Agostino Chigi.

Italian banker and merchant. Agostino Chigi (ahg-oh-STEE-noh KEE-jee) was born around 1465, and according to the baptismal rolls of Battistero di San Giovanni in Siena, he was baptized at this cathedral on November 29, 1466. Chigi was born into a wealthy Sienese family of merchants. His parents were Mariano Chigi (1439-1504) and Caterina Baldi. Mariano was well known in Siena and held important political and financial positions, including that of Sienese ambassador to the Holy See. Like his son Agostino, Mariano was a patron of the arts, and he commissioned the painter Perugino, the artist Raphael’s teacher, to create a major altarpiece. In addition to receiving a basic education in letters as appropriate to his social standing, Agostino learned the banking and financing business, first at his father’s offices in Siena and Viterbo and in 1487 in Rome at Ambrogio Spannocchi’s firm, which performed accounting services for the Holy See.