Apollo on Parnassus

1515/1520

Marcantonio Raimondi

Artist, Roman, c. 1480 - c. 1534

Printed with black lines on cream-white paper, twenty-four people gather on a hilltop that incongruously curves over a door and door jamb in this horizontal engraving. The men all wear voluminous robes and most have crowns of laurel leaves. The women wear gowns or togas that drape to their feet, and their wavy hair is rolled back, sometimes in a turban-like cloth. At the upper center, a muscular man, Apollo, sits on an earthen mound. His long curling hair falls around one bare shoulder. He strums a lyre with his right hand, on our left. In groups of four or five, men and women stand in conversation or lounge in repose around him. Faint cursive writing, added with pen, above most of their heads identify them. Around a spindly tree in the lower left are "Plato," "Plutrache," "Plinio," and "Cicero." A bareheaded man, "Luciano," writes as he looks up at "Danto," "Homero," and "Virgilio" to our left of Apollo. Immediately around Apollo are "Clio," "Euterpo," "Melpomene," "Erania," "Terpischore," "Polimia," and "Talia." Two women, reclining to each side of Apollo, are not labeled, and four tall trees grow up amid this group. To our right are "Marcobaro," "Seneca," and "Pitagora" around two more trees. Finally, "Socrates," "Ovidius," and "Aristitolus" gather along the right edge. The tops of the trees almost touch the top of the print. Five winged, baby-like cherubs, each holding leaf diadems in both hands, float between the tree canopies above. A piece of paper seems to be affixed to the doors below, at the bottom center of the composition. It reads, “RAPHAEL PINXIT IN VATICANO,” above a monogram with the conjoined initials “MAF.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    engraving

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    plate: 35.8 × 47.6 cm (14 1/8 × 18 3/4 in.)
    sheet: 36.8 × 48.4 cm (14 1/2 × 19 1/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1972.31.1

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Bartsch, no. 247


Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1973

  • Prints of the Italian Renaissance, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1973, no. 361.

1974

  • NGA Recent Acquisitions 1974, no. 84.

2020

  • Raphael and His Circle: Prints and Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020, no cat.

Bibliography

1802

  • Bartsch, Adam. Le peintre graveur. 21 vols. Vienna, 1802-1821: Adam. Le peintre graveur. 21 vols. Vienna: J.V. Degen, 1802-1821.

2013

  • Campbell, Stephen J. and Michael W. Cole. Italian Renaissance Art. New York, 2013: 378, 379, fig. 13.11.

Wikidata ID

Q47532948


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