Baldassarre Peruzzi

Portrait of Baldassarre Peruzzi I saw him. Giorgio Vasari.

Baldassarre Peruzzi was an Italian painter and architect of the Renaissance, born in Siena on March 7, 1481 and died in Rome on January 6, 1536.

Artistic career

As a painter, he trained in the city of Siena in the style of Pinturicchio.

When he moved to Rome, his style matured in contact with the work of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, El Sodoma and, above all, with Raphael Sanzio.

In his figurative scenes there is a tendency towards the forms of Raphael, which does not exclude a detail characteristic of the Sienese school, as can be seen in the frescoes in the Ponzetti chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. This tendency will be transformed into increasingly artificial compositions, with a Mannerist tone, such as The Presentation of the Virgin, from the same church, painted in 1520. The same inclination for the bright and decorative can be observed in two compositions kept in the Museo del Prado, where the artist seems to trace his inspiration to Perugino, Raphael's teacher, rather than to the latter: The continence of Scipio and The kidnapping of the Sabine women .

A similar evolution characterizes his architectural works. His first great work is the Villa Farnesina, begun in 1509. He will also work on the construction works of the new Basilica of San Pedro after the death of Raphael, becoming the director of the works in 1532. During that same year he elaborates a large quantity of architectural designs, studies of ancient monuments and projects that will have a notable influence on Sebastiano Serlio's treatise, and that constitute restless and experimental research. The culminating point of such investigations will be the realization of the Massimo Palace alle Colonne , one of his most accomplished works.

After the sack of Rome in 1527, he returned to Siena, where he left architectural and pictorial works such as the construction and decoration of the Villa Belcaro. He returns to Rome between 1530 and 1531 and, later, between 1535 and 1536, where he leaves the best samples of his activity.

His work is a paradigmatic example of the concerns of a historical moment in which, taken to the extreme the study of classicism, the limits and possibilities of freedom were investigated at the same time, in a revolutionary and stimulating formal search, although discontinuous and not resolving.

Outstanding works

• Project for the Basilica of Saint Peter of the Vatican

In his project for St. Peter's Basilica, Peruzzi takes the centralized option proposed by Bramante: a Greek cross plan topped with semicircular apses and inscribed in a square. The dome continues to be the nuclear and centralizing element. His project provides an increase in the volume of the dome and an attempt to bring the naves closer to it, with which it was intended to solve the technical problems that the construction raised. At the same time, he introduces a clear anticlassical element: the top of one of the apses with a portico that replaces the façade. His contributions, like those of other masters, did not materialize in the final building, which was finally entrusted to Michelangelo.

• La Farnesina

Villa Farnesina.

One of his masterpieces is the villa built for the banker Agostino Chigi (today known as Farnesina because it later became the property of the Farnesio family). Here Peruzzi provides a model of a suburban villa that shortly after will be the inspiration for Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in his Farnese Palace. It is a building closed to the outside and open at the back, through the arrangement of a U-shaped plant. The lateral wings extend towards the garden, allowing architecture and nature to merge and acquire a unitary treatment. In the transition between the built area and the natural area, a patio is inserted, a precedent of the great parade grounds of the 17th century. Outside, most of the elements are classical, used according to a non-classical syntax. The façade is arranged on two floors, finished off and separated by a cornice: on each one there is a monumental order of Tuscan pilasters, in whose intercolumns there are double openings, a large lighting window topped with a cornice and, above it, a small ventilation hole. His reaction to the orthodoxy of the orders can be seen on the upper floor, where there is a frieze decorated with garlands, anti-normative to the Tuscan order used on the columns: triglyphs and metopes would correspond to it. On the courtyard façade, he orders a large loggia of arcades as an open gallery, flanked by the wings of the building that advance towards the garden.

• Palace Massimo alle Colonne of Rome

In the Roman Palazzo Massimo, called alle Colonne due to the striking columns on the façade, he puts up a revolutionary façade, built following the curvature of the street where it was located. The façade will adapt to this convex shape. This solution will be widely used in the Baroque. The façade is arranged in two different areas: two floors that are separated by a wide cornice that merges with the balcony. On the upper floor there are three orders of holes, reminiscent of the windows already used in the Farnesina and that do not respond to any order of columns. The entire façade is padded. The lower floor is convex in shape and in it, an order of Tuscan columns is superimposed on a calligraphic padding, similar to that of the upper floor. It is ordered by means of pairs of pilasters between each hole, and as it approaches the center, these are replaced by a pilaster and a half column, and then by two pairs of columns. This gradual play accentuates the convex character of the façade, where all the elements used are classical but not the way they are arranged. This controversy is found throughout the building.

In the portico that is arranged in this façade, although of small proportions, a sensation of depth is produced, due to the arrangement of its elements, combined to produce that illusory sensation of spatiality. The coffered ceiling curves like the façade, and the niches are decorated with flared ribs, which produces a feeling of spaciousness. In the courtyard of the palace there is a succession of orders in an anti-classical way: the Tuscan order on the lower floor, while the Ionic order is located on the upper floor. Finishing off these floors is a large attic with ventilation holes, which gives a greater longitudinal character.

In this work, classical elements are ordered in a completely anti-classical way, with a fictitious and unreal use criteria, producing the sensation of a different space from the one derived from its real measurements. These types of resources were widely used in the Baroque, making Peruzzi one of the first representatives of Mannerism architecture.