balusters were added in the 17th century. This balustrade was copied by Giovanni Battista Contini in the Elci Chapel in Santa Sabina using a different colour scheme. The step leading into the chapel is a large monolith of Egyptian granite. All the other chapels in the basilica have simple white stone steps. Agostino Chigi paid 300 scudi for the large block of stone. The central panels of the wooden doors are decorated with a dense foliage of carved acanthus leaves.

The friezes in the chapel are "dropped" in an odd position between the capitals. This was an uncommon device and Raphael gave it an entirely new significance with the exuberance and plasticity of the carvings. There are similar dropped friezes on the Santa Casa in Loreto designed by Bramante in 1509. Shearman supposed that the design for the Chigi Chapel preceded the Santa Casa; at any rate the two project were related because the Chigi Chapel was dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto by Agostino Chigi. Dropped friezes appear on the two monumental tombs by Andrea Sansovino in the apse of the basilica which were also created in the first decade of the 16th century. The antique precedents are rare but the same arrangement is visible on the Arcus Argentariorum in Rome.

The friezes are embellished with festoons of fruit and ribbons. The decoration was modelled after the relief panels in the entrance bay of the Pantheon that Raphael recorded on a smaller drawing but he omitted the tripods on the sides because the available space was smaller. Raphael also added new symbols above the festoons: ascending eagles (at the sides of the altar), a bearded male head wearing a hat in the form of the Chigi symbols with two fantastic beasts (right to the entrance), a siren attended by winged sealions (left to the entrance) and the Chigi symbol of the mountain and the eight-pointed star (under the entrance arch). There are playful details: flowers and berries at the end of the ribbons, birds pecking the fruits of the festoons (both eagle panels) and a small scene of a bird attacking a lizard which is nibbling the fruits (left eagle panel).

There is a circular crypt under the chapel with an unornamented, empty pyramidal tomb set in the wall right under the altar which was discovered in 1974. At present this hypogeum is totally hidden from view but before Bernini's reconstruction there was an aperture in front of the altar creating a visual link between the two levels.

Main article: Creation of the World (Raphael) The dome is decorated with mosaics executed by the Venetian Luigi da Pace after Raphael's cartoon (1516). The original cartoons were lost but some preparatory drawings, that confirm the originality of the work, survived in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Lille. The central roundel represents God, the Father, surrounded by putti, effectively foreshortened in an impetuous gesture, harking back to Michelangelo, which seems to give rise to the entire motion of the universe below. Eight mosaic panels show the Sun, the Moon, the starry sky and the six known planets as pagan deities depicted in half-length, each accompanied by an angel with colourful feathered wings. The figures are accompanied by the signs of the zodiac.

The sequence of the panels is as follows: the sky; Mercury, the god holding the caduceus (with Virgo and Gemini ); Luna, the crescent moon jewelled goddess holding a bow (with Cancer ); Saturn, the bearded god holding the scythe (with Aquarius and Capricorn ); Jupiter, the king of the gods with his eagle holding a thunderbolt (with Sagittarius and Pisces ); Mars, the god of war holding a sword and a shield (with Scorpio and Aries ); Sol, the sun jewelled god holding a bow (with Leo ); Venus, the goddess of love with Cupid holding a torch (with Taurus and Libra ). A French engraver, Nicolas Dorigny created a series of plates depicting the mosaics in 1695 for Louis, Duke of Burgundy.

The mosaic panels are surrounded by richly gilded stucco decoration. The blue background creates an optical illusion giving the impression of an architectural framework opening to the sky above the chapel. The panels look like illusionistic skylights between the gilt stucco ribs while God is standing on the edge of the central oculus.

The traditional interpretation of the dome is that the composition shows the Creation of the World. Another interpretation, proposed by John Shearman, claims that it represents the cosmos as described by Plato in a Christianized Neoplatonist form. This idea had a widespread popularity in the Renaissance. In this case the dome is a depiction of the "Realm of the Soul after Death" with God, the Father receiving the soul (of Agostino Chigi) in his new home. The presence of the signs of the zodiac corroborates this interpretation because the signs were symbols of the passage of time in eternity, and they appeared in antique funeral art around the image of the departed.