Poetry

A photograph of a drawing listed by Ruland (1876), who catalogued the Raphael Collection, as being then in the possession of Messrs Colnaghi, but now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no.789 DR). The drawing is a copy after the engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (see RCIN 852625), based upon a (lost) preparatory drawing by Raphael for the so-called Poetry, one of the allegorical figures painted in the vault of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican (see RCIN 852621 for a photograph of the painting).

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. In the Royal Collection there is a preparatory drawing by Raphael for the allegorical figure of Poetry in the vault of the chamber (see RCIN 912734).