 VILLA FARNESINA
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 villa was built by Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and treasurer of Pope Julius II. Between 1506–1510, the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi, aided by Giuliano da Sangallo, designed and built the villa.
Chigi also commissioned the fresco decoration of the loggias, by artists such as Raffaello, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giulio Romano, and Il Sodoma. The themes were inspired by the "Stanze" of the poet Angelo Poliziano, a key member of the circle of Lorenzo de Medici.
Best known are Raphael's frescoes in Loggia depicting the classical and secular myths of Love and Psyche, and The Triumph of Galatea. One of his few purely secular paintings, which pictures a near-naked nymph on a shell-shaped chariot amid frolicking servants in painting reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus.
Some claim that the Farnese once contemplated linking their two palaces across each other on the Tiber with a private bridge.
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).
The Palazzo and Loggia are open to visitors
 THE TRIUMPH OF GALATEA BY RAPHAEL:
The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco masterpiece completed in 1512 by the Italian painter Raphael for the Villa Farnesina; it is representative of the renewed interest into secular classic mythology dear to Renaissance artists.
The fresco was is a mythological scene of a series embellishing the open gallery of the building, a series never completed which was inspired to the "Stanze per la giostra" of the poet Angelo Poliziano.
In Greek mythology, the beautiful Nereid Galatea had had fallen in love with the pleasant shepherd Acis. Her consort, one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, after chancing upon the two lovers together, lobbed an enormous pillar and killed Acis.
Raphael did not paint any of the main events of the story. He choose the scene of the nymph's apotheosis (Stanze, I, 118-119). Galatea appears surrounded by other sea creatures whose forms are somewhat inspired to , whereas the bright colors and decoration are supposed to be inspired by ancient Roman painting. At the left, a sturdy Triton (partly man, partly fish) abducts a sea nymph; behind them, another Triton uses a shell as a trumpet. Galatea rides a shell-coach drawn by two dolphins.
Galatea was not drawn using a model, but, according to the same Raphael, to represent the ideal beauty. The eyes of the nymph are indeed directed to the so-called Platonic love, i.e. the little Cupid who has wisely left his arrows in the quiver. In spite of the statement of the painter, it seems he actually used a model: she was the famous courtesan Imperia, who was Agostino Chigi's lover and whom Raphael could covet taking advantage of his role and of the absences of the banker.
Seeing this theme of a woman abiding the waves on a shell reminds us of the now-ubiquitous image of The Birth of Venus by Boticelli (1483). However, that high-renaissance icon scuds effortlessy in a placid ocean; Raphael's Galatea is urged on by gallivanting dolphins and a more boisterous crowd of nereids and mermen.
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The Triumph of Galatea, 1511 (Detail)
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