Cupid and the Muses

An etching in reverse by Gerard Audran reproducing a scene from the ceiling of the Loggia of the Villa Palatina, frescoed by Raphael's workshop. This print is lettered below the image with the attribution to Raphael as the painter of the fresco. Signed by the printmaker. With a blind stamp.

According to Frommel, Baldassarre Peruzzi was responsible for the decoration of the Loggia around 1520 (see Bibliographic References). The scene represents Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, holding an arrow above Cupid's head. Another version of the same subject in reverse has been printed by Pietro Sante Bartoli (see RCIN 854095).

The Villa - erected on the ruins of the house of the Emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill - was a Renaissance Casino, probably built c. 1520 by the Stati family, a member of which also commissioned the frescoes in the loggia. The villa was later acquired by Paolo Mattei and it subsequently changed owner several times (Spada, Magnani, de Brunati, Colocci, Gell, Mills, Campana). The building was turned into a Gothic Villa in the 19th century. In the 20th century, after being owned by the Nuns of the Visitation, the Italian State acquired it and dismantled it between 1906 and 1936. The loggia is the only part of the villa still extant (see Bibliographic References).

The frescoes were removed from the Villa and the majority of them acquired in 1947 by the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Eight frescoes have been in the collection of the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg since 1861 (inv. nos. ГЭ-2339, ГЭ-2335, ГЭ-2337, ГЭ-2334, ГЭ-2333, ГЭ-2332, ГЭ-2336, ГЭ-2335).

The first series of frescoes (mythological scenes, Zodiac signs, Apollo and the Seven Muses) are now on long-term loan from the Metropolitan Museum to Rome, where they have been re-installed in their original locations in the loggia. The second series (scenes based on the Metamorphosis by Ovid) is catalogued by the Hermitage Museum as by Raphael's school and dated c.1516-1518. Five of these frescoes represent the same themes as the ones in the Stufetta (bathroom) of Cardinal Bibbiena in the Vatican, frescoed by Raphael's workshop using Raphael's designs (see Bibliographic References).