PERINO DEL VAGA
(b. 1501, Firenze, d. 1547, Roma)

The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche

1545-47
Fresco
Sala Paolina, Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome

Between 1542 and 1548 Pope Paul III transformed a series of rooms on the two upper levels of the Castel Sant'Angelo into a comfortable and at the same time impressive apartment. Time and again this castle had provided protection to popes against the incursions of secular powers, and it continued to have a military function. His predecessors had commissioned various decorations, although these have been lost. The newly decorated rooms were to provide leisure and spiritual rest - the typical purpose of a country house or villa. The mythological subjects with which some of the rooms were painted - such as the overtly erotic depictions of the story of Cupid and Psyche in the frieze of the bedchamber - thus correspond to what one would expect in a villa, but hardly in papal apartments.




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