The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche

One of the most famous decorative cycles of the Villa Farnesina, inspired by the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche

The Loggia, located on the ground floor and consisting of five arches now enclosed by protective glass, takes its name from the fresco decoration painted in 1518 on the vault by Raphael’s workshop from the master’s designs. The scenes depict episodes inspired by Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, specifically the tale of Cupid and Psyche, a theme already used in the fifteenth century for artworks with nuptial subjects.The Loggia served as a stage for the celebrations and theatrical performances organized by the villa’s owner.

To give the space a festive and theatrical character, Raphael transformed the vault of the entrance Loggia into a pergola, as if the garden’s pavilions and trellises extended into the Villa in the form of rich garlands. At the center are two painted tapestries: the sumptuous Banquet of the Gods, in which the maiden, unjustly persecuted, is finally welcomed among the divine assembly, and The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, the symbolic culmination of the entire cycle.

However, it should be remembered that the general layout of the fresco and the conception of the individual scenes and figures are due to Raphael’s ingenious intuition, but numerous artisans from his workshop often worked on the frescoes, including Giovan Francesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Giovanni da Udine, the author, in particular, of the exuberant triumph of the festoons of flowers and fruit.

The frescoes dialogued in ancient times with classical statuary that was part of the banker’s antiquarian collection.
The facade adorned with pilasters of Tuscan order is closed at the top by a cornice with a festoon of Putti. It originally overlooked the Italianate garden facing the facade.

The first significant restoration of the Loggia dates back to the 1690s, when, on the strength of the serious state of neglect in which the Villa was lying, Ranuccio II Farnese ordered its refurbishment. In 1693 the ducal agent, Abbot Felini, therefore commissioned Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), one of the most renowned painters of the time, and his team, to begin the work.

The Raphael frescoes on the vault of the Loggia had been severely damaged by prolonged exposure to the elements and were therefore in poor condition. The restoration was consequently extensive: Maratti and his collaborators worked directly on the frescoes, consolidating them and securing the plaster with numerous clamps, filling the losses, and extending the fruit garlands—painted by Giovanni da Udine (1487–1564)—up to the springing of the arches.

As the art historian and theorist Giovan Pietro Bellori emphasized in his celebrated descriptive encomium dedicated to Maratti’s restorations (1695), these interventions were carried out with great sensitivity and respect, taking care to alter as little as possible—at least by the standards of the time—the original appearance of the Loggia.

All the additions were therefore conceived and executed in continuity with Raphael’s work and in order to make the overall view “homogeneous.” On the two short sides were thus added the two blind doors that can still be seen today next to the real ones, while the walls, which had remained so far devoid of decoration, were filled with niches painted in trompe l’œil, “contenting themselves in simple exhibitions of architecture without figures out of the respect due to that vault” (Bellori).

The lunettes at the top, also left blank, were instead completed with faux stained-glass windows painted in foreshortened perspective, echoing the true sub-arches of the loggia.