Raphael Rooms
Between 1509 and 1511, Raphael also completed another work on the wall opposite the "Disputa". This third painting, entitled "The School of Athens", represents the degrees of knowledge or the truth acquired through reason. The fresco's position as well as the philosophers' walk in direction of the Holy Sacrament on the opposite wall suggested the interpretation of the whole room as the movement from the classical philosophy to the true religion and from the pre-Christian world to Christianity. It was meant to reside over the philosophical section of Pope Julius II's library. It is perhaps Raphael's most famous fresco.
Agostino Chigi
In Rome, Chigi's three artistic commissions involving Raphael remain the most prominent monuments of his contemporary fame: a chapel in Santa Maria della Pace; his mortuary chapel, the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo; and the suburban villa known since 1579 as the "Villa Farnesina", all of them intended to give substance to his legend. His splendid villa that he built on the shore of the Tiber, in Trastevere, bears the name of its later owners: Villa Farnesina ("illustration"). For its design, Chigi employed the Sienese painter Baldassare Peruzzi, virtually untried as an architect. Sebastiano del Piombo, Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano, Sodoma and Raphael were called upon to provide the decoration. Here Raphael frescoed his "Triumph of Galatea". Here Chigi held sumptuous repasts. In order to show his contempt of money, he was said to have all the silver dishes thrown into the river after the end of the parties; however, his servants were secretly ready to recollect them with nets draped under the windows. The villa called the "Viridario" in Chigi's time served as banking facility as well as residence, setting Chigi apart from the ordinary run of bankers in Rome, who normally resided in a "piano nobile" directly above but unconnected to their street-level "botteghe".