Pilaster decorations in the Loggia

A photograph of a drawing now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (either inv.no.1147-1848 or 1148-1848) copying elements of the garland decorations of the pilasters of the Loggia, designed by Raphael and executed by his workshop (c.1517-19) in the Vatican. Annotated on verso.

This drawing is one of two cartoons in the V&A by the same hand, with both depicting swags of fruits and foliage. The sheets were originally thought to be Giovanni da Udine's original cartoons for the pilasters, but the discovery of a watermark dating to the seventeenth century on one of the sheets led to the revised hypothesis that these are copies after pilaster decorations, and possibly made as part of the preparation for the replica Raphael Loggia in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, commissioned by Catherine the Great and executed in the 1780s (see Ward-Jackson 1979 (Bibliographic References) for more information).

The repeating sequence of decoration in the Logge - see Dacos 2008 (Bibliographic References) for more information - is strongly influenced by the antique; Raphael had studied antique sculpture and painting in Rome.