The Villa Farnesina Analysis

The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance villa in Rome, in the Trastevere neighbourhood. Other than the palazzo's in the center of the city that usually faced the road and didn't have a big garden, the villa's were usually outside of the city center and had an open loggia that faced a garden. Rich families often had parties and banquets in these villas. This villa is decorated with many frescoes of high quality, painted by amongst others Raphael. The frescoes inside it depict mostly mythological scenes.

The ceiling of the loggia is decorated with multiple scenes that tell the love story of Cupid and Psyche. The story goes that Psyche was a beautiful princess, so beautiful that everyone in her area forgot to worship the godess of beauty, Venus.
Venus, who still didn't like Psyche, made her do all kinds of impossible tasks, and Psyche completed them all, because she always had help. The last task Venus gave her was to get a box of beauty from the underworld. Unfortunately, Psyche got tempted and took a look in the box. The box did not contain beauty, but sleep, so Psyche fell into a deep sleep. Luckily, Cupid had just recovered from the wound on his shoulder by then and he went to the underworld to kiss her, so that she would wake up again. Afterwards, he pleaded with Jupiter to make Psyche immortal, so that he could be with her forever. Jupiter approved and Psyche became a godess.
On the ceiling of the loggia, we see two main scenes: the wedding feast of Cupid and Psyche and the counsil of the gods about whether or not Psyche could become immortal. On the sides, we see various scenes from the story. The scenes are separated by fruit guirlandes. And if you look very closely at those fruits, you can discover multiple curious things... One of them is depicted here on the right. The exact function or meaning of these peculiarly shaped fruits is unclear and it was an interesting discussion topic during our art history