The triumph of Galatea

A print by Domenico Cunego reproducing the fresco The triumph of Galatea painted by Raphael in the loggia of the Villa Farnesina, Rome c.1512. Lettered with title, inscription in latin and attribution of the composition to Raphael. Signed and dated by the printmaker. Numbered at top left: 8. Published as Plate 8 in Gavin Hamilton's Schola Italica Picturae, 1773. Annotated on recto. On watermarked paper. Not in Ruland (1876).

Hamilton's Schola Italica Picturae comprised 40 plates, executed by leading Italian printmakers, reproducing Italian Old Master paintings. No text accompanied the plates.

The triumph of Galatea was Raphael's first commission from the Papal banker Agostino Chigi for the Villa Farnesina; he later also frescoed the villa's entrance loggia, as well as working on the banker's chapels in Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Pace, both also in Rome. Raphael's literary source for his depiction of Galatea was a poem by Poliziano which celebrated the victory of Giuliano de'Medici in a joust of 1475. Contemporaneously, Sebastiano del Piombo painted a fresco adjacent to Raphael's, again based on Poliziano's poem, depicting the giant Polyphemus. It seems likely that a full cycle of frescoes was planned for the loggia but that this plan was abandoned, for reasons unknown.