The head of Venus

A photograph of a drawing in the British Museum, London (inv.no.1895,0915.632) which is related to the head of Venus in the fresco depicting Venus and Cupid on the south wall of the stufetta, or bathroom, in the apartments of Cardinal Bibbiena in the Vatican Palace. The stufetta was frescoed with mythological subjects by Raphael's workshop c.1516. Annotated on verso.

Cardinal Bibbiena had a close friendship with Raphael, patronising him on a number of occasions and, it would seem, facilitating the betrothal of the artist to his niece. In addition to the stufetta, Raphael's workshop also painted Cardinal Bibbiena's loggia. Both spaces were designed in a manner imitating ancient Roman painted decoration, and included depictions of episodes from Ovid, grotesques and ornamental motifs. The stufetta was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and survives in a much damaged form today; the loggetta was not rediscovered until the twentieth century. 

This drawing, a fragment of a cartoon, has also been connected with a sequence of frescoes in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, which were executed by Giulio Romano for the Villa Stati on the Palatine in the early 1520s. See Pouncey and Gere, 1962 and Clayton, 1999 (Bibliographic References) for more details.