Raphael at the Villa Farnesina: Galatea and Psyche

As part of the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, the National Academy of the Lincei organized the exhibition “Raphael at the Villa Farnesina: Galatea and Psyche”, curated by Antonio Sgamellotti and Virginia Lapenta.

Raphael’s work in the villa commissioned and decorated by Agostino Chigi is celebrated here by focusing on the two loggias that still bear pictorial witness to the Urbino master’s Roman period: the Loggia of Galatea and the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche.
The catalogue follows the exhibition’s narrative, expanding and deepening the content presented. In the Loggia of Galatea, it highlights the remarkable results of non-invasive analyses conducted on the fresco The Triumph of Galatea—from which the loggia takes its name—revealing the unexpected use of Egyptian blue.
This pigment—the first artificial blue in history, which disappeared at the end of the Roman Empire—was identified in the sky, the sea, and in the eyes of the nymph herself. Its presence defines and immortalizes Raphael’s work, already well known to the public, as a unicum within the output of the “divine painter,” inspired by his passion for antiquity and his desire to recreate its artistic materials.