Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

Apollo plays his lyre as he presides over Mount Parnassus, the gathering place of the nine muses, who surround him. Poets from different eras have come in search of inspiration. Beneath the leftmost tree, a scribe sits ready to record the words of the aged Greek Homer, the youthful Roman Virgil, and the mature Tuscan Dante. An homage to a classical past, the compressed space of the engraving has the feel of an ancient relief sculpture. Marcantonio based this engraving on a preparatory design made by Raphael as he developed his ideas for a 20-foot-wide fresco in the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura, then the office and library of Pope Julius II. Not many people had access to such an exclusive space; fortuitively, his printmaking partnership with Marcantonio allowed Raphael a means to publicize his accomplishment. Italy, Europe