Venus seated

A photograph of an etching reproducing, in reverse, a drawing, now in the Louvre (inv.no.4017) which is considered itself to be the counterproof of a lost drawing by Raphael for the pendentive fresco depicting Venus and Cupid from the vault of the entrance loggia of the Farnesina, Agostino Chigi's villa in Rome, which was frescoed with mythological subjects by Raphael's workshop c.1518. Annotated on verso.

The etching was made by Charles Paul Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart de Saint-Morys after the counterproof drawing, which was then in his possession. Vialart de Saint-Morys was a collector of Old Master drawings and amateur printmaker who published two groups of prints after drawings in his own collection, the first group dated 1780-89 and the second 1792-94.

The fresco decoration in the Farnesina illustrates the classical fable of Cupid and Psyche, a story which was also frequently used to decorate Florentine wedding chests. Raphael's fresco scheme comprises two primary scenes in the vault (painted to resemble tapestries), accompanied by a series of episodes painted in the pendentives. The whole is encompassed within a fictive pergola, which gives the viewer the impression of looking up into the heavens. Only the upper part of the loggia is painted (the vault and its supporting pendentives and spandrels).