The vault of the Loggia di Galatea

An etching reproducing the whole ceiling from the vault of the Loggia di Galatea, the garden loggia on the Tiber side of the Villa Farnesina, frescoed by Baldassarre Peruzzi in c.1510-11. This print – which is unfinished, missing the hand-colouring –  would have been published by Ludwig Gruner as plate 18 in "Fresco decorations and stuccoes of churches & palaces in Italy..." (London, 1844). Annotated on the verso.

Agostino Chigi, a Sienese banker, commissioned the Villa Farnesina from Baldassarre Peruzzi, who designed and erected it in c.1506-1510. In the Loggia, the painter depicted a sky like the one that would have been seen in 1466 at the hour of Chigi's birth, with stories of gods and heroes, which symbolized constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac.

The loggia frescoed by Peruzzi comprises 26 compartments located in three areas separated by architectural elements. In the hexagonal compartments are represented the planetary gods - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo (representing the Sun) and Diana (representing the Moon) and the signs of the Zodiac, beginning with Aries and ending the figurative journey in Pisces. In the pediments, interspersed with the signs, the constellations of fixed stars are highlighted, which, in the sky, are placed in relation to each zodiacal divinity. In the ceiling panel several constellations are emphasized in two large horizontal formats: on the right Ursa Major; on the left Perseus and Pegasus. Below the ceiling, the nine lunettes depicting stories from the Metamorphosis by Ovid have been attributed to Sebastiano dal Piombo (see Bibliographic References).