The Hours of the Day and Night

A set of twelve prints by different artists (Fosseyeux, Petit, Bourgeois, Croutelle, Lavallée, Hubert, Mariage, Dequevauviller and Thomas) representing the Hours of the day and night. Each print is lettered with the title in Italian at the bottom of the image and signed by the printmaker, with publication details and the identification of Raphael as the painter of the fresco. 

In the literature, the source for the representation of Hours of the Night and Day (see also RCINs 854108 and 854109) is not clear: according to Passavant, they might relate to some frescoes in a Roman palace executed by a pupil of Raphael. Ruland (1876) writes that they could reproduce a decoration in one of the rooms in the Vatican (see Bibliographic References). Nevertheless, these representations appear close to elements of decoration in the fresco of the ceiling of the Sala dei Pontefici in the Borgia Apartment, Vatican, in particular to the dancing figures around the central medallion.

The vault of this room was frescoed with personifications of the Planets and Zodiac signs by Perin del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, surely after September 1520 (when Sebastiano del Piombo writes in a letter to Michelangelo that this work had not being commissioned yet) and before 1524, when Parmigianino was commissioned by Pope Clement VII to decorate the walls of the room. The coat of arms of Pope Leo X is visible in the four corners of the room and therefore, at the time of his death in December 1521, the decoration must have been at a relatively advanced stage (see Bibliographic References for the different opinions about the end date).