Decorative pilaster with fruit, flowers, mythological figures and endrils.

A very fine, and an extremely decorative image from the work entitled "Loggie di Rafaele nel Vaticano" depicting the decorative work executed by Raphael and his assistants between 1518 and 1519 in the Vatican.
This remarkable print was probably planned as early as 1760, but was not executed until between 1772 and 1776. The project as a whole was carried out by the painter Gaetano Savorelli, the draughtsman Ludovico Teseo, the architect Pietro Camporesi, and the engravers Giovanni Ottaviani and Giovanni Volpato.
The whole series was particularly remarkable for the size and precision of the prints. It exerted a great influence on contemporary taste. Elements from Raphael's Vatican tapestries were also inserted where the original frescoes were in too poor a state to be decorative.
The finished plates therefore represented a set of different elements that held very large interest and initiated the taste for the "grotesque" in the successive period.

Reference: Cf. Brunet IV, 1110; cf. Berlin Kat. 4068; cf. Lambert Pattern and Design (V. & A.: 1983), p. 26;