THE LOGGIA. In 1518 the group of artists who worked around Raffaello Sanzio's workshop completed the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche in Villa La Farnesina Rome. The group read and painted the plot of a fairy tale (fabella) handed down as a fairy tale of Cupid and Psyche and contained in the Berber-Latin novel entitled Books of Metamorphosis by Lucius Apuleius (II century AD). The preparation involved the discussion and recovery of images, postures and interpretations from medieval and humanistic editions, translations and remakes of this novel and story. THE STUDIO. In the studio of Raphael, who was commissioned to build the Loggia, models, cartoons and preparatory drawings of the plan and segments of the frescoes were set up with the help of famous painters and decorators - from Giulio Romano to Giovanni da Udine. The Loggia project used narrative-visual parts of the fairy tale with a script suitable for a love story destined to be shown in public. The patron was of the “magnificent” banker from Siena (Agostino Chigi) who intended to celebrate his wedding. Even through the Loggia, the image of Psyche becomes an icon that later circulates for centuries in European cultures. It is an icon that concerns research on the relationships between body and soul, conflict and trials, the pleasures and pains that the inevitable proof of love requires from all beings. The Loggia is a chapter in the history and function of the image, the tradition of the Ancient and the fantastic story in European cultures and the philosophical, erotic, spiritual interpretations of its millenary figures. The PROJECT rebuilds Raffaello Sanzio's studio when the Loggia was built. A site and a series of short documentaries i) illustrate the details of the Loggia and explain its meaning, ii) reconstruct the life and works of the painters and designers who worked on the project, iii) reconstruct the ancient medieval and pre-modern sources, iv ) describe the fortune of the fable of Cupid and Psyche in the sixteenth century from the theatrical, literary, pictorial point of view: from Raphael to Giulio Romano (Palazzo Te), to Perin del Vaga (Castel Sant'Angelo), Matteo Maria Boiardo and others.

THE LOGGIA. In 1518 the group of artists who worked around Raffaello Sanzio's studio completed the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche in Villa La Farnesina Rome. The group read and painted reads the plot of a fairy tale (fabella) handed down with the title fairytale of Cupid and Psyche and contained in the Berber-Latin novel entitled Lucius Apuleius' Books of the Metamorphoses (2nd cent. AD). The preparation involved the discussion and recovery of images, postures and interpretations from medieval and humanistic editions, translations and remakes of this novel and story. THE STUDIO. In the studio of Raphael, who was commissioned to build the Loggia, models, cartoons and preparatory drawings of the plan and segments of the fresco were set up with the help of famous painters and decorators - from Giulio Romano to Giovanni da Udine. The working group also read the medieval treatises and the first illustrated editions of the novel by Apuleius and the novel of Cupid and Psyche. The Loggia project used narrative-visual parts of the fairy tale with a script suitable for a love story destined to be shown in public. The patron was of the “magnificent” banker from Siena (Agostino Chigi) who intended to celebrate his wedding. AN ANCIENT FAIRY TALE FOR THE LOGGIA. The ancient fable of Psyche was chosen for the frescos of the Loggia, which tells the story of a beautiful, curious, daring, dangerous girl who overcomes the envy of the sisters and the hatred of Venus and goes beyond her human nature to become the bride of the god of love, Cupid, in the skies of Olympus. Even through the Loggia, the image of Psyche becomes an icon that later circulates for centuries in European cultures. It is an icon that concerns research on the relationships between body and soul, conflict and trials, the pleasures and pains that the inevitable proof of love requires from all beings. A CHAPTER OF EUROPEAN ARTS. The Loggia is a chapter in the history and function of the image, the tradition of the Ancient and the fantastic story in European cultures and the philosophical, erotic, spiritual interpretations of its millenary figures. The lodge designers worked freely on a variant of the fairy tale. For centuries, the communities, the arts and fashions of European cultures manipulated the plot of the fairy tale and the variable figure of Psyche. A set of figures and events discovered in the sixteenth century passed between communities and different narrative and visual heritages: the story, the fantastic, philosophy, religion and the primordial thrusts of being - Eros and Beauty. AN IMAGE OF THE WOMAN. This fable has conveyed and suggested a figure of a woman and an intertwining in many sectors of the representation of the Mediterranean and European communities - from philosophies to spirituality, from the entertainment story to the pictorial invention. The Loggia has chosen some passages from the text of the fable, has integrated them with insertions suitable for the visual language, in fact it has modified some of the already widespread meanings of the fable in the Berber-Latin text and in the texts of its medieval and pre-modern readers and editors. TWO WORLDS COMPARISON. The Loggia is a representation that weaves together the components of the natural universe (Eros, Beauty, conflict), cultural (the story, the philosophy) and the imaginary (the fantastic, the symbols, the businesses, the Ancient). His dominant themes - from passions to ethics, from strength to beauty - are inscribed in metaphor in the profiles of the Olympian gods. The original figure of Apuleius' fable - metamorphic, erotic, spiritual - is totally decomposed and re-aggregated on other lines of meaning. The Loggia underlines the vision from above of the skies, the role of the patron, the difference and the division of the world between the Gods and living beings, a fracture that can be recomposed only with the assumption to Olympus in the name of art and power - of the market and love. THE STORY OF PSYCHE. Reconstructing the history of the image of Psyche means following the interpretations of well-known European works of art on this subject made during the first phase of the rediscovery of the Ancient. The images of the Loggia are a first phase of the works on this image that goes from the Gods of the Ancient World (Raffaello Sanzio) to the goods that come from the New World just discovered by Colombo (Giovanni da Udine). Then, the image of Psyche is adopted as an emblematic figure from the arts of the sixteenth century (Raphael, Giulio Romano, Perin del Vaga), of the seventeenth century (Molière, Lully, Corneille, Marino, La Fontaine, Basile and others), of the eighteenth century (Gerard, Voltaire, Kaufmann, Natoire, Romney, Wedgewood, Lagrenée, Fragonard and others), the first (Canova, David) and the second half of the nineteenth century (Klinger, Burne-Jones, Bouguereau), up to Freud and Fritz Lang. THE PROJECT concerns the interpretation and use of an ancient fairy tale and the figure of the woman by the arts of European cultures of 5 centuries and the tests on the representation of the nature of the New World. The project reconstructs the history and function of this image of a woman in theater, music, drawing, painting, literature. It is the line of research on the history of botany by Giulia Caneva and the history of European culture by Michele Rak on the first phase of Modernity. THE PROJECT rebuilds Raffaello Sanzio's workshop when the Loggia was built. A site and a series of short documentaries) illustrate the details of the Lodge and explain its meaning, ii) reconstruct the life and works of the painters and designers who worked on the project, iii) reconstruct ancient medieval and pre-modern sources, iv) describe the fortune of the fable of Cupid and Psyche in the sixteenth century from the theatrical, literary, pictorial point of view: from Raphael to Giulio Romano (Palazzo Te), to Perin del Vaga (Castel Sant’Angelo), Matteo Maria Boiardo and others) describe the decorations of the Loggia with particular attention to their impact on still life painting, the introduction of new foods, the change in the diet, the new iconographic materials that entered European cultures with the first expeditions to the Americas. European significance Psyche's image played a role in the representation of women and the image of love in European cultures from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. All European arts - theater, music, drawing, painting, literature have represented, with different nuances and interpretations, the role and passions of women and the image of love through the figure of Psyche.

The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche is considered one of the masterpieces of architecture, of painting, of the representation of botany of the modern age (containing the richest botanical representation in the world). It became a model for decorated rooms, show buildings, objects for the following centuries throughout Europe. The creative solutions of the Loggia have strengthened Raphael's image as the head of a pictorial research expressed with sweetness and seduction. Thousands of copies, prints, drawings and all European museums and private collections are derived from the Loggia. La Loggia with Psyche represents the mobile image of women in all the arts of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries.