Villa Pigneto del Marchese Sacchetti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Villa Pigneto or Sacchetti, or also the Casino al Pigneto del Marchese Sacchetti was an architecturally prominent building designed by the Baroque artist Pietro da Cortona. A second, plainer, Villa Sacchetti, now calle Villa Chigi, is found at Castelfusano near Ostia and was decorated (if not designed) by Cortona]]. It was an elaborately decorated suburban casino or (lodge), that stood only for some decades after completion in 1630, just at the then-outskirts of Rome (now Pigneto Sacchetti train stop) at the foot of Monte Mario. From the top rampart of the garden entrance, one should have been able to glimpse above the surrounding pine forest (pigneto) the domes of St Peter's Basilica and central Rome.

As the name casino implies, this was a 'pleasure house', a lodge for where notables could take refuge from the crowded Rome. The villa suburbana was commissioned by the Florentine Marchese Marcello Sacchetti, papal treasurer of the profligate Barberini Pope Urban VIII. Other members of this family, benefited for a few decades from association with the pope, including his brother Giulio, named cardinal, and another brother, named general of papal armies. Cortona, a fellow Tuscan, designed the villa for his long-time patron.

We can only reconstruct the villa from etchings, paintings, plans, and scant architectural ruins left, although the findings generally agree. It was one of Cortona's first designs. The house was built on a high plinth on a hillside. The favored garden approach had 3 tiers, not unlike Vignola's Villa Giulia from the previous century; daring symmetric flights of stairs gave drama to the entrance and flanked a large basin-fountain with cascading waters and a nymphaeum. Atop a three story pavilion with lower foward thrusting wings. The concave foward embrace of the wings is reinforced by the central exedra, which recalls the Belvedere's Cortile della Pigna. Unlike the Villa Giulia and the Belvedere, the facade is elaborately decorated. Statuary, in a style reminiscent of Palladio's Palazzo Chiericati (1550) at Vicenza, crennelates the skyline. In a model to be repeated by Cortona's never-implemented plans for Palazzo Chigi in Rome and later by the Trevi Fountain, this palace integrates the fountains into the entrance.

Unfortunatedly, within 50 years, the palace was in great disrepair, the Sacchettis and Barberini in low esteem, and the palace, like much in Rome, soon became a ruin. The villa also had its contemporary critics; Bernini likened the structure to a Christmas crib^[1]In the middle of the 19th century, the site was sold by the surviving Sacchettis, and the remaining structure razed. It was, for its day a daring design, which influenced other baroque creations. Today, the area is a delightful park (Pineto)[1].