Leseprobe

77 members of his family, ensure the salvation of their souls, and uphold the family’s reputation. In addition to restoring the dome, its mosaics, and the paintings, the measures also included, finally, the erection of the second pyramid tomb that, like the burial site of Agostini Chigi, the chapel’s founder, was to be adorned with portrait medallions and new inscriptions (figs. 54, 55). A description, probably written by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, of the Chigi Chapel once the work had been completed states: “This immortal work of eternal piousness of Agostino Chigi, which Fabio, who now radiates in sacred purple, has recently restored and completed with lunettes, after a pyramid was erected on the right side and medallions and titles added on both sides; and this, not in his own name, but in those of the brothers Mario and Agostino. Just now, the same pope is adorning the large altarpiece that I described and the other images with a frame glittering with bronze and gold. He thought about all of this while he was still a cardinal after his return to Rome from a lengthy mission, as the words written in large letters on the sarco­ phagus remind us: MORS AD COELOS ITER, meaning in the year MDCLI, before he was elected to the Holy Collegium and completed the chapel.” 10 Fig. 53 Cappella Chigi, view of chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome