Villa'Farnesina. ROME. 77. Right Bank. 315
torments her in every conceivable manner, and imposes impossible tasks
on her, which, however, with the aid of friends she is enabled to perform.
At length she is desired to bring a casket from the infernal regions (7), and
even this, to the astonishment of Venus, she succeeds in accomplishing (8).
Cupid, having at length escaped from his captivity, begs Jupiter to grant
him Psyche; Jupiter grants his request, kisses him (9), and commands
Mercury to summon the gods to deliberate, and to conduct Psyche to
Olympus (10). Psyche appears in the assembly of the gods and Mercury
hands her the draught of immortality (ceiling-painting on the right). The
gods celebrate the nuptial-banquet (ceiling-painting on the left). — Below
the spandrils, fourteen Cupids with divine attributes. The garlands en¬
closing the different paintings are by Giovanni da Udine.
The apartment adjoining the entrance hall on the left, which was
also once without the protecting Windows, contains a second mytho¬
logical picture by Raphael, which is no less charming than the Psyche
series, and even far surpasses them in point of execution, being
painted entirely by the master's own hand in 1514: **Galatea,
borne across the sea in a conch, and surrounded by Nymphs, Tritons,
and Cupids. To the left, Sebastiano del Piombo painted the Poly-
phemus trying in vain to move the heart of Galatea by his love-songs
(restored and ruined in the 18th cent.). The *Ceiling-paintings,
masterly in design and execution, by Baldassare Peruzzi, represent
the starry heavens in a border painted to resemble plastic work.
The large picture presents the constellation of Perseus and the
chariot, with the nymph Callisto as the charioteer ; in the fourteen
pointed arches are other constellations, and in the ten hexagonal
spaces, the twelve signs of the zodiac and the gods of the seven
planets, mostly arranged in groups. The lunettes were afterwards
filled by Seb. del Piombo (shortly after his arrivai in Rome) with
scenes from the kingdom of the air and from metamorphoses in
which human beings are changed into birds. — The restoration
carried out in 1861-70 in this and the entrance-hall have had only a
modifled success.
The subjects in the lunettes are taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses,
but the meaning is not in every case clear. S. end wall: 1. Tereus with
Philomela and Procne (?) ; 2. Daughters of Cecrops and Erichthonius. Long
wall : 3. Dsedalus and Icarus ; 4. Juno in ber chariot drawn by peacocks ;
5. Scylla kills her father Nisus by cutting off bis purple hair; 6. Phaethon;
7. Boreas and Oreithyia. N. end wall: 8. Flora and Zephyr; 9. Colossal
head in charcoal, said to have been drawn by Michael Angelo, but by
modera critics ascribed to Peruzzi. The landscapes are erroneously attri¬
buted to Gasp. Poussin.
The Upper Floor of the Farnesina, to which however, visitors are
seldom admitted, contains in the I. Room. (Salone) fine architectural
scenes by Bald. Peruzzi (View of Rome, the Borgo, Janiculum, etc), one
of the best examples of this kind of deceptive painting. Peruzzi also
executed the frieze of mythological scenes. Entrance wall : Deucalion and
the flood, Apollo and Daphne. Long wall: Venus and Adonis, Bacchus
and Ariadne, Pace of Pelops and Q3nomaus, Parnassus, Triumph of Venus.
Exit wall: Endymion and Lnna, Cephalus and Procris. Over the fire-
place : Vulcan's forge. — II. Bedroom. "Sodoma, Marriage of Alexander
and Roxana, painted in 1511-12. The conception of this masterpiece is
based on Lucian's description of a painting by ^tion: Alexander is
conducted by Cupids to the nuptial couch of Roxana; Hymen and Hephses-
tion, the bridesman, stand lost in admiration ; other Cupids play with Ihe
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