2015
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Florian Métral, « Au commencement était la fin. Retour sur la chapelle Chigi de Santa Maria del Popolo à Rome », Studiolo : revue d'histoire de l'art de l'Académie de France à Rome (documents), ID : 10.3406/studi.2015.1003
A Re-Examination of the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Through a new study of the Genesis cycle executed by Francesco Salviati in the Chigi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, between 1552 and 1554, this article re-examines the interpretation of the decoration formulated by John Shearman in 1961. Through an iconographic reading that takes into consideration the general function of the whole decorative scheme and its actual state of visibility today, it emerges that the decoration of the Chigi Chapel is based on the idea of a meditation on the creation of the world, in which the earthly and the heavenly, the transitory and the eternal, the real and the imaginary are set side by side. Thus, more generally speaking, the Chigi Chapel also participated in the theological debates on the dawn of the world that enlivened Rome at the beginning of the 16th century and were a reflection on the (re)creative potential of antique art as expressed by Raphael.