Venus

An etching by Stefano Molinari reproducing an unidentified drawing by Pietro da Cortona which depicts Venus 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. The names of the intermediate draughtsman and the printmaker, as well as the identification of Raphael as the painter of the fresco and an explanation of the subject are at the bottom centre. Publication details ("In Roma presso Giuseppe Nave, Negoziante di Stampe, e Libri all'Corso") have been trimmed off this impression. On watermarked paper. Trimmed within the platemark.

Stefano Molinari made his reputation by making reproductions of the drawings of the great Italian painters. He executed many prints of drawings by Cortona after Raphael.

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).