appear AGOSTINO CHIGI, born at Siena about 1465, of Mariano and Margarita Baldi, was gifted by nature with such keen insight and exquisite tact in the art of trading, that before reaching his fortieth year he had become, financially, the most powerful man in the world. Republics and kingdoms, Christians and infidels, popes and sultans alike, showed the same anxiety to secure his help in monetary affairs, and the same willingness to entrust to him the collectorship of their revenues and customs. Not less "magnifico" does he in connection with art and artists, his name being inseparable from those of Raphael, Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, il Sodoma, Penni, Luciani, Lotti, Nani, whom he favored and enriched, and whom he led to the accomplishment of such beautiful works as the chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Pace, the chapel of our Lady of Loreto in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the Casino and gardens by the Porta Settimiana (the Farnesina). By a curious but by no means unprecedented coincidence, while many of his contemporaries of dubious fame, or of no fame at all, have found their historians and their panegyrists, no record exists of the career of Agostino, if we except the three attempts made by Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, Giuseppe Bonafede the Augustinian, and Angelo Galluzzi the Jesuit,' which are 1 Pallavicino, Vita di Alessandro VII, Rome, 1849, vii, 1; Bonafede, I Chigi Augusti, Venice, 1660, p. 169; Galluzzi, Duodecim virorum e gente, Chisia elogia, MSS. in the Chigi Library marked R. V. e. hardly worth mentioning. A biography, however, exists, written by Agostino's own nephew, Fabio Chigi, who, having been elected Pope in 1655, took the name of Alexander VII. This valuable manuscript, discovered by Professor Giuseppe Cugnoni in 1879 and edited in the following year,' supplies us with information concerning the splendid use which Agostino made of his boundless wealth, an object lesson to modern Croesuses, who "pecudum ritu ad voluptatem omnia referunt." 2 The Contrada dei Banchi, the Wall Street of the Renaissance, is among those which have suffered the most in the recent transformation of the city. A centre of life, business, and wealth- where real property had attained fabulous prices-over-crowded and congested, with its ill-lighted premises and ill-ventilated courts, it began to lose its prestige after the middle of the sixteenth century, viz., after the completion of the "piano regolatore" or street reform of Paul III. Rank, fashion, and "la haute finance" began to desert the populous quarters of Ponte and Parione to seek space, air, health, and sunshine in those of Trevi, Colonna, and Monti. And so it came to pass that the section of the city considered the most fashionable and desirable from the time of Innocent VIII to that of Paul III lost caste after the death of the latter, and the palazzetti, until then inhabited by bankers, merchants, and prelates, found tenants only among the lower classes of tradesmen. For this reason the Contrada dei Banchi, with the adjacent courts, lanes, and alleys, has kept its sixteenth century aspect till the present day, free from the changes which modern civilization has inflicted on more fashionable quarters. 1 Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, vol. ii, a. 1879, pp. 38, 209, 475; vol. iii, 1880, pp. 213, 291, 422. 2 Cicero, Laelius, 9. By the expression "the present day" I mean a period of time within my own personal recollection, because evil days have fallen lately upon this picturesque corner, depriving it of many landmarks and of many associations with a glorious past. The men to whom the city has entrusted the safeguarding of its archæological and historical interests cannot be called responsible for the damage done, because, when the piano regolatore was discussed and sanctioned in 1873–75, we had obtained a guarantee that the Contrada dei Banchi should suffer no alteration. In 1889, however, the Town Council was suddenly asked to sanction an alteration in the line of the new Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, and before we conservative men had recovered from our surprise the banks and the houses of the Martelli, of the Bini, of the Altoviti, of the Ricasoli, and the Oratorio dei Fiorentini had fallen under the pickaxe of the reformer. Agostino's first move in business was to join forces with the Sienese banker, Stefano Ghinucci. Their aggregate capital did not exceed two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, and the office they rented in the Via dei Banchi was quite unpretentious; yet they succeeded so well from the first, that on May 30, 1502, Agostino was able to enter a second partnership with Francesco Tommasi, with a capital of ten thousand dollars. Three years later he appears as the leading shareholder in the firm of Chigi, Spannocchi & Co., and in 1508 as the sole owner and manager of the most prosperous and extensive banking concern in the world, dealing with France, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, England, and Turkey in every possible branch of trade, and monopolizing in Italy the three staple commodities, salt, wheat, and alum. The first was obtained by natural evaporation of the sea water in the salt-works of Ostia, Corneto, Camposalino, Cervia, and Manfredonia, and distributed |