Pala Chigi

The Chigi were Sienese bankers, and by the early 1500s one of them, Agostino Chigi, was on his way to becoming perhaps the richest private citizen in Europe, lending to popes. Around 1502 the family hired Perugino, then the most sought-after painter in central Italy, for the altarpiece of their chapel in Sant'Agostino in Siena. He delivered it a few years later, and it still hangs there. Perugino stacks it the way he liked, heaven above and earth below: Christ on the cross ringed by calm angels at the top, saints standing in quiet grief beneath. The small scenes that once ran along the base are gone from Siena now, split between museums in New York and Chicago.