The mythological theme of the Three Graces, combined with the iconography of Venus / Venere, was always a fountain of inspiration to artists – painters, sculptors and craftsmen – whose works are introduced with the invention of the printing press in several copies on sheets of paper. The most excellent in reproducing works of art with incisions on copper was Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1534). In Rome in 1509, assumed to be in the circle of friends of Raphael, in the 10 years of cooperation he helped to make popular the art of the already famous painter. On prints and with the signature, “RAPHAEL OPUS – M.A. FECIT” he engraved more than 70 of his works, among which “the Three Graces” of the frescoes in the “Loggia of psyche” of villa Farnesina. For what reason the “Three Graces” of the Borghese collection is not reproduced, and Marcantonio engraves and prints the version of a roman bas-relief, and not the one painted by his friend, will remain unknown. It is reasonable to think that the Borghese family, and other centres of clerical culture, did not want too much popularity to be given to a painting devoid of religious content and moral where the graceful aides of Venus take on a high degree of visual attractiveness. It is evidently a beautiful and decorative image, with strong symbolic meaning, but not for widespread commercial purpose with prints even in countries with other religious trends. So that’s how a denial give birth to a phantasmagoric “Copyright” that is passed along with the picture on who becomes the new master of the work. In fact, it is surprising that none of them ever gave the permission to publish prints of the “Three Graces” by Raphael.

Also the last of the owners of the painting, the Duc d’Aumal, put a brake to too much popularity of the Allegory. Purchased at the price of 25’000 Livre in 1885, in England, to be added to other Italian works in his great collection of art, finally assembled in his Château at Chantilly, he found another form of “copyright” in turning the collection in a museum. Named in Musée Condé, it passes with a bequest to the “Institut de France“ that must respect the severe clauses of the testament: “… à cet égard aucun èchange et sans pouvoir prêter aucun des objets qui les composent; ne peut prêter aucune des oeuvres qu’il détient“. That is how since 1897 the public can admire the “Three Graces”, exposed in a showy silver frame, exclusively in the room “the Sanctuary” in Chantilly, unable to be given on loan to other museums in exhibitions dedicated to Raphael. This explains why the documentation of the “Three Graces”, during hundreds of years, was handed down in the art world only in the form described. The historian of art J.D. Passavant (1787-1861) visited in 1833 by Lord Dudley in London, then in possession of Raphael, noted with regret not having given permission to the famous engraver Desnoyers to engrave the “Three Graces”. “Wir würden sonst einen gefälligen Kupferstich mehr von ihm besitzen und uns nicht mit demjenigen begnügen zu müssen, welchen Sherwin in Punktimanier in der Größe des Originals ausgeführt hat” (“We would possess otherwise a pleasing engraved copperplate from him and would not have to content ourselves with the one which Sherwin has performed in point size in the size of the original“). (Pag. 113, ed. 1860).

 

Since then, we have not received any news of the existence of a copy as oil painting, or of copies printed with the improved Lithography in several colors.

Even if already in 1830 with Niépce photography starts, only since 1850 perfecting the technique of photo reprography and the printing process, according to the first photographs taken in the Condé Museum, in the decades around the turn of the century, monographic editions of Raphael, are still published in black and white adequate images.

With reference to the above considerations, it can be asserted that in the years 1822-23 for the first time a reproduction of the original painting of the “Three Graces” by Raphael was executed by Marie-Victoire Jaquotot in vitrifiable colors on a porcelain plate, which remained unknown to studious and historians of porcelaine art up to the year 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secondary literature on Raphael:

• Rafael Monograph, H.Knackfuss, Delhagen & Klafing 1895
• Rafael Monograph, Grog Gronau, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1909
• Arnold von Salis, Antike und Renaissance, Eugen Rentsch Verlag Zürich 1941
• Veronika Metren. Die drei Grazien, ISBN 3-447-03435-1
• J.D. Passavant, Rafael von Urbino, Page 113, F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1839

 

Image credit:

• Three Graces, piccolomini [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Tre_grazie%2C_piccolomini.jpg
• Three Graces, Francesco del Cossa: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAprile%2C_francesco_del_cossa%2C_11.jpg
• Three Graces, Pompeij: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Three_Graces_by_Antonio_Canova_(copy)_-_Hearst_Castle_-_DSC06413.JPG