Palazzo Massimo and Baldassare Peruzzi's Approach to Architectural Design

Abstract

The architectural career of Baldassare Peruzzi has traditionally been divided chronologically into halves, each epitomized by one of his two masterpieces, the Farnesina (Figs 1–3) and Palazzo Massimo (Figs 11–33). The commission for the Farnesina was granted him about 1505 by the exceedingly wealthy financier Agostino Chigi, who seems to have taken the young fellow Sienese under his wing. The Tuscan origins of the building’s patron and architect are reflected in its simplicity and lightness, and in the linear delicacy of its details which recalls in particular the style of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who exerted a formative influence on the young Peruzzi before he left Siena. In the setting of Julius II’s Rome these qualities seem slightly anachronistic, yet the outcome is such a harmonious balance between elegant symmetry and relaxed planning, between architectural and painted decoration, that Vasari was moved to comment that the building appears to have been born rather than built (non murato, ma veramente nato).

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