BALDASSARRE PERUZZI. — Architect and painter, born in Siena on 6 March 1481, died in Rome on 6 January 1536. At the age of 20, in Siena, he collaborated with Pinturicchio on the decoration of the chapel of St John in the Cathedral, but two years later he was already in Rome, the scene of his greatest achievements.
In 1509, after having worked as a painter—according to some scholars also in the apse of the church of St Onofrio, but certainly in a Nativity scene in the church of St Roch—he began in Rome the construction of the Palazzo of Agostino Chigi, later known as the Farnesina, and left his mark there in the loggia, in a ground-floor room, and in the main hall.