A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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218. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

Ascribed to Peruzzi (Sienese: 1481-1536).

Baldassare Peruzzi, an excellent draughtsman and fair painter, was most distinguished as an architect. His life, says Sir Edward Poynter, was one which any artist might envy. "Brought up at his own wish as a painter at Siena, he soon gave evidence of such talent that he was entrusted with important commissions at Rome, making acquaintance by this means with one of the great Roman patrons of art, Agostino Chigi, the same for whom Raphael painted a chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. Baldassare found leisure to devote himself to the study of architecture; from this time he seems to have had almost the happiest lot that one can imagine falling to an artist, that of building palaces and decorating them with his own hand" (Lectures on Art, ch. viii.). Among these were the Farnesina Palace for Agostino Chigi, and the Palazzo Massimi, which is "justly considered one of the most beautiful and ingeniously constructed in Rome." It is characteristic of the taste of the time that what Vasari most admired in Peruzzi's buildings was "the decoration of the Loggia at the Villa Farnesina, painted in perspective to imitate stucco work." "This is done so perfectly," he says, "with the colours, that even experienced artists have taken them to be works in relief. I remember that Titian, a most excellent and renowned painter, whom I conducted to see these works, could by no means be persuaded that they were painted, and remained in astonishment when, on changing his point of view, he perceived that they were so." Baldassare also designed the fortifications of Siena, and on the death of Raphael was appointed architect of St. Peter's at Rome. His life was not free from adventures. At the sack of Rome in 1527 he was plundered of all he possessed by the Imperial soldiers, and was forced to paint a picture of their general, the Constable Bourbon, who had been killed in the assault of the city. He died at Rome, not without suspicion of having been poisoned, and was buried in the Pantheon, near the tomb of Raphael.

There is a drawing by Peruzzi of this subject in possession of the National Gallery, No. 167. Girolamo da Treviso (623) made a copy of it, which is perhaps this work. The figures of the three magi are interesting as having been portraits of Titian, Raphael, and Michael Angelo.