Raphael’s masterpiece and late Renaissance graffiti. Villa Farnesina in Rome

There is a place in Rome that has preserved to this day not only an incredible fresco by one of the greatest masters of the Renaissance, but also a very curious graffiti. We are talking about Villa Farnesina – the first “lightweight” Renaissance villa with an open loggia. Her project was developed by the famous architect and master of illusory murals-dummy Baldassare Peruzzi. And the villa was ordered by Agostino Chigi, the same for whom Raphael would later create a tomb in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which in our century will be glorified throughout the world by the writer Dan Brown in the book “Angels and Demons” and director Ron Howard in the eponymous movie.

Villa Farnesina is a small two-storey U-shaped building with a loggia overlooking the garden in the center of the northern facade. The ceiling of the loggia is richly frescoed, which makes an incredible impression thanks to the light that penetrates through the large arched openings and fills the entire space.

The main masterpiece of the villa is undoubtedly the fresco “The Triumph of Galatea”, created by Raphael in 1511. In this fresco, the artist rethinks the ancient story, using as a source the story of the daughter of Nereus from The Idylls by Theocritus or Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the retelling of Angelo Poliziano, or Apuleius.

After the looting of the villa

“Why don’t I, who write these lines, laugh? Landsknechts put the pope to flight,” the graffiti reads.

A year earlier, in 1527, Rome was captured by the troops of Charles V, and looting did not stop in the city during the year. Almost the entire Swiss guard was killed on the steps of St. Peter’s Cathedral, and Pope Clement VII himself fled through a secret passage to the Castel Sant’Angelo, where he took refuge for a while. Subsequently, he managed to leave prison by paying a huge ransom, in addition, he recognized the German-Spanish dominance in the Apennines and further supported Emperor Charles V.

Villa Farnesina, like many rich palaces and mansions, was not lucky. That year, it was plundered and found on one of the walls this mocking graffiti, which, however, today has an important historical significance, as a living visual evidence of a turning point in the era.

The sack of Rome brought down the curtain on the Renaissance. In the context of the current general crisis, art began to search for a new language of expression. There comes a period of Mannerism, which is perceived by many researchers as an early phase of the next great style in the history of art – the Baroque style.