GIULIO ROMANO

The large horses are remarkable for the slight hints of movement they convey, for their shiny coats with gliding touches of light, and for the accuracy and tension in their musculature, all of which contribute to the play between reality and illusion, nature and artifice, suggested in the decorative scheme of the room as a whole.

In the second half of the 1530s, Giulio Romano was in charge of decorating and furnishing the St Longinus Chapel in the church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua. He painted one of his great masterpieces of religious art for this chapel - the Adoration of the Shepherds altarpiece, now in the Louvre.

The photo shows the aerial view of the palace looking east.

Outside the gates of Mantua on the island of Te there was a large stud farm belonging to the marchesi of Gonzaga. From 1526 onward the young Federico had the stalls converted to a large palazzo-like villa: a place for pleasure and courtly entertainments, an island of leisure, love, and display of a ruler’s status. It took ten years to complete the palazzo. As a child Federico had spent several years at the court of Julius II in Rome, where he became familiar with the new art of the High Renaissance and the Roman culture of villas. From 1515 to 1517 he lived in France, in the circle of King Fran�ois I, who lived in various châteaux on the Loire.

The design of the architecture and decoration was in the hands of a single artist: Giulio Romano. His design was based on the ideal plan for a single story Roman house with a vestibule and a large atrium.

In order to decorate the villa’s vast surface areas with fresco and stucco in a short period of time, Giulio Romano put together an enormous workshop of artists who could work up and then execute his designs while maintaining, as far as possible, a uniform stylistic tone. The master established the overall decorative framework of a room, the composition of its figural groups, and the placement of individual figures in an impressive number of drawings. His assistants then translated them, using a system of squaring, into cartoons that allowed the original idea to be transferred onto the walls themselves. Even the most talented artists who spent time in Giulio’s workshop, like the Bolognese sculptor Francesco Primaticcio, had to rein in their own stylistic impulses in order to sustain a uniformity that reflected the master’s style. And with little documentary evidence to help us, it is very difficult to distinguish individual hands in the decorative cycles.

View the ground plan of Palazzo del T�, Mantua.

The photo shows the aerial view of the palace looking west.

This scene is a detail of the ceiling fresco in the Sala di Troia.

The Sala dei Cavalli (Room of the Horses) is part of Federico’s apartment which is called Appartamento di Troia after its most important room, the Sala di Troia. The decoration of the Sala dei Cavalli must have recalled that of the room with the same name at the Palazzo del T�. It is a large, trapezoidal space once hung with a series of large canvases, which are now unfortunately lost.

The picture shows a fragment of a remaining fresco depicting Mount Olympus in the Labyrinth.

This tapestry, made after Giulio Romano, was woven for Louis XIV.

This part of the ceiling in the Salone dei Cavalli represents the Mount Olympus.

Federico Gonzaga’s private rooms in the Palazzo del T� included the Camera dei Venti (Room of the Winds). It is richly decorated with cosmological themes: they include representations of the winds, the signs of the zodiac, the months, and - onm medallions painted with small, lively figures - human activities corresponding to each month.

In the centre of the ceiling decoration of the Stanza del Sole (Room of the Sun) the fresco represents the chariot of the sun, driven by Apollo, sinking among the clouds at dusk, while the chariot of the moon, driven by Diana, is just beginning its journey across the sky. The artist painted the scene with a dizzying perspectival foreshortening that allowed him to give the image an erotic overtone appropriate for the decoration of a bedroom.

In 1505 the nuns of the convent of Monteluce near Perugia commissioned Raphael for a painting of the Coronation of the Virgin. On the death of Raphael (1520) only some drawings were ready. In 1523 Raphael’s assistants Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni were contracted to execute the altarpiece which was finally completed in 1525. The altar represents a compound, iconographically unusual subject, the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. The work is made up of two parts, painted on different occasions and then joined together. The most likely hypothesis is that the upper panel with the Coronation of the Virgin (after a sketch by Raphael) is the work of Giulio Romano, while for the lower part with the Apostles gathered around a tomb covered in flowers an altarpiece by Giovan Francesco Penni was used.

This is a detail of the south wall fresco Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche.

The Camerino dei Cesari (Chamber of the Caesars) was perhaps the most famous room in Federico Gonzaga’s apartment in the Palazzo Ducale. Giulio Romano designed the complex decoration of this room, which centred on frescoed scenes of classical subjects on the vault, now only partially preserved; the series of stuccoed niches around the upper part of the wall, which contained bronze statues, and the famous series of eleven Roman emperors painted by Titian between 1536 and 1540. Wooden panels inserted into a framework beneath them illustrates scenes from the lives of Caesars and ancient knights and were painted by Giulio’s pupils.

In addition to the completion of Raphael’s unfulfilled commissions, Giulio immediately received independent architectural assignments. In 1520-21 he had the opportunity to capitalize on the fashion for classical suburban villas, which the Villa Madama had helped to create, when Baldassare Turini commissioned a residence (now known as the Villa Lante) on the Janiculum Hill. The setting suggested a classical conceit: it was the site of a villa thought to be owned by the Roman writer Martial (c. AD 40-104), a link that Turini wanted to celebrate. Giulio’s capacity to enunciate modern building language through an antique vocabulary gave him perfect credentials for Turini’s task. (Giulio’s role in the design of the villa is controversial; it has been also suggested that the project was begun by Raphael).

The design acknowledged the building’s ancient predecessor by following the outline of its ruins and the loggia (later enclosed) on its extant foundations. The details of the structure, however, were not calculated to conform to the Roman canon. The villa is high and narrow, with vertical continuity stressed in the placement of the orders, which are delicately scaled and without massive projection. The pristine Doric order of the ground-floor is surmounted by elegantly shallow Ionic pilasters, whose volutes swell only slightly from the surface of the wall. The lightness conveyed by the dainty proportions of the orders is apparent also in the simplified entablature - just an architrave and cornice - and is continued in the tall, narrow arches of the loggia. The canonic orders here begin to be treated visually as independent from their structural purposes, and this liberation offered the architect new expressive possibilities.

Today, the property is owned by the Republic of Finland, and the building houses the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae and the Embassy of Finland to the Holy See.

In addition to the completion of Raphael’s unfulfilled commissions, Giulio immediately received independent architectural assignments. In 1520-21 he had the opportunity to capitalize on the fashion for classical suburban villas, which the Villa Madama had helped to create, when Baldassare Turini commissioned a residence (now known as the Villa Lante) on the Janiculum Hill. The setting suggested a classical conceit: it was the site of a villa thought to be owned by the Roman writer Martial (c. AD 40-104), a link that Turini wanted to celebrate. Giulio’s capacity to enunciate modern building language through an antique vocabulary gave him perfect credentials for Turini’s task. (Giulio’s role in the design of the villa is controversial; it has been also suggested that the project was begun by Raphael).

The design acknowledged the building’s ancient predecessor by following the outline of its ruins and the loggia (later enclosed) on its extant foundations. The details of the structure, however, were not calculated to conform to the Roman canon. The villa is high and narrow, with vertical continuity stressed in the placement of the orders, which are delicately scaled and without massive projection. The pristine Doric order of the ground-floor is surmounted by elegantly shallow Ionic pilasters, whose volutes swell only slightly from the surface of the wall. The lightness conveyed by the dainty proportions of the orders is apparent also in the simplified entablature - just an architrave and cornice - and is continued in the tall, narrow arches of the loggia. The canonic orders here begin to be treated visually as independent from their structural purposes, and this liberation offered the architect new expressive possibilities.

Today, the property is owned by the Republic of Finland, and the building houses the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae and the Embassy of Finland to the Holy See.

The photo shows the loggia side from Trastevere.

Following the Villa Lante, c. 1522-23 Giulio took up the commission from a Roman patrician, Cristoforo Stati, to construct an urban palazzo facing the Piazza Sant’Eustachio. In contrast to the villa commissions with their concern for beauty of setting and explicit ancient prototypes, here Giulio was faced with the conversion of the site of several smaller houses into one unified structure, with the inclusion of income-producing shops at the street-level. The resulting Palazzo Stati Maccarani (now the Palazzo di Brazza) is a massive three-storey building surrounding an interior courtyard, with five bays composing its principal fa�ade.

The shops on the ground-floor are marked with dynamic, rusticated keystones and voussoirs that burst out in the shape of a fan over the flat-arched entrances. The energy that explodes from the expansive forms and rusticated blocks of the lowest floor leads into a much more restrained piano nobile, with its paired pilasters and shallow aediculae framing the windows in stately niches. In the uppermost floor the vigorous physicality that sweeps the ground-level has become completely enervated; even the doubled pilasters, here without architraves, bases and pedestals, almost sink into the wall, merely echoing the articulation of the fa�ade below. The refined effect of the third storey is that of a ghostly grid, in very low relief.

The Palazzo Stati Maccarani provides a clear measure of the rapidity with which Giulio came into his own in architectural design. Although essentially the palazzo fits into the line of development pioneered by Donato Bramante and developed by Raphael, Giulio’s variation establishes a different dialogue among the architectural forms, animates them with the tension of contrast and provides a kind of commentary on architectural practice by calling attention to it through the manipulation of its vocabulary.

The photo shows the principal fa�ade of the building.

Following the Villa Lante, c. 1522-23 Giulio took up the commission from a Roman patrician, Cristoforo Stati, to construct an urban palazzo facing the Piazza Sant’Eustachio. In contrast to the villa commissions with their concern for beauty of setting and explicit ancient prototypes, here Giulio was faced with the conversion of the site of several smaller houses into one unified structure, with the inclusion of income-producing shops at the street-level. The resulting Palazzo Stati Maccarani (now the Palazzo di Brazza) is a massive three-storey building surrounding an interior courtyard, with five bays composing its principal fa�ade.

The shops on the ground-floor are marked with dynamic, rusticated keystones and voussoirs that burst out in the shape of a fan over the flat-arched entrances. The energy that explodes from the expansive forms and rusticated blocks of the lowest floor leads into a much more restrained piano nobile, with its paired pilasters and shallow aediculae framing the windows in stately niches. In the uppermost floor the vigorous physicality that sweeps the ground-level has become completely enervated; even the doubled pilasters, here without architraves, bases and pedestals, almost sink into the wall, merely echoing the articulation of the fa�ade below. The refined effect of the third storey is that of a ghostly grid, in very low relief.

The Palazzo Stati Maccarani provides a clear measure of the rapidity with which Giulio came into his own in architectural design. Although essentially the palazzo fits into the line of development pioneered by Donato Bramante and developed by Raphael, Giulio’s variation establishes a different dialogue among the architectural forms, animates them with the tension of contrast and provides a kind of commentary on architectural practice by calling attention to it through the manipulation of its vocabulary.

The photo shows the building from the northeast.

Giulio articulated the three outer fa�ades with a rhythmic sequence of distinct groups of forms, unified by his use of a Roman Doric order probably derived from the ancient Basilica Emilia in Rome. This order embraces the ground story and a mezzanine for servants and storerooms. A feeling of tension and compression is created by the unusual rustication. While the second story is rusticated in flat, Albertian blocks like those of Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, the windows and arches of the first story are so heavily rusticated that their quoins and archivolts seem to expand as if they are about to devour the elegant architecture surrounding them. This conflict has been described as a titanic struggle of formlessness against form.

View the ground plan of Palazzo del T�, Mantua.

After the resolved Classical order and measured harmony of Bramante’s High Renaissance buildings, two main, though interwoven, directions of Mannerist development become apparent. One of these, emanating largely from Peruzzi, relied upon a detailed study of antique decorative motifs - grotesques, Classical gems, coins, and the like - which were used in a pictorial fashion to decorate the plane of the facade. This tendency was crystallized in Raphael’s Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila (destroyed) at Rome, where the regular logic of a Bramante fa�ade was abandoned in favour of complex, out-of-step rhythms and encrusted surface decorations of medallions and swags.

The second trend exploited the calculated breaking of rules, the taking of sophisticated liberties with Classical architectural vocabulary. Two very different buildings of the 1520s were responsible for initiating this taste, Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence and the Palazzo del T� by Giulio Romano in Mantua.

Giulio Romano was Raphael’s chief assistant from 1515 to his death in 1520. He is no less important as an architect and the two professions are spectacularly united in the Palazzo del T�, which he built and decorated for the Gonzaga in Mantua. The architecture, at once intensely witty and intensely serious, is based on a profound knowledge of antique precedent and High Renaissance practice.

View the ground plan of Palazzo del T�, Mantua.

This is a preparatory drawing for Giulio Romano’s fresco in the Palazzo del T� in Mantua.

The picture shows a detail of the east wall fresco representing a cyclops. The facial forms of the cyclops blur, monster and monkey shout at each other. Out of the blood of the giants, in keeping with medieval interpretation of Ovid, little monkeys emerge: the giants, having lapsed into the sin of pride, have revealed their true animal essence in monkeys that only superficially resemble human beings.

The picture shows a detail of the north wall fresco.

The giants are ill-proportioned but muscular, with grotesque, desperate faces, and they are depicted struggling amid or trying to escape the dramatic collapse of rocks and fictive architecture that Giulio Romano imagined.

The giants are ill-proportioned but muscular, with grotesque, desperate faces, and they are depicted struggling amid or trying to escape the dramatic collapse of rocks and fictive architecture that Giulio Romano imagined.

This fresco is located on the east wall, to the left of Polyphemus, above the left window.

The amorous themes in the Sala di Psiche are treated with an extraordinary boldness, and they reflect a taste that artist and patron certainly shared. In this scene Jupiter disguised as a snake is impregnating the Macedonian queen. Olympias, while her curious husband Philip is blinded by an eagle. The scene is forthrightly pornographic - a remarkable thing given the great size of the work and its relatively public location.

This little painting, designed to be used in private devotion, shows a foreshortening of the interior similar to that employed in Giulio’s Madonna of the Cat (Naples, Museo Nazionale), a work that is directly connected to the composition of the Madonna of the Pearl (Museo del Prado). Though Vasari gave the latter picture to the hand of Raphael, it was instead probably carried out after the master’s death by his pupil Giulio Romano. In both the Madonna of the Cat and in this small panel, the artist decided to set the scene with a domestic background instead of the more usual open landscape. This lends a tender family atmosphere that enhances the already intimate scale of this painting.

The idealized female figure, comparable to similar figures in numerous other works of Giulio Romano, is related to the ideal model of Raphael. Her specific features have been identified as those of Raphael’s own lover, known to us from his paintings of the veiled Lady (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) and the Fornarina (Palazzo Barberini).

This painting, which clearly belongs to Giulio Romano’s Roman period, has been dated to 1522-23. A copy exists in the Brera Gallery in Milan.

This scene is on the right side of the north wall.

Pope Leo X commissioned from Raphael the Holy Family (now in the Louvre), for which this sketch was made, and sent it to France, perhaps in celebration of a royal birth. After World War II, the drawing was attributed to Raphael’s close associate Giulio Romano, author of other figures in the painting.

This fresco is located in the centre of the east wall, between the two windows.

Opposite the entrance door, in the line of sight of those passing into the room, sits giant, muscular Polyphemus - the prototype of a man tortured by ardent passion, an image of physical virility wedged into a rocky crag. He reclines, alone and lovelorn in his cave, the enormous club remains leaning between his legs. Galatea and her lover embrace by the seashore in the distance.

Giulio Romano depicted Polyphemus as a giant figure lying in his cave for the main fresco of the garden loggia of the Villa Madama. This representation of Polyphemus can be compared with Giulio’s later fresco in the Sala di Psiche of the Palazzo del T� in Mantua.

This is a study for the head of the figure next to Constantine in the fresco of the Vision of the Cross in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican executed by Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni and their assistants after Raphael’s death in 1520. It is an ‘auxiliary cartoon’: a full-sized drawing, made on the basis of an outline pounced through from the main cartoon, of a detail which the artist wished to realise with particular care.

The woman is traditionally identified as Isabella d’Este.

The artist was a leading assistant of Raphael in Rome before being appointed court artist to the Gonzagas at Mantua in 1524. Apart from his skills as a painter, architect and designer, he has the distinction of being the only Italian artist referred to by name by Shakespeare (in The Winter’s Tale).

The painting was first recognised as a work by Giulio Romano and identified as a portrait of Isabella d’Este in the eighteenth century. Although both the attribution and the identification have been challenged, there is a general consensus that the portrait is by Giulio Romano. The treatment of the architecture in particular is comparable with the backgrounds of the Madonna della Gatta (Naples, Capodimonte) and the Virgin and Child (Rome, Galleria Nazionale). In general terms, the composition reveals a debt to the Portrait of Giovanna d’Aragona (Paris, Louvre), which was probably designed by Raphael, but painted with the assistance of Giulio Romano.

The identification of the sitter has recently become the subject of discussion. Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), one of the foremost patrons of the arts in Renaissance Italy, married Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1490. She was notoriously reluctant to be painted and her personal iconography is severely limited. The principal images are two portraits by Titian: Isabella d’Este in Black (about 1534-36) and Isabella d’Este in Red (both in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). In these works, as well as in the famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci dating from 1500 (Paris, Louvre) and a medal by Giancristoforo Romano of 1498, the face is round, the forehead low and the neck short. These are features that do not accord with the sitter in the present portrait. The age of the sitter also seems incompatible as Isabella d’Este would have been fifty when Giulio Romano arrived in Mantua. Furthermore, the knot patterns on the dress, often associated with the personal motif created for Isabella d’Este by Niccolò da Correggio in 1493, were a widespread fashion.

An alternative identification of the sitter with Margherita Paleologo (1510-66), who married Isabella d’Este’s son, Federico Gonzaga, the first Duke of Mantua, in 1531, has been proposed. Contemporary descriptions suggest a closer likeness (‘the skin white like snow, the face a little long with a nose like her father’s) and there is an abundance of evidence for Margherita Paleologo’s interest in clothes and ornaments. It has been suggested that the portrait was made at the time of her wedding, and that the veiled figure entering the room in the background is Isabella d’Este. The Marchesa is attended possibly by her other daughter-in-law, Isabella of Capua, and a nun, Margherita Cantelma, Duchess of Sora (died 1532). Although the documentary evidence is persuasive, final visual confirmation is lacking.

There are signs of a figure (perhaps a putto) in the upper left corner, which may indicate that the artist had used the panel on a previous occasion for a different composition. The elegant figure of the maid pulling back the curtain may have been inspired by the sculptural figures on early funerary monuments, for example, on the tomb of Cardinal de Braye (died 1282) by Arnolfo di Cambio (Orvieto, San Domenico).

It has been suggested that the portrait was made at the time of her wedding, and that the veiled figure entering the room in the background is Isabella d’Este. The Marchesa is attended possibly by her other daughter-in-law, Isabella of Capua, and a nun, Margherita Cantelma, Duchess of Sora (died 1532). Although the documentary evidence is persuasive, final visual confirmation is lacking.

The elegant figure of the maid pulling back the curtain may have been inspired by the sculptural figures on early funerary monuments, for example, on the tomb of Cardinal de Braye (died 1282) by Arnolfo di Cambio (Orvieto, San Domenico).

The picture shows one of the lunettes on the east wall.

The picture shows one of the lunettes on the north wall.

This is a detail of the west wall fresco Preparation for the Feast.

This painting is almost identical with the painting attributed to Raphael in the Tribuna of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The naked, athletic St John the Baptist sits on a stony outcrop of a grotto-like rock formation that forms a dark background for his brilliantly lit figure. The spring rising close by can be read as a symbol of baptism.

This is the final cartoon for the painting in the church of Santo Stefano, Genoa. This altarpiece undisguisedly emulates Raphael’s famous Transfiguration, but it was conceived in an independent manner that both imitated and departed from the formal vocabulary of his master.

Pope Leo X commissioned from Raphael the Holy Family (now in the Louvre), for which this drawing was made. The study from a model for the figure of Mary shows Giulio Romano at work to define a pose from life, with special concentration on the contours of the left arm and leg.

This picture, very typical of Giulio’s work in Mantua in its choice of subject, represents a famous episode from early Roman history. The rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, and the dishonoured victims subsequent suicide, are said to have led to the fall of Tarquinius Superbus (the rapist’s father and the last Etruscan king) at the end of the 6th century BC.

This drawing was pricked for transfer, it served as a cartoon.

The influence of Giulio Romano’s style spread throughout northern Italy and as far as Spain, France and Germany and wherever his followers happened to go. Yet ultimately it was his drawings that allowed Giulio to garner such an influential position in the contemporary art world. They were much coveted by both artists and patrons, indeed more than once whole batches of them were stolen.

Giulio Romano was the chief pupil of the Italian painter Raphael, whom he assisted in many of the latter’s finest works. He inherited a portion of Raphael’s wealth, including his works of art, and succeeded him as head of the Roman school.

This painting clearly illustrates the influence of Raphael on the style of Giulio.

This painting illustrates Giulio Romano’s penchant for erotic subject matter. It may show the encounter between Zeus and Alcmene: the alarmed dog at the maidservant’s feet points to a breach of marital fidelity. The bed’s carved decoration of a satyr and nymph may allude to another of Zeus’s amorous adventures, when he assumed the guise of a satyr to make love to the nymph Antiope.

Alcmene was the mother of Hercules and the wife of Amphitryon, but the night she conceived Hercules and his twin brother Iphicles, Alcmene mated with both Zeus, who had disguised himself as her husband, and Amphitryon. As a result, Zeus was Hercules’s father, but Amphitryon was the father of Iphicles.

The alarmed dog at the maidservant’s feet points to a breach of marital fidelity. The bed’s carved decoration of a satyr and nymph may allude to another of Zeus’s amorous adventures, when he assumed the guise of a satyr to make love to the nymph Antiope.

This is a detail of the south wall fresco Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche.

This is a detail of the south wall fresco Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche.

This is an unusual monument made for Pietro Strozzi who died in 1529. The four caryatids usurp the traditional place of virtues and support a heavy entablature carrying a sarcophagus with the Strozzi crescent moons and the effigy of the deceased dressed in a toga and sandals. Each caryatid, similar except in pose, has a basket on her head, like the echinus of a capital. The front two are freestanding; those against the wall carved in relief.

This is a detail of the south wall fresco Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche.

This is a detail of the south wall fresco Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche.

The triumph belongs to the series of eleven panels which Giulio Romano executed in 1537 for Federigo Gonzaga’s Camerino dei Cesari (Chamber of the Caesars) in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, where they were placed beneath portraits of emperors by Titian.

From the summit of Mount Olympus, the father of the gods hurls his thunderbolts at the earth, sweeping away the giants and the awkward pile of rocks intended to support their ascent into the heavens. The pantheon of pagan divinities that surround him are for the most part paralysed with fear. The giants are ill-proportioned but muscular, with grotesque, desperate faces, and they are depicted struggling amid or trying to escape the dramatic collapse of rocks and fictive architecture that Giulio Romano imagined.

The pantheon of pagan divinities that surround Jupiter are for the most part paralysed with fear.

The pantheon of pagan divinities that surround Jupiter are for the most part paralysed with fear.

The frescoes in the Sala di Psiche illustrate Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, a late-antique story that recounts Psyche’s romantic adventures and the trials she endured in order to be allowed to marry Cupid. The decoration is spread across the ceiling, the lunettes, and the upper parts of the walls.

In the centre of the ceiling decoration the Chariot of the Sun is located.

The detail shows the central panel of the ceiling fresco in the Sala di Psiche.

The detail shows the central panel of the ceiling fresco in the Sala di Psiche.

The detail shows the central panel of the ceiling fresco in the Sala di Psiche.

This scene is on the left side of the north wall.

The influence of Giulio Romano’s style spread throughout northern Italy and as far as Spain, France and Germany and wherever his followers happened to go. Yet ultimately it was his drawings that allowed Giulio to garner such an influential position in the contemporary art world. They were much coveted by both artists and patrons, indeed more than once whole batches of them were stolen.

Outside the gates of Mantua on the island of Te there was a large stud farm belonging to the marchesi of Gonzaga. From 1526 onward the young Federico had the stalls converted to a large palazzo-like villa: a place for pleasure and courtly entertainments, an island of leisure, love, and display of a ruler’s status. It took ten years to complete the palazzo. As a child Federico had spent several years at the court of Julius II in Rome, where he became familiar with the new art of the High Renaissance and the Roman culture of villas. From 1515 to 1517 he lived in France, in the circle of King Fran�ois I, who lived in various châteaux on the Loire.

The design of the architecture and decoration was in the hands of a single artist: Giulio Romano. His design was based on the ideal plan for a single story Roman house with a vestibule and a large atrium.

In order to decorate the villa’s vast surface areas with fresco and stucco in a short period of time, Giulio Romano put together an enormous workshop of artists who could work up and then execute his designs while maintaining, as far as possible, a uniform stylistic tone. The master established the overall decorative framework of a room, the composition of its figural groups, and the placement of individual figures in an impressive number of drawings. His assistants then translated them, using a system of squaring, into cartoons that allowed the original idea to be transferred onto the walls themselves. Even the most talented artists who spent time in Giulio’s workshop, like the Bolognese sculptor Francesco Primaticcio, had to rein in their own stylistic impulses in order to sustain a uniformity that reflected the master’s style. And with little documentary evidence to help us, it is very difficult to distinguish individual hands in the decorative cycles.

The photo shows the east fa�ade.

View the ground plan of Palazzo del T�, Mantua.

The photo shows the east fa�ade of the courtyard.

The photo shows the east fa�ade of the courtyard.

On the east wall the boulders are covering the monsters. The wall is completely filled with the blocks of fallen stone, only a few heads and limbs poke out.

In this fresco, beneath the gods, in a melodramatic representation the giants tumble to earth, seeming to destroy the walls around them that pretended to be the actual walls of the room, thus threatening the merely human-sized spectator within the space.

The figure above the door in the centre is a variation of Michelangelo’s Jonah in the Sistine Chapel.

The Sala dei Giganti is located in the southern corner of the Palazzo del T�. The walls and the ceiling of the room are painted with a single continuous scene of giant figures. It is an apocalyptic catastrophe into whose centre the viewer enters. The room’s decoration represents Jupiter punishing the giants for having dared to oppose his power and for bringing their rebellion to his domain.

The giants are attacking the gods, trying to storm Olympus, piling mountain onto mountain, until Jupiter causes the boulders to fall with his lightning, and the attackers are buried beneath them. From the summit of Mount Olympus, the father of the gods hurls his thunderbolts at the earth, sweeping away the giants and the awkward pile of rocks intended to support their ascent into the heavens. The pantheon of pagan divinities that surround him are for the most part paralysed with fear. The giants are ill-proportioned but muscular, with grotesque, desperate faces, and they are depicted struggling amid or trying to escape the dramatic collapse of rocks and fictive architecture that Giulio Romano imagined.

On this wall, the catastrophe is taking place in the foreground, the disaster seems to push its way into the viewer’s space. The boulder construction collapses, the view of the landscape is partially blocked. fleeing and falling giants are crushed.

This view of the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo del T� Mantua shows the frescoes of Gods on Mount Olympus and the Fall of the Gigants. The frescoes were commissioned by Federigo Gonzaga.

On this wall one sees the first moment of the collapse of the right wall. In the corners on the left and right the giants are heaving up boulders, as if they were trying to build a vault over the room. But the view into the open landscape between them reveals in the distance, beyond the river, the destruction of the first group of giants. The giants fleeing from there, swimming through the water, bring the disaster into the foreground. The screaming, boulder-carrying giant on the left seems to be getting into dire straits as well.

Opposite the entrance door, in the line of sight of those passing into the room, sits giant, muscular Polyphemus - the prototype of a man tortured by ardent passion, an image of physical virility wedged into a rocky crag. Giulio links this figure to the two neighbouring erotic scenes in a risqu� manner. Polyphemus’s pipes - the pipe being a common metaphor for the phallus - point to the left where in the scene Jupiter Seducing Olympias Jupiter is obviously putting his virility to use while blinding the witness. One-eyed Polyphemus thus prefers to gate to the right where - in the scene Pasiphae - he sees sticking out toward him the hindquarters of the artificial cow. Polyphemus reclines, alone and lovelorn in his cave, the enormous club remains leaning between his legs. Galatea and her lover embrace by the seashore in the distance.

The three lunettes on the east wall represent Venus before Jupiter, Mercury, Psyche Appealing in Vain to Juno.

On the north wall the scene Bacchus and Ariadne can be seen in the centre, above the window. On the left Venus and Mars Bathing, on the right Mars Chasing Adonis from Venus’s Pavilion are depicted, while in the three lunettes Psyche’s Second Task, Psyche’s First Task, and Punishment of Psyche are represented.

The large fresco on the south wall represents the Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche. The table is decorated; the silver dishes are in place; several gods have already arrived; and others are seen in the distance. The focus of the celebration is on the wedding couple, Cupid and Psyche, who are being served on a sumptuous couch.

The three lunettes above it depict Psyche Pleas to Ceres for Help, Venus with Juno and Ceres, Venus Admonishes Cupid.

Federico Gonzaga engaged Giulio Romano to decorate the pleasure palace on the outskirts of Mantua where he stabled his horses and housed his mistress. The name of the Palazzo del T� is derived from the island on which it was situated.

The general decorative scheme of the Sala di Psiche, the room that contains the Banquet of Cupid and Psyche is indebted to Raphael’s design for the Villa Farnesina in Rome, also built as a retreat for the patron and his mistress.

The famous Sala di Psiche was decorated between 1526 and 1528. This large room was intended for entertaining, and a famous banquet was held here in 1530 in honour of Emperor Charles V during his first visit to Mantua. It was on that occasion that Marquis Federico Gonzaga was elevated to the rank of duke. The frescoes in this room illustrate Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, a late-antique story that recounts Psyche’s romantic adventures and the trials she endured in order to be allowed to marry Cupid. The decoration is spread across the ceiling, the lunettes, and the upper parts of the walls, and the individual scenes illuminated by a soft, nocturnal light, are represented with extreme foreshortening.

Above the socle area the west and north walls, each of which is broken up by windows, open onto frameless scenes of painted grottoes and a garden nymphaeum that are filled with characters from myth. Next these scenes, there are depictions of happy couples inserted above the windows. The painted frames of these scenes correspond in each case to the bas-relief window frame.

On the east and south wall, which have doors leading to the adjacent rooms of the palace, there is a continuous panoramic landscape. The fertile natural idyll of the landscape paintings has satyrs and nymphs preparing a feast for the gods. The table is decorated; the silver dishes are in place; several gods have already arrived; and others are seen in the distance. The focus of the celebration is on the wedding couple, Cupid and Psyche, who are being served on a sumptuous couch.

In the lunettes and fields on the ceiling we see, through a grillwork frame, a number of Cupid and Psyche’s adventures, so that their banquet is vaulted by its own prehistory. In the vault Giulio tells the beginning of the story, while the stories of Psyche’s suffering are painted in the lunettes.

The large fresco on the west wall depicts the Preparation for the Feast. On the left side a River Landscape with Springs can be seen.

The three lunettes above it depict Psyche with Proserpina, Psyche’s Third Task, Cupid Awakens Psyche.

As work was coming to an end at the Palazzo del T�, Giulio Romano increased the number of new projects in various places and varying degrees of importance. One of his most significant projects in this period, though, was the decoration of Federico Gonzaga’s official apartment in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, later called the Appartamento di Troia (Troy Apartment) after its most important room, the Sala di Troia. It was begun in 1536 and completed around 1540.

The scenes painted on the ceiling and walls of the Sala di Troia narrate the Greek victory over the Trojans as it is recounted in The Iliad. The battle itself rages across the ceiling: desperate horses and warriors lie on their backs while victorious heroes stand over them. The scene is painted as a continuum interrupted only by trees painted to conceal the angular corners of the room. The paintings on the walls narrate individual stories from the war, and they are isolated in giant fictive frames. These scenes, painted by Giulio’s students, include the construction of the Trojan Horse, Laoco�n and His Sons Attacked by Serpents, Hecuba’s Dream, and the Death of Ajax.

The room was originally decorated all the way down to the floor pavement with military trophies and faux marble, and as a whole it alludes to the military virtues of Federico Gonzaga.

As work was coming to an end at the Palazzo del T�, Giulio Romano increased the number of new projects in various places and varying degrees of importance. One of his most significant projects in this period, though, was the decoration of Federico Gonzaga’s official apartment in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, later called the Appartamento di Troia (Troy Apartment) after its most important room, the Sala di Troia. It was begun in 1536 and completed around 1540.

The scenes painted on the ceiling and walls of the Sala di Troia narrate the Greek victory over the Trojans as it is recounted in The Iliad. The battle itself rages across the ceiling: desperate horses and warriors lie on their backs while victorious heroes stand over them. The scene is painted as a continuum interrupted only by trees painted to conceal the angular corners of the room. The paintings on the walls narrate individual stories from the war, and they are isolated in giant fictive frames. These scenes, painted by Giulio’s students, include the construction of the Trojan Horse, Laoco�n and His Sons Attacked by Serpents, Hecuba’s Dream, and the Death of Ajax.

The room was originally decorated all the way down to the floor pavement with military trophies and faux marble, and as a whole it alludes to the military virtues of Federico Gonzaga.

Giulio Romano violates the accepted rules of perspective in his ceiling fresco for the Sala di Troia in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua: it lies well above the viewers’ eye level, but nonetheless presents them with a view of the terrain on which the action takes place. It is a concept that would surely have been unthinkable even a few years earlier, and it was only taken up again to any significant extent during the Baroque period.

The Salone dei Cavalli (Room of the Horses) was one of the first rooms to be completed, in 1526. It was used for banquets or dances. Originally, the lower parts of the walls were decorated with worked leather hangings. The upper parts display a fully articulated architectural system - Corinthian pilasters that support a trabeation (an architectural beem), above which runs a continuous frieze of putti and racemes. Illusionistic niches and panels are opened into the walls, and full-sized statues, marble busts of ancient gods, and fictive bronze reliefs of the Labours of Hercules are represented in them. Six fictive windows penetrate the illusionistic architecture, and they look out over panoramic landscapes with life-sized portraits of Federico Gonzaga’s most valuable thoroughbreds.

The execution of the architectural and antiquarian decoration in this room was wholly entrusted to the shop, but the horses, most of which are identified by name, are of exceptional quality, they were likely painted by Giulio himself.