Tomb of Pope Hadrian VI

The Sienese Baldazzare Peruzzi followed Raphael’s footsteps in Rome. After the notable architecture of Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina, he had the opportunity to seal his reputation with the theme of the monumental tomb, with that of the Netherlandish pope Hadrian VI (1522-23) in Santa Maria dell’Anima, working from 1524 to 1529, Among his collaborators was Niccolò Tribolo, a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino.

This papal tomb made way for the custom of adding reliefs with historical scenes to the architectural context, to be a feature of successive papal tombs. He stressed the pictorialness of Sansovinian models with grand columns in polychrome marble, particularly in Lucullan black (“nero africano”), which links Hadrian’s tomb with the columns Peruzzi painted in the Sala delle Prospettive in the Villa Farnesina. Peruzzi underlined the architectural installation, enlarging the great central arch and crowning the attic with a tympanum. Minute decoration gave way to more monumental figures and statues between orders with superimposed niches. The break with the fifteenth-century tradition of the wall architectural tomb was final.