- Title
- Two Cupids Riding a Dolphin
- Date Made
- 16th century
- Medium
- Engraving
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 6 × 8 1/2 in. (15.24 × 21.59 cm)
Image: 5 1/2 × 8 1/4 in. (13.97 × 20.96 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.88.91.401
- Collecting Area
- Prints and Drawings
- Curatorial Notes
Two chubby putti riding serpentine dolphins dominate this oval-shaped engraving. The undulating tails of the imagined creatures and the rounded bodies of the winged children echo the water’s waves. This delightful print relates to a lunette in the Room of the Eagles in the Palazzo Te, a pleasure palace of the princely Gonzaga family in Mantua. The original design for this composition can be traced back to the palace’s deviser, Giulio Romano, who was himself inspired by an antique carved gem once in the collection of the powerful Venetian Grimani family, as well as by his master Raphael’s dolphin decorations for the walls of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. In a dizzying additional layer of exchange, the engraver Adamo Scultori was likely furnished with the now-lost Giulio drawing from which this print derives by his father, Giovanni Battista Scultori, who worked on decorations for the Room of the Eagles between 1527 and 1528.
Claire Spadafora Baes
2024
- Selected Bibliography
- Bartsch, Adam von. The Illustrated Bartsch. New York: Abaris Books, 1978.
