Il giovane rapsodo nella Stana della segnatura di Raffaello

In the representation of Homer in Parnassus in the Room of the Segnatura,
Raphael was perhaps inspired by the contemporary ‘poeti canterini’. Sitting
to the right of the poet, he paints a young man writing: the figure, whom later
interpreters define as ‘a rhapsode’, alludes to the transcribers of Homer.
Or maybe he wants to imply that the figure is a contemporary translator of
Homer (Poliziano?). Raphael could also be alluding to the beginning of the
translation of Lorenzo Valla’s Iliad, which was in the Library of Julius II.