Chigi Chapel

The Chigi Chapel (Italian: Cappella Chigi) is the second chapel on the left-hand side of the nave in the Church 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 considered among the most important monuments in the basilica.

History

In 1507 Julius II granted the right construct a burial chapel in the church to a wealthy Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. The work began around 1513 with Raphael as the architect. The chapel was dedicated to the Madonna di Loreto and its main iconographic theme was the Resurrection. In visual themes it represented a marriage between Christianity and antiquity.

Work on the unfinished chapel resumed in the 1550s when Salviati frescoed the drum and the lunettes but the chapel was only completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1652 and 1656, more than a century after Raphael's death. Bernini's patron was Fabio Chigi, who became Pope Alexander VII in 1655.