Hinc Usque ad Sidera Notus. Per il diletto di Raffaele Riario: l'Apoteosi di Dafni di Perugino nel Musée du Louvre

This essay aims to identify the iconographic subject of the small oil painting on panel painted by Perugino, vis- ible in the Louvre Museum, in the apotheosis of Daphnis, as described in book XIV of the Punicorum libri XVII (I Punica) by Silio Italico (25-101). Previously, historiography had identified the subject in the musical dispute between Apollo and Marsyas, or generically in the meeting between Apollo and Daphnis. Following this new proposal, in the scene, the god of music Apollo, after having given Daphnis a flute, to celebrate the young shepherd as the founder of bucolic poetry and singing, listens to him play after hanging his lyre from a trunk. Considering the success that the poem of I Punica had in Renaissance Rome, in particular thanks to the activity of the humanistic academy of Pomponio Leto, it is proposed to identify the client of this masterpiece by Perugino, in the great-grandson of Sixtus IV, Cardinal Raffaele Sansoni Riario della Rovere (1461-1521), young, rich and powerful cardinal chamberlain, perhaps portrayed by Peru- gino himself in the Delivery of the Keys (Sistine Chapel), who was the protagonist of a great patronage aimed at recovering ancient theater and poetry. The style of this work also confirms this proposal, considering that Perugino may have painted the work in the years in which he worked in Rome in the Sistine Chapel, or shortly after (circa 1480-1485). As has already been hypothesized, for Raffaele Riario, Perugino would have painted the Albani Torlonia Polyptych in 1491 (Rome, Torlonia Foundation).