RAFFAELLO Sanzio
(b. 1483, Urbino, d. 1520, Roma)

Psyche Gives Venus the Vessel

1517-18
Fresco
Villa Farnesina, Rome

Raphael's pictorial narrative in the Loggia di Psiche begins in the spandrels of the short side on the left as one enters and continues along the spandrels to the right to the second short side and then along the entrance side. These triangular surfaces represented a problematic format for artists. Raphael solved this challenge in ever new and surprising ways, causing the form of the painting's support and the composition of its figures to interact in particularly fortuitous and varied manners.

The scenes of encounters in two neighbouring spandrels, Psyche Gives Venus the Vessel and Cupid Pleads with Jupiter for Psyche, form a pendant that symmetrically frames the central entrance to the loggia: two female protagonists on the left and two male ones on the right.