by: patron: Cardinal Bibbiena category: Fresco location: Papal Palace
note: This fresco was part of the larger decorative program for Cardinal Bibbiena's stufetta. The room, which measured a mere 2.5 m square (totaling a footprint of roughly 6.25 square meters), was positioned near the decorated loggie within the Vatican. Pietro Bembo noted in a 1516 letter to Bibbiena the need for him to “send more stories to paint in your stufetta” (Golzio 1936, 44), however, most scholars accept that the designs only were the work of Raphael. Much of the execution was owed to the workshop (for more, see: Late Raphael 2013: 31).The upper lunettes were frescoed as all’antica emulations that evoked the fictive architecture characteristic of fourth style ancient Roman wall painting. As Dacos noted: “For the first time, applied to a red background, the aedicule of the Domus Aurea, with their very slender columns, are depicted, here containing old men extending in the pose of antique river gods; no doubt in an ironic allusion to the purpose of the room, young servants are shown washing their hair” (Dacos 2008: 32).