Collezione Chigi Saracini Siena

ORARI DI APERTURA E VISITA:
Friday and Saturday, from 11 am to 12 and from 15 to 16

The collection Chigi, consisting of approximately 12,000 works, is housed in the building situated in the heart of the historic center of the city. It is one of the most important private collections of Italian and international art which originated from the personal interest in the art of Galgano Saracens. Interest geared towards all areas of the arts that can be found today in the types most distinctive features of a noble and private collectors. Funds gold, paintings, statues, bas-reliefs, drawings, engravings, Etruscan and Roman antiquities, pottery, weapons, clothing, coins and medals, holy apparel, furniture, offer a singular exemplification of the many schools of painting and manufactures arts and crafts of Tuscany not only de. Its chronological overview of the panorama proposes a significant international figurative, but above all an extraordinary testimony of Sienese art ranging from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, with particular attention to the period of the sixteenth and Beccafumi Sodom.
Over the years the collection has been enriched using all channels of a thriving local market, but taking advantage of many opportunities that deletions Leopold offered with the sale of precious works of painting and sculpture, from churches and brotherhoods.
Between 1806 and 1819, the Chigi palace was opened to the public for the visit of twenty rooms, now reorganized as a result of a careful critical reading of the various trends in taste collectible expressed over the years by its owners.
The work of Galgano Saracens brought in a few years the transformation of their home in place of the glorification of his family, the genealogy was illustrated by busts located in different rooms and frescoes commissioned to Antonio Castelletti and Thomas Paccagnini for the main floor rooms . The choices of the noble Sienese were motivated not only by a strong sensitivity to the Fine Arts, in a climate of great interest to the figurative culture in the second half of the eighteenth century, was evidenced in Siena after the birth of a large group of private collections .
The rich list of authors in this collection, we mention only some of the masters: Sassetta, Sano di Pietro, Sodom, Jerome Pacchia, Beccafumi, Riccio, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo. They are joined by great composers of Baroque painting: Petrazzi, Vanni, and Manetti Bernardino Mei. Temporally close the large collection of paintings works by Pietro Benvenuti, Cesare Maccari and composition of Cassioli depicting the visit of Galeazzo Sforza, Lorenzo de 'Medici. In the collection Chigi space are also numerous sculptures and ceramics sixteenth century, with important examples from factories and Casteldurante Chigi Zondadari of San Quirico d'Orcia. The artistic journey that the collection offers the public of today, stands as one of the most interesting and qualified observers for the study of art and Italian collectors.