The Yellow Sitting Room

The ‘Salotto Giallo’ [‘Yellow Sitting Room’] is situated on the first floor of Palazzo Chigi. Together with the adjoining Deti Antechamber and Deti Gallery, this room formed part of the original Aldobrandini-Deti apartment. Cardinal Deti commissioned Flaminio Allegrini to decorate it between 1626 and 1630.

The frieze in this room, which runs along the walls underneath the wooden beamed ceiling, celebrates the achievements of Giovanni Francesco Aldobrandini, Olimpia’s husband. The coats of arms of the Chigi family and of the Sayn family were added to each corner in the 19th century to mark the marriage of Mario Chigi and Antonietta Sayn.

A fireplace decorated with a large 18th century mirror similar to the one in the antechamber stands at one side of the room and on either side there are two paintings: the portrait of a young Laura Marsili Chigi, mother of Pope Alexander VII, and the ‘Portrait of a woman with a tiara’, produced by the Tuscan School in the 16th century. 

On the other walls hang ‘The Flood’ by Francesco Bassano, the ‘Bacchanal’ by Nicolas Poussin, inspired by Titian’s famous ‘The Andrians’, and a copy of Raphael’s ‘Madonna of the chair’.

This is the room where the President of the Council of Ministers receives guests and their delegations for meetings.