Poetry

A print reproducing one of the four roundels painted on the vault of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican (see RCIN 852621 for a photograph of the painting). Lettered with title and production details below image. One from a series of four engravings reproducing the four roundels in the stanza. The remaining prints from the series can also be found in the Raphael Collection: Theology (RCIN 852613), Philosophy (RCIN 852633), and Justice (RCIN 852637). Passavant (1860) dated the engraving after 'Theology' 1781. The same date was indicated by Engelmann (1866) for the whole series.

This roundel depicts the allegorical figure of Poetry, flanked by two winged putti holding inscribed panels, from the vault of the Stanza della Segnatura, where it is painted above the fresco of 'Parnassus'. From 1508 until his death in 1520, Raphael undertook the decoration of a number of spaces in the Vatican Palace for, first, Pope Julius II and, later, Leo X. The first of these commissions was for what was probably the Pope's private library, known as the Stanza della Segnatura. The major aspects of the decorative scheme of the room are as follows: personifications of Poetry, Theology, Jurisprudence and Philosophy in roundels on the vault, with four narrative scenes known as the School of Athens, the Parnassus, the Disputa and the Three Cardinal Virtues on the walls below. There is a preparatory drawing by Raphael for Poetry in the Royal Collection (see RCIN 912734).