Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te 9789048536689

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Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard ­University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Gender, Space and Experience at the ­Renaissance Court Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te

Maria F. Maurer

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Sala dei Giganti, 1530-35. Fresco. Executed by the workshop of Giulio Romano. Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus isbn 978 94 6298 553 7 e-isbn 978 90 4853 668 9 doi 10.5117/9789462985537 nur 685 © M.F. Maurer / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Table of Contents The Palace in Cyberspace: A Note on the Virtual Tour

7

List of Illustrations

9

Acknowledgements13 1.

The Performative Palace

15

2.

Spaces of Ceremony

49

3.

The Palace in Time

91

4.

The Unbounded Palace

131

5.

The Troubled Palace181

Epilogue: Ruin and Rebirth

227

Index231 

The Palace in Cyberspace: A Note on the ­Virtual Tour Readers are encouraged to use the virtual tour of the Palazzo Te provided by Google Arts and Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/palazzo-te. The tour can also be taken on your smart phone via the Google Arts and Culture app, available in the Google Play Store for free download. This format is superior because it allows one to ‘look up’ at the ceilings and frescoes. While I highly recommend the virtual tour, it does not do justice to the fluidity of movement allowed by the plan of the Palazzo Te, nor does it focus on the architecture of the palace. The tour begins in the Loggia di Davide, which was rarely the point through which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century visitors entered the palace. One should rightly begin in the Loggia delle Muse (Fig. 5). Navigation can be difficult, especially because Google’s plan of the palace does not accurately record walls between rooms. Finally, while one can enter the gardens, and thus see the eastern façade, many of the other façades are difficult, if not impossible to access. The secret garden is not included in the virtual tour. With those caveats in place, the virtual tour is the best way to experience the spaces of the Palazzo Te outside of Mantua, and I consider it to be a valuable research tool.

List of Illustrations Color Plates Plate 1: Camera di Psiche, detail of the east wall, Jupiter and Olympia, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 2: Camera delle Aquile, ceiling vault, 1527–28. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 3: Camera di Psiche, west wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 4: Camera di Psiche, east wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 5: Sala dei Cavalli, east and south walls, 1526–27. Fresco with gilt wood ceiling. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 6: Loggia di Davide, view looking south, after 1530. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 7: Sala dei Giganti, ceiling vault, 1530–32. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 8: Perino del Vaga, Sala dei Giganti, Fall of the Giants, 1530–32. Villa Doria, Genoa. Fresco. © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, NY. Plate 9: Sala dei Giganti, north wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Plate 10: Loggia delle Muse, 1526–28. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

List of Figures Fig. 1: Fig. 2: Fig. 3: Fig. 4: Fig. 5: Fig. 6: Fig. 7: Fig. 8:

Gabriele Bertazzolo, Urbis Mantua Descriptio, 1628. Engraving, 76 x 116 cm. Biblioteca Teresiana, Mantua. Northern courtyard façade, detail with exterior frescoes, 1525–28. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia, c. 1530–32. Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 110.6 cm. © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY. Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Plan of a Church According to the Proportions of the Human Body, from Trattato di architettura e macchine, c. 1490. Pen and ink. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Ms.II.I141. Plan of the Palazzo Te Complex. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Western courtyard façade, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. ‘Unfinished’ columns, western loggia, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Camera del Sole e della Luna, ceiling vault, 1526–27. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

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GENDER, SPACE AND EXPERIENCE AT THE RENAISSANCE COURT

Fig. 9: Northern exterior façade, detail, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Fig. 10: Ippolito Andreasi, Plan of the Palazzo Te, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 107.8 x 82.3 cm, inv.10937. © Museum Kunstpalast – ARTOTHEK. Fig. 11: Camera di Psiche, ceiling vault, 1526–28. Fresco and gilt wood ceiling. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 12: Camera di Psiche, south wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 13: Camera di Psiche, north wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 14: Sala dei Cavalli, detail of north wall with (left to right) Dario, Hercules and the Lernean Hydra, and Bust of Cleopatra. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 15: Titian, Federico II Gonzaga, 1529. Oil on panel, 1.25 x 0.99 m. Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 16: Camera dei Venti, south wall and ceiling vault, c. 1528. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 17: Camera di Psiche, detail of the east wall, Pasiphae and the Bull, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 18: Giulio Romano, Victory, 1530. Pen and ink, brush and brown wash on paper, 38.5 x 25.7 cm, inv. no. 332. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna. Fig. 19: Loggia di Davide, view looking east toward the gardens, after 1530. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Fig. 20: Ippolito Andreasi, East façade of the Palazzo Te, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 18.2 x 84 cm, inv. 10920. © Museum Kunstpalast – Horst Kolberg – ARTOTHEK. Fig. 21: Leon Battista Alberti, Façade, designed c. 1470. Sant’Andrea, Mantua. Photo by author. Fig. 22: Leon Battista Alberti, Interior elevation. Sant’Andrea, Mantua. Scala / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 23: Giulio Romano, Design for the Porta del Te, c. 1530–36. Pen and brown ink, 38.9 x 57.3 cm, inv. 14204. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna. Fig. 24: Camera degli Stucchi, south and west walls with ceiling vault, 1530–32. Stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 25: Giulio Romano, Victory Inscribing the Name of Charles V on a Shield, 1530. Pen and brown ink, 2.22 x 1.39 cm. Uffizi, Florence, 1492E. Fig. 26: Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar 6: The Corselet-Bearers, c. 1484– 92. Tempera on canvas, 270.8 x 280.4 x 4.0 cm, inv. 403963. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018. Fig. 27: Camera degli Imperatori, ceiling vault with Caesar Burning Pompey’s Letters (center), Continence of Scipio (center top), Alexander Placing the Works of

List of Illustrations

Fig. 28: Fig. 29: Fig. 30: Fig. 31: Fig. 32: Fig. 33: Fig. 34: Fig. 35: Fig. 36: Fig. 37:

Fig. 38: Fig. 39: Fig. 40: Fig. 41: Fig. 42:

11

Homer in a Casket (center bottom), and (starting at top right and moving clockwise), Warrior, Augustus (?), Warrior, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Philip of Macedon. Boschetto and Mons Olympus devices in the left and right corners, respectively, 1530–32. Fresco and stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Loggia di Davide, ceiling vault with (left to right), Toilette of Bathsheba, David Spying on Bathsheba, and Drunkenness of Uriah, 1530–32. Fresco with stucco roundels. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Camera degli Imperatori, Boschetto device, c. 1532. Stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Andrea Mantegna, ceiling vault of the Camera Picta, 1464–75. Fresco. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY. Plan of the Palazzo Te, from the Roman Sketchbook, II, fol. 23v. Pen and brown ink on paper, 19.5 x 14.6 cm, Inv. 79 D 2 a, fol. 23 verso. © bpk Bildagentur / Staatliche Museen / Volker-H. Schneider / Art Resource, NY. Camerino delle Grottesche, ceiling vault, 1535. Fresco and stucco with pigment and gilding. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Sala dei Giganti, southwest corner, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Raphael and assistants (including Giulio Romano), Loggia of Psyche, 1517– 18. Fresco. Villa Farnesina, Rome. Scala / Art Resource, NY. Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin, 1526–30. Fresco. Duoma, Parma. Scala / Art Resource, NY. Sala dei Giganti, south wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Perino del Vaga, Jupiter and Juno: Study for the ‘Furti di Giove’ Tapestries, c. 1532–35. Pen and dark brown ink with brown and grey wash, highlighted with white gouache, 43.2 x 40 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 2011.36. Image in public domain. Western courtyard façade, detail of central portal, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Sebastiano Serlio, Extraordinario libro di architettura, portal XXIX, 1584. Printed book with woodcut illustration. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 24.45.3. Image in the public domain. Italienischer Bau, western façade, begun 1536. Stadtresidenz, Landshut. Photo by author. Italienischer Bau, loggia, begun 1536. Fresco and stucco. Stadtresidenz, Landshut. Photo by author. Primaticcio, Grotte des Pins, 1543. Chateau de Fontainebleau, Fontainebleu. Photo by author.

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GENDER, SPACE AND EXPERIENCE AT THE RENAISSANCE COURT

Fig. 43: Léon Davent, Cryptoportico of the grotto in the jardin des Pins, late sixteenth century. Etching, 24.5 x 53.7 cm, inv. NB-B-171367. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Fig. 44: Niccolò Bellin da Modena, Francis I as Minerva, Mars, Diana, Amor and Mercury, c. 1545. Tempera on vellum, laid down on oak panel, 27.2 x 18.9 cm. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 45: Mouth of Hell, begun 1552. Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo. Photo by author. Fig. 46: Giambologna, Appennino, 1579–80. Villa Medici (currently part of Villa Demidoff), Pratolino. Photo by author. Fig. 47: Secret Garden, rear wall interrupted by entrance to Grotto, 1593–95. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Fig. 48: Giovanni Guerra, Mouth of Hell, 1604. Engraving, Inv. 37232. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna. Fig. 49: Pietro Santi Bartoli, Giants Struggling Against Impending Boulders from the series Giove che fulmina li giganti, c. 1680, after Giulio Romano. Etching, 20 x 28.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 2012.136.134. Image in the public domain. Fig. 50: Sala dei Giganti, west wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 51: Ippolito Andreasi, Northern Wall of the Loggia delle Muse, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 30.1 x 66.2 cm, inv. 10905. © Museum Kunstpalast – Horst Kolberg – ARTOTHEK. Fig. 52: Camera di Ovidio, detail of south wall with Orpheus and Eurydice in the Underworld, 1527. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova. Fig. 53: Agnolo Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus, c. 1537–39. Oil on panel, 93.7 x 76.4 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen, 1950-86-1. Fig. 54: Agostino Carracci after a drawing by Giulio Bonasone, Semper Libidini Imperat Prudentia, from Achille Bochi’s Symbolicarum Quaestionum, 1555. Engraving, 20 x 14 cm. Bayerische Bibliothek, Munich, inv. 13704199 Passau. Fig. 55: Eastern (garden) façade, 1530–32. Palazzo Te. Photo by author. Fig. 56: Giulio Romano, Winged Victories and Barbarian Prisoners, c. 1530. Pen and brown ink with brown wash and squared off in black chalk, on paper, 22.2 x 43.9 cm, inv. 3503. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

Acknowledgements This book is indebted to many friends, colleagues, and institutions. I am profoundly grateful for the formal and informal conversations, advice, and support that I have received since I first conceptualized this project in the summer of 2008. The thoughtful questions and suggestions of mentors and colleagues at Indiana University and The University of Tulsa have prodded me forward, and their continued support has been invaluable. I am particularly indebted to Giles Knox, whose insistence that I anchor my methodological approach in the frescoes, stuccoes, and architecture of the Palazzo Te has kept this book metaphorically and literally grounded in the artwork. Several institutions have supported the research necessary for this project. The Samuel H. Kress Dissertation Fellowship awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians funded a nearly year-long stay in Mantua during which I performed much of the archival research on which this study is based. The Kress Fellowship also allowed me to engage with the Palazzo Te in a variety of social and physical circumstances. Further generous support from the Friends of Art at Indiana University and The University of Tulsa funded additional archival and visual research and the cost of illustrations. The Oklahoma Humanities Council and the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities have provided additional assistance, as well as a forum for feedback from scholars in diverse disciplines. Preliminary ideas for this project were presented at conferences organized by the College Art Association, the Renaissance Society of America, at the Feminist Art History Conference, and at the multidisciplinary Technologies of Experience conference organized at Indiana University in spring of 2013. I am thankful for the many conference participants whose feedback and suggestions helped me to shape and hone this project. I am also deeply grateful to the staff of the Archivio di Stato in Mantua. Their unfailing kindness and support was invaluable as I negotiated roughly 100 years of documents and records. Likewise, the staff at the Palazzo Te afforded me views of the building rarely granted to outsiders. Staff at the Biblioteca Teresiana in Mantua, the Archivio di Stato in Modena, the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art also helped me locate and analyze important archival and visual sources. This book would not have come to fruition with the support of Erika Gaffney and Allison Levy at Amsterdam University Press. Their enthusiasm and expertise on both Early Modern art and society and the editorial process has been invaluable.

1. The Performative Palace Abstract: This chapter outlines the concept of performative space as something constructed through the relationships between corporeality, gender roles, and the built environment. It draws on the work of Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau in order to demonstrate that gender and space are inextricably intertwined, and uses early modern courtesy literature and works of art to investigate the construction and performance of gender at court. Chapter one also argues that the Palazzo Te in particular, and early modern spaces in general, were active agents in the construction of the Renaissance self. Gender was produced and performed through the interplay of spaces, discourses, and bodies. Keywords: Corporeality, Courtesy Literature, Identity, Performativity

On 1 April 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V arrived at the Palazzo Te, located on an island just outside the boundaries of Renaissance Mantua (Fig. 1). Upon entering the Camera di Psiche ‘he stood completely awestruck, and there he remained for more than half an hour contemplating it and praising everything immensely’.1 As he moved around the room, the unfolding story of Psyche on the ceiling and the images of mythological lovers and sensuous banquets on the wall invited Charles to take up varying positions and identities. A fresco of Jupiter and Olympia depicting the pair mid-coitus allowed the Emperor to see himself as the robust and virile King of the gods, and as Philip of Macedon, whose illicit gaze cost him his sight. Charles could even identify with Olympia, who grasps the fictive frame of the painting, penetrating the picture plane and entering into the physical space of the room (Pl. 1). Charles was triumphant, condemned, and sexualized. This book examines the dynamic relationships between gender, space, and experience at the Renaissance court, using the Palazzo Te as a case study to analyze interactions between buildings and their inhabitants. It is my contention that the built environment is an active agent in the construction and performance of gendered and sexual identities.2 The Palazzo Te is thus a place composed of constantly shifting 1 ‘[S]ua Maestà restò tutta maravigliosa, et ivi stette più di mezz’hora a contemplare, ogni cosa laudando sommamente’. Giacinto Romano (ed.), Cronaca, 262. Unless noted otherwise, all translations are my own. 2 For the agency of objects, see Alfred Gell’s controversial and somewhat problematic Art and Agency, 524–551; Matthew Rampley, “Alfred Gell’s Anthropology of Art.” To my mind, Gell’s approach overstates the cultural and historical uniformity of objects and their beholders, and does not take experience into account. Maurer, Maria F., Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462985537/ch01

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Fig. 1: Gabriele Bertazzolo, Urbis Mantua Descriptio, 1628. Engraving, 76 x 116 cm. Biblioteca Teresiana, Mantua. Isola del Te in upper left corner.

physical and signifying surfaces that provoke the production and negotiation of gender identities. Rather than a monolithic monument with a unified iconography and stable interpretive framework, the Palazzo Te is open, polyvalent, and, at times, troubling. Renaissance princes, courtiers, and ladies dynamically engaged with the palace in order to enact identities that were similarly unsettled and unsettling. I therefore aim to treat Renaissance courtly space in general, and the Palazzo Te in particular, as integral to a social and cultural environment in which the performance of gender took center stage.3 By analyzing discourses of gender and space in tandem, I hope to provide a model for analyzing the ways in which buildings are constituted by the gendered interactions that take place within them, and at the same time incite performances of gender. Moreover, I hope that uniting archival evidence concerning the palace’s use and reception with critical theory will reveal intersections between social discourses on gender and personal agency within the built environment. In For more nuanced approaches to object-based agency, see Charles Burroughs, Palace Facade, 121–127; Carolyn Springer, Armour and Masculinity; Adrian W.B. Randolph, Touching Objects, 1–15; 231–237; Caroline van Eck, Art, Agency and Living Presence. 3 Cf. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble; Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology. I elaborate upon my methodological approach below.

The Performative Palace

17

other words, I propose to examine the ways in which discourses of gender and space intersect with buildings and the bodies that inhabited them.4 On one level, this book aims to illuminate the use and reception of the Palazzo Te throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. From its inauguration in 1530 until the Sack of Mantua in 1630 the Palazzo Te played a pivotal role in welcoming foreign dignitaries to the Gonzaga court, and it was therefore central to the dynasty’s reputation as urbane patrons and magnificent princes. Through copies and appropriations, the palace and the dynasty that constructed it were celebrated in Italy and abroad. The Palazzo Te served as a point of contact between the Gonzaga family and its guests, and set the stage for interactions amongst courtiers from throughout Europe. Through entertainments arranged for visiting royalty, triumphal entries produced for newly-wedded brides, and the circulation of its images throughout European courts, the Palazzo Te participated in the construction and negotiation of gendered identities in Mantua and abroad. Yet, what is at stake here is not merely a reevaluation of the Palazzo Te and its continued use following the death of Federico II in 1540. I also want to demonstrate that architectural space was and remains vital to the production and performance of gender. This book is therefore framed by three interrelated discourses: those of gender, space, and corporeal experience. While I will treat them somewhat separately in the pages that follow, I ultimately believe that they can and should be joined together into what I am calling a performative approach to space. Through the conjunction of gender, space, and experience historians of the built environment can analyze the production of more abstract discourses and identities while also situating them within particular places and bodies.

Gender The Early Modern period was a time of changing social and gender roles: the growth of cities and the merchant class that inhabited them, as well as shifting religious roles and the discovery of supposedly new worlds, created discursive spaces that writers, artists, and theorists rushed to fill. Texts and images produced gender ideologies attuned to class, religion, and place.5 This book focuses on the performance of gender at the Renaissance court, a space that allowed for individual agency, but that also had carefully articulated social codes and structures. In many ways, the 4 The question of the relationships between discourses of gender and the sexed body was taken up, but not fully resolved, in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter. For a critique of Butler, see Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies. For a nuanced analysis of the challenges in confronting both discourses and bodies, see Iris Marion Young, “Lived Body,” 12–26. 5 Ruth Kelso, Doctrine; Ann R. Jones, Currency of Eros; David Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit; Douglas Biow, Importance of Being an Individual.

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rules of gender appear to be less strictly enforced at court, especially where the experiences of women are concerned.6 Yet, there was an abundance of discourse concerning gender at court.7 From Baldassare Castiglione to Pietro Aretino, and Titian to Giulio Romano, texts and images that produced and regulated gender roles proliferated in the sixteenth century. One could almost say that Renaissance courtiers were caught in a web of discourses. Yet, as this book demonstrates, the multiple overlapping and conflicting approaches to gender created areas of slippage in which adept courtiers could negotiate individual identities that differed from prescribed social practice. Renaissance courtesy literature was one of the primary ways that discourses of gender were produced and maintained. The Book of the Courtier (1528), written by the Mantuan ambassador and courtier Baldassare Castiglione is perhaps most concerned with attitudes towards gender. Il Galateo overo de’ costumi (1558) penned by the Florentine prelate and writer Giovanni della Casa, and La civil conversazione (1574) composed by Stefano Guazzo, who, like Castiglione, worked as a diplomat for the Gonzaga family, also take up the question of appropriate gendered comportment. In describing male and female roles, these authors attempted to represent gender as the God-given product of nature, but in claiming to form perfect courtiers and their ladies Castiglione and his companions revealed that men and women could be fashioned and molded to fit changing expectations.8 The fashioning of men and women in the Book of the Courtier is decidedly gendered. In Books I and II the company set themselves the task of ‘forming in words a perfect Courtier, setting forth all conditions and particular qualities that are required’.9 They debate the virtues that the male courtier should possess and the ways in which he is to acquire and demonstrate them. In Book III the conversation turns toward the donna di palazzo (‘court lady’). Il Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici claims that he will describe a perfect lady, and ‘when I have fashioned her to my taste […] like Pygmalion I will take her for my own’.10 As Valeria Finucci and Ann R. Jones have argued, Giuliano/Castiglione constructs a discourse in which woman is produced and controlled by men.11 While I differ from Finucci and Jones in that I see this discourse as a product of male homosocial bonding, rather than masculine anxiety, 6 Federico II’s mother, Isabella d’Este, was a woman famed for collecting antiquities and commissioning mythological works of art for her studiolo, activities that were usually gendered masculine. For an analysis of the relationship between gender and Isabella’s collecting activities, see Rose Marie San Juan, “The Court Lady’s Dilemma,” 67–78. 7 Jones, Currency of Eros, 12. 8 Jones, “Nets and Bridles,” 40–41. 9 Baldassare Castiglione, Courtier, 19 (I.12). Unless otherwise stated all translations of Castiglione are from the 2002 edition of the Singleton translation. 10 Ibid., 150 (III.4). 11 Valeria Finucci, The Lady Vanishes, 57–59; Jones, Currency of Eros, 12. It is, however, problematic to seek the historical Castiglione’s viewpoint in the words of particular literary characters.

The Performative Palace

19

the Book of the Courtier does set up oppositions between masculine and feminine performance, particularly in the realm of sprezzatura.12 In Book I, Count Lodovico Canossa advises the courtier to ‘practice in all things a certain sprezzatura which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless’.13 Sprezzatura, or the carefully constructed façade of indifference, is at the heart of Castiglione’s courtier, for it imbues everything he does with the appearance of grace and ensures that he delights everyone around him. The ideal courtier described in Castiglione’s text is not a person born with grace, but one who must create its semblance through sprezzatura.14 Despite the Neoplatonic tenor of Book IV, sprezzatura and the grace is seeks to evoke are not expressions of the courtier’s nobility or character. Rather, the courtier must enact a ‘staged authenticity’.15 Sprezzatura is an art that imitates nature so closely that the audience has difficulty distinguishing between the two. Castiglione’s courtier is enjoined to enact an unending series of effortless performances that leave spectators free to appreciate the skill involved.16 The courtier’s character manifests itself through words, actions, and movements, but that character is a carefully constructed work of art designed to elicit praise from the courtly audience. In contrast to the male courtier, the court lady is never expressly directed to practice sprezzatura. Yet, in a passage disparaging women’s affected attempts to appear beautiful, Count Lodovico praises women who eschew cosmetics and elaborate hairstyles as evincing a sprezzata purità (‘careless purity’) which is all the more pleasing to men who are ‘ever fearful of being deceived by art’.17 He continues with examples of teeth, hands, and ankles, all body parts that are generally concealed by lips, gloves, and skirts, but that, when revealed through seemingly natural gestures, ‘leave one with a great desire to see them more’.18 Like masculine sprezzatura, feminine sprezzata purità aims to avoid affection by producing the illusion of effortless grace. Lodovico urges court ladies to practice such seeming carelessness precisely because men will find it more alluring, yet at the same time he rouses the specter of deception. The lady must elicit desire through a performance that is so artless that it avoids all suspicion. 12 On the problems with anxious masculinity in the Early Modern period, see Patricia Simons, Sex of Men, 17. For the ways in which textual depictions of women facilitated homosocial bonding, see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men. 13 Castiglione, Courtier, 32 (I.26). Although it is traditionally translated as ‘nonchalance’, I have left the word sprezzatura untranslated. In Castiglione’s writing and thought sprezzatura does not simply denote the indifference implied in nonchalance; it also signifies ‘scorn for normal, human limitations, physical necessities, and the restrictions of most forms of behavior’. Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 35. 14 Harry Berger, Jr., Absence of Grace, 9–25. 15 Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 20. 16 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 25; 38–39. 17 Castiglione, Courtier, 48 (I.40). My analysis of sprezzata purità is indebted to Berger, Absence of Grace, 91–95. 18 Castiglione, Courtier, 49 (I.40).

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The Count’s examples of sprezzata purità relate to the veiling and unveiling of the female body, and he admires the calculation of bodily gestures as much as he celebrates their apparent spontaneity.19 Ann R. Jones has demonstrated that courtesy literature, especially that written by Castiglione and Guazzo, manifests a tension between the need for the court lady to speak, specifically to speak of and arouse desire, and social discourses that equated access to women’s speech with access to their bodies. The court lady is enjoined to speak of sex while also maintaining her chaste reputation, a paradox that requires the same carefully constructed façade as that created by the male courtier.20 The lady therefore participates in the seemingly natural artifice of sprezzatura, but her performance of sprezzata purità must at once allow and deny access to her sexualized body. Masculine sprezzatura is also linked to the bodily movements of the courtier: when dancing or participating in the exercise of arms the courtier’s every step and movement should appear natural, graceful, and elegant.21 The courtier’s performance should ‘feed his spectator’s eyes’ and elicit maraviglia (‘wonder’) from the audience, who will simultaneously admire and desire him.22 However, the courtier’s body is not the only site of sprezzatura, which may also be exercised through oratory, letters, languages, and even humor, and the desire that he elicits is not only, and perhaps not primarily, sexual. In contrast, the court lady’s sprezzata purità is enacted through a deployment of the female body such that it is both sexual and chaste, and both open and closed to the male beholder. In Book III Giuliano de’ Medici concedes the difficulty of such a feat, for the court lady ‘must observe a certain mean (difficult to achieve and, as it were, composed of contraries) and must strictly observe certain limits and not exceed them’.23 Sprezzata purità requires a constant balancing act between inciting desire and denying it, a requirement not outlined for the male courtier. Both men and women were expected to produce the effect of nature via consummate acts of artifice, yet the lady’s performance was irrevocably intertwined with her sexualized body. The performances of male and female courtiers created a tension between nature and artifice that echoed developments in sixteenth-century art and architecture. In his treatise On Painting (1435), Leon Battista Alberti advises would-be artists that ‘all the steps of learning should be sought from Nature’.24 Yet, artists should also follow the model of the ancient painter Zeuxis by selecting the most pleasing features from a number of bodies and assembling them in one beautiful figure.25 Like the courtier, 19 At the end of Book III, Chapter 40, Lodovico states that ‘everyone thinks that such elegance […] must be natural and instinctive with the lady, rather than calculated’, thereby betraying that such movements are the product of artifice. Ibid., 49. 20 Jones, Currency of Eros, 15–17. 21 Cf., Castiglione, Courtier, 34–35 (I.28) and 72–73 (II.8). 22 Ibid., 73 (II.8) and 99 (III.37). 23 Ibid., 151 (III.5). 24 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, 89 (III.55). 25 Ibid., 90–91 (III.55–56).

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painters should create works of art that simulate nature, while at the same time improving upon it. In the preface to the third part of his Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects (1568), Giorgio Vasari likewise advises artists to imitate Nature by selective copying of limbs and forms that would be joined together ‘so as to make a figure of the greatest possible beauty’.26 Both courtiers and paintings are assemblages of parts that appear natural, but which are actually artful. Moreover, it is telling that as art began to develop a discourse and theoretical framework, the tension between nature and artifice was articulated via the careful copying and idealization of the human body. Renaissance beholders understood that gender was enacted through the routine and stylized movements of the body. Like the artists, dancers, and performers to which Castiglione compares them, courtiers enacted their identities and aimed to convince their beholders that the act was natural.27 Renaissance courtiers therefore recognized that gender identity was performative. Judith Butler has written that gender is constructed through mundane bodily acts and gestures which seem to reveal an essential identity that is, in fact, lacking. Gender is a constant performance and an unceasing enactment of both personal and social experiences that seems natural, but that is actually manufactured by the collective acts of many individuals.28 Butler sees normative gender performance as largely unconscious on the part of individuals who are caught up in the maintenance and reproduction of existing power structures. As we will see, many of the individuals who inhabited the Palazzo Te followed the social script without much reflection. But, it is also my contention that Renaissance court culture posited the self as malleable, and that performative identity could therefore be purposefully and self-consciously produced. Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier and della Casa’s Galateo constructed the court as a culture of surveillance, a place where one was constantly watching and being watched for cracks in the performative façade, and where the audience’s approbation was required for the performance to be judged successful.29 Castiglione’s courtier is advised to ‘consider well what he does or says, the place where he does it, in whose presence, its timeliness, the reason for doing it, his own age, his profession, the end at which he aims, and the means by which he can reach it’.30 Likewise, della Casa’s attention to the minutiae of table manners in Chapter 29 of the Galateo speaks to a culture in which each movement is noted and judged.31

26 Giorgio Vasari, Lives, 1.618. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Vasari are from the 1996 edition of the du Vere translation. 27 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 16. 28 Butler, Gender Trouble, 175–193. 29 Frank Whigham, “Interpretation,” 623–639; Berger, Absence of Grace, 11–25. 30 Castiglione, Courtier, 72 (II.7). 31 Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, 61–64. See also, Berger, Absence of Grace, 49–51.

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Fig. 2: Northern courtyard façade, detail with exterior frescoes, 1525–28. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

Art at the Renaissance court also betrays a preoccupation with seeing and being seen. Jennifer Webb has argued that the figures of illustrious men and intarsia panels in the studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino subject the visitor to multiple gazes, at once engaging him and making her the subject of a system of surveillance.32 Andrea Mantegna’s Camera Picta, located in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and completed in 1475, is perhaps best known for its oculus, which features women of the court and spiritelli, or mischievous spirits, who lean over the balustrade to look down upon visitors (Fig. 30).33 Mantegna’s oculus playfully reverses the act of looking: the spectator is watched from above, becoming the object of the gaze he once thought to control.34 Giulio Romano similarly referenced the gendered nature of visibility in the courtyard of the Palazzo Te. Above the entrance to the Loggia delle Muse fictive windows open inward, revealing women within the palace or architectural vistas beyond.35 In one 32 Jennifer D. Webb, “All is not fun and games,” 438. 33 Charles Dempsey, Reniassance Putto. Dempsey has demonstrated that what art historians have come to refer to as ‘putti’ were known as spiritelli in fifteenth and sixteenth-century documents. 34 Randolph Starn and Loren W. Partridge, Arts of Power, 119. 35 Five of these figures were added in 1533–1534 by Luca da Faenza. Daniela Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.638– 639. Only two of the scenes above the Loggia delle Muse are still identifiable; in one additional scene a painted window can just barely be discerned.

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scene a woman holds a jug and looks down as if checking for the presence of people before emptying its contents into the courtyard (Fig. 2). In both the Camera Picta and the courtyard of the Palazzo Te female spectators comment upon and subtly subvert gendered relationships by granting women the evaluating gaze normally reserved for men. Much of the culture of surveillance was directed toward policing the boundaries of gender.36 Indeed, the Book of the Courtier fashions an image of the ideal courtier based in large part upon the correct performance of normative feminine and masculine gender roles. Although Castiglione has Gaspare Pallavicino argue that the court lady ought to obey the same rules as the male courtier, Giuliano counters that, although they have some things in common, men and women should comport themselves differently.37 Moreover, just as men should refrain from appearing feminine, the court lady’s movements ‘shall always make her appear the woman without any resemblance to a man’.38 Stefano Guazzo goes one step further, writing that ‘the sight of a young girl portraying the gestures, expressions, and freedom of speech and that boldness which is proper to a man is a monstrous thing’.39 While neither Castiglione, della Casa, nor Guazzo outline the consequences for feminine men or masculine women, each author warns against a failed performance. Despite injunctions to enact gender roles that conformed to biological sex, Renaissance beholders also recognized that the performative nature of gender meant that it was not necessarily tied to sex. Castiglione and della Casa take great pains to warn men against walking, standing, or moving in any way which might be perceived as feminine. Count Lodovico cautions the male courtier against appearing, [S]oft and feminine as so many attempt to who not only curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows, but preen themselves in all those ways that the most wanton and dissolute women in the world adopt; and in walking, in posture, and in every act, appear so tender and languid that their limbs seem to be on the verge of falling apart; and utter their words so limply that it seems they are about to expire on the spot.40

Lodovico and his audience are concerned that in appearing feminine the male courtier will fail to perform the gender role that they have assigned to him. Likewise, della Casa warns his male reader against appearing in the guise of a woman, ‘such 36 Butler argues that recognizable gender roles humanize individuals within a culture, and thus failure to appropriately perform leads to punishment for those ‘who fail to do their gender right’. Gender Trouble, 178. 37 Castiglione, Courtier, 149 and following (III.3–4). 38 Ibid., 150 (III.4). 39 ‘[P]erché il vedere una giovane rappresentare ne’ gesti, ne’ sembianti e nel parlare quelle libertà e quell’ardire che è proprio dell’uomo è cosa mostruosa’. Stefano Guazzo, La civil conversazione, 239. 40 Castiglione, Courtier, 27 (I.19).

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that the ornament is not one thing and the person another’.41 In stating that the person and his appearance should be the same, della Casa seems to be defining gender as an essential substance that cannot be differentiated from sex. However, in cautioning men not to create differences between ornaments, or appearances, and the person, or body, Guazzo in fact admits that gendered comportment can be separated from, and even opposite of, the sexed body. By pointing out areas of potential gender slippage Castiglione, della Casa, and Guazzo highlight the performative nature of gender. Moreover, in their warnings to men and women to avoid walking, standing, speaking, or appearing as the opposite gender, the authors recognize that gender is enacted through the routine, stylized movements of the body. In the Renaissance, the performance of gender occurred on the surfaces of sexed bodies that were largely categorized as either male or female.42 The masculine body was idealized as a unified whole that was as impenetrable as the ceremonial armor men wore; the feminine body was at once open and accessible, as well as mysterious, and thus in need of investigation.43 Patricia Simons has demonstrated that in medical literature and popular culture the male body and its genitalia were understood as projecting outward, while the female body and its womb were seen as receptive. Because women required and desired male sexual action and semen, they were dependent and inferior. What Simons identifies as ‘the unequal two-see theory’ reinforced patriarchal attitudes; yet it also admitted female sexual desire.44 Simons’ analysis of the sexed body dovetails with literary discourses surrounding gender and its performance. Castiglione, della Casa, Guazzo, and their readers enjoined the court lady to act as an attentive, receptive audience for the courtier’s performances of wit and physical prowess, while at the same time expecting her to possess and elicit sexual desire. Moreover, as Count Lodovico’s discussion of sprezzata purità demonstrates, the primary way that the lady could elicit praise and desire was through corporeal signs. The visual arts similarly reveal the ways in which the body and its gestures could be mobilized to negotiate gender roles. In her well-known essay on Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia, Rona Goffen argued that Lotto and his sitter used forceful, masculine gestures and utterances to communicate the lady’s vigorous defense of her chastity (Fig. 3). Like the Roman matron Lucretia, this sixteenth-century

41 ‘[A] guisa di femina; acciò che l’ornamento non sia uno e la persona un altro’. della Casa, Galateo, 59 (XXVIII). For ornament as a necessary embellishment to artifice, see Clare Lapraik Guest, Ornament, 67–119. 42 Early Modern popular culture, philosophy, and medical literature recognized the existence of androgynous persons, hermaphrodites, and the possibility of spontaneous sex change. However, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries medical and legal establishments often forced people that we might today call intersex into one of two binaries. Authorities used a combination of physical and performative factors to assign sex. Israel Burshatin, “Interrogating Hermaphroditism,” 3–18; Simons, Sex of Men, 25–38. 43 Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 13–21. 44 Simons, Sex of Men, 191–218.

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Fig. 3: Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia, c. 1530–32. Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 110.6 cm. © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY.

woman is ready to die before dishonoring herself or her family.45 She has successfully negotiated Giuliano’s difficult mean by speaking of and eliciting desire even as she defends her chastity. On one level, this lady is re-inscribed into a patriarchal discourse in which her chastity is her defining feature, but she enacts that chastity through an appeal to masculine vigor rather than through feminine modesty. By manipulating the interstices between socially mandated gender roles the new Lucretia occupies a performative space somewhat different from the demure beauty fashioned by Lodovico and Giuliano in the Book of the Courtier. Both courtesy literature and art define a subject that is constructed through carefully calculated performances of nonchalance, and the specific nature of these performances is gendered. This is perhaps obvious. Yet, it seems to me that both men and women were rhetorically imbued with the power to self-consciously construct their own personalities, or to self-fashion their identities.46 Castiglione, Guazzo, and 45 Rona Goffen, “Lotto’s Lucretia,” 742–781. 46 My use of Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning focuses on the discursive agency granted to Renaissance men and women. However, as Greenblatt himself suggests, any self-fashioned identity is always constructed amidst and embedded within larger cultural and social systems. I disagree with Greenblatt’s

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other male writers circumscribe femininity and masculinity within a patriarchal discourse, but, ultimately, individuals could perform the social script in ways that reframed, rewrote, and transgressed gendered expectations.47 Artifice, subterfuge, and misrepresentation were expected and even praised at the Renaissance court, suggesting that gender roles were seen as similarly malleable and unstable. Rather than something that was actively imposed by authors and artists upon passive readers and beholders, discourses concerning gender arose out of the negotiation between overlapping and competing frames of reference.48 Renaissance authors and artists and their audiences realized that gender performance could both reinforce and destabilize social norms. In combination with Renaissance visual and ceremonial culture, courtesy literature demonstrates that gender was a never-ending series of performative acts that took place on the surfaces of the body.

Experience As today, Renaissance gendered performance took place through physical engagement with things, whether they were buildings, objects, or people. I therefore invoke experience, in part, as a call to examine the uses and functions of Early Modern buildings. We need to think beyond the plan, the façade, and the furnishing or decoration of the built environment in order to integrate the presence, interactions, and interpretations of inhabitants and visitors. I take Ernst Gombrich’s formulation of the ‘beholder’s share’, and John Shearman’s conception of art as transitive, or coming to completion through the presence of an engaged spectator, as points of departure for complicating the ways in which people interacted with art and architecture.49 Historians of religious architecture have provided models for investigating the ways in which liturgy and ceremony both give structure to buildings and are structured by them.50 In the realm of secular architecture and urbanism there has also been a assertion that self-fashioning must always occur in opposition to some threatening or alien Other. I therefore see self-fashioning as more closely connected to Berger’s argument that ‘if others can fashion them [men and women], they can fashion themselves’. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning; Berger, Absence of Grace, 67. My position is also contrary to that of Joan Kelly-Gadol, among others, who maintained that women were only ever objects and were not afforded the same individuality as men. Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” 47 I take a cue here from Berger, who suggests that Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier contains a critique of the very society it represents. While I am not wholly convinced by his argument, he does point to the ways in which the text contradicts and subverts itself, which I believe opens the way for individual agency. Berger, Absence of Grace. 48 Christine Gledhill, “Pleasurable Negotiations.” See also, Jones, Currency of Eros, 2. 49 Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion; John Shearman, Only Connect. Sherman himself called for a history of the spectator’s engagement with architecture. 50 Among the classic studies are Thomas Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople; and William Tronzo, “Medieval Object-Enigma,” 197–228.

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growing interest in the relationships between inhabitants and architectural space.51 We can now build upon that work in order to interrogate the lived experiences of buildings. Experience is culturally mediated and historically contingent. I rely on archival documents in order to analyze the ways in which Gonzaga family members and their guests interacted with the Palazzo Te. The dynasty’s approach to the palace was not uniform throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it served many functions at once. From stables to fruit orchard and recreational site to alchemical laboratory, the Palazzo Te was embedded within the daily life of the Mantuan court. At the same time, the palace was instrumental in the ceremonial life of the dynasty, particularly during the reigns of Federico II (1519–1540) and Vincenzo I (1587–1612). Records concerning the palace’s role in courtly entertainments and triumphal entries demonstrate the ways in which the Gonzaga dynasty self-consciously deployed the palace in order to enhance their social and political prestige. They also reveal the extent to which the Gonzaga attempted to re-frame and reconstruct the palace to fit their changing circumstances, as well as the ways in which the building resisted such efforts. I also attempt to invoke something of the fluctuating circumstances in which inhabitants encounter the built environment by including some figures with people, cars, signs, and shadows (for example, Figs. 7, 21, and 40). Beholders rarely experience buildings in isolation or in ideal circumstances. I hope to have captured the way that light, furnishings (both Modern and Early Modern), and people relate to the structures and surfaces around them. I propose that we treat the built environment as a dynamic agent that forms and is formed by the bodies, actions, and identities of its inhabitants. Thus, my use of the term experience is also a call to reconstitute the viewer as an embodied beholder.52 In doing so, I appeal not to the ocular-centric experience of Michael Baxandall, but to phenomenological experience as conceptualized by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and read through feminist and queer approaches.53 Merleau-Ponty argued that bodies and space are interdependent. The body is not in space, rather ‘it inhabits space’.54 Conceptual and physical spaces do not exist separate from the body; instead, space is predicated upon and defined by the body. Similarly, identity and consciousness are 51 Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House; David R. Coffin, Villa in Renaissance Rome; Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces; Amanda Flather, Gender and Space, 39–173; James R. Lindow, Renaissance Palace in Florence, 77–184; Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space; and Niall Atkinson, Noisy Renaissance. 52 I am especially indebted to recent work by Elina Gertsman and Adrian Randolph on the tactile and performative experience of objects and to Patricia Simons’s call for an ‘embodied history’. Elina Gertsman, Worlds Within; Randolph, Touching Objects, 1–15; 169–203; Simons, Sex of Men, 18 and following. 53 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience; Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology; Simone de Beauvoir, Second Sex; Judith Butler, “Performative Acts.”; Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion; Iris Marion Young, Female Body Experience. For the applications of phenomenology in the study of art, see Amelia Jones, “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment,” 71–90. 54 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 140. Emphasis in original.

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bound up with the body and its spaces. Just as there can be no concept of space without the body, there can be no constitution of the subject separate from the body.55 While Merleau-Ponty posits that the body is always a subject, Iris Marion Young argues that the body is both subject and object, or ‘a thing that exists as looked at and acted upon’.56 In framing the Palazzo Te as both subject and object, I therefore examine the ways in which buildings and bodies act upon one another. Early Modern bodies were subject to a culture of surveillance that produced them as both looking and looked at, both acting and acted upon, and thus as both subjects and objects. Moreover, beholders were attuned to the ways that objects and spaces could impose upon them, making identity something that was produced in the negotiation between beholder and beheld.57 Buildings were not empty objects divorced from the body; rather, architectural spaces made possible certain kinds of physical and social relationships, and were, in turn, transformed by the uses and experiences of their inhabitants.58 Beholders did not come to works of art or architecture with already determined identities; instead, subjectivity was formed and reformed as they encountered, experienced, and interpreted the physical world around them. At the same time, it would be inaccurate to say that gendered and corporeal subjectivity is formed solely through individual agency. Castiglione, della Cassa, and Guazzo wrote a body that was under the control of the mind, a docile body that could be crafted, honed, and performed by its subject.59 While Renaissance authors therefore stress the autonomy of self-fashioning, social and cultural forces could and did impinge upon, and, at times, override individual determinacy. As Pierre Bourdieu and Elizabeth Grosz have noted, ideas of corporeality are created through the inscription of social practices upon the body, such that the body becomes a style one inhabits rather than a self-consciously constructed edifice.60 Renaissance courtiers described and envisioned their bodies and their selves as under control, disciplined, and unified, yet many of their decisions and actions were governed by external social and cultural forces. Precisely because the spaces of the Palazzo Te are unstable, dynamic, and unbounded they allow us to explore the tensions between self-conscious constructions of gender and the ways in which spaces imposed upon their inhabitants. 55 Ibid., 142–153. See also, Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl,” 145–148. 56 “Throwing Like a Girl,” 148. Emphasis in original. Merleau-Ponty’s later work also tends in this direction, as he explores the embodied subject as one who ‘cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed by it, unless he is of it’. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm,” 134–135. 57 Several recent publications have explored that ways in which objects are constitutive of identity and how objects and spaces can co-opt the spectator and collapse subject-object distinctions: Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 29–57; Anne Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 114–121; Randolph, Touching Objects, 169–179; and Giancarla Periti, Courts of Religious Ladies, 196–203. 58 Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion, 92. 59 I am thinking here of Foucault’s concept of the docile body, disciplined not by institutions, but by individual will and social monitoring. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 135–169. 60 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 72–91; Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 138–158.

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Architectural historians have tended to focus on the ways in which Renaissance architectural theory divorced the body from the eye and transformed buildings into objects to be seen, rather than spaces to be inhabited.61 Classical and Renaissance writers allowed for the corporeality of the built environment and conceived of buildings as bodies. In his influential treatise on architecture, Vitruvius cited the human form as a model for symmetry and proportion, stating that a building should mimic ‘the components of the human body’.62 Vitruvius also asserted that the Doric and Ionic orders were based upon the proportions of men and women, respectively.63 Following Vitruvius, Renaissance architects such as Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and Sebastiano Serlio conceived of a dialectic relationship between their buildings and the body.64 Francesco di Giorgio’s illustrations in his Trattato di architettura (c. 1490) perhaps best illustrate that Renaissance architects envisioned the human body not only as a source of proportion, but also a source of invention and imitation (Fig. 4).65 In his drawings for the plan and façade of a church, the male body provides the proportions of the structure and defines it as a space inhabited by the body. For Renaissance architects the building was a body, and, I would argue, an embodied subject that acted on inhabitants even as they acted on its structures and surfaces. The concept of buildings and people as embodied subjects is particularly important for understanding Renaissance approaches to and negotiations of gender. With the exceptions of the Orders, treatises on architecture commonly equate the male body with ideal architectural proportion, suggesting that the subject or identity of churches, palaces, civic buildings, and the city itself might be masculine. Indeed, a long exegetical tradition described the Catholic Church and its members as the body of Christ, and man as a microcosm of the world.66 If the proportions of the ideal building were masculine, the matter being shaped was feminine.67 In contrast to masculine corporeal control, authors and artists constructed women as subject to and controlled by their bodies.68 At the same time, the Virgin Mary was portrayed as ecclesia, or the Church, both as a building and a body.69 Various parts of the city and

61 Mark Wigley, “Untitled,” 327–389. Wigley argued that Alberti’s white surface produced an eye/body that was detached from what it saw, thereby creating a disciplinary approach to architecture in which buildings became objects to be looked at and inhabited by detached viewers. My thinking regarding embodiment and space is deeply indebted to Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion. 62 Vitruvius, Architecture, 47 (III.1.5). See also, Joseph Rykwert, Dancing Column, 96–115. 63 Vitruvius, Architecture, 54–55 (IV.1.1–6). 64 Rykwert, Dancing Column, 43–67. 65 Lawrence Lowic, “The Human Analogy in Francesco di Giorgio’s Trattato,” 360–370; Francesco Paolo Fiore, “Trattati,” 66–85. 66 Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles, 1–32; Rykwert, Dancing Column, 61–66; 73–85. 67 Wigley, “Untitled,” 357. Wigley is here referring to Artistotelian concepts of masculine form and feminine matter. Cf., Aristotle, De generatione, 1.20–1.22. 68 Simons, Sex of Men, 125–128. 69 Mary Garrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, 36–41.

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Fig. 4: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Plan of a Church According to the Proportions of the Human Body, from Trattato di architettura e macchine, c. 1490. Pen and ink. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Ms.II.I141.

its civic, religious, and domestic buildings could also be gendered through rituals and practices that claimed spaces as masculine or feminine.70 Rather than seeing buildings or spaces as abstractly masculine or feminine, a phenomenological approach acknowledges the ways in which individuals produced gender identities in and through the built environment.71 In treating buildings and individuals as acting subjects, or agents, phenomenology allows us to approach the built 70 Robert C. Davis, “The Geography of Gender in the Renaissance,” 19–38. 71 I am drawing upon Elizabeth Grosz’s body-city model in which the body and the built environment are mutually defining. The physical body and its social discourses produce and transform the built environment, but architecture also plays an active role in constituting bodies. Space, Time, and Perversion, 103–110.

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environment as a space that could resist the intentions of its makers and inhabitants. The Palazzo Te becomes more than a place in which women and men fashioned and performed their gendered subjectivity; it is also a material subject that shaped its inhabitants, leaving traces upon their bodies and their identities.72 Moreover, as I argue at greater length in Chapter Four, Renaissance space did not always posit an intact, stable body. Instead, the building’s body, and the bodies that inhabited it, could be open, unstable, and polysemous.

Space The study of space has become ubiquitous in recent years, and numerous articles, essays and books attest to a spatial turn in social history.73 While there seems to be broad agreement that space is socially constructed and activated, and that space and time are inextricably intertwined, just what constitutes space is a nebulous question. Is space physical, abstract, geographical, theoretical, lived, mapped, or made? This study considers space from three interwoven methodological points of view: social, experiential, and material.74 Henri Lefebvre famously conceived of space as something that is constructed, imagined, and lived through societal interactions.75 For Lefebvre, social space is primarily conceptual. Yet, feminist theorists have argued for an understanding of social space as a place of material and corporeal interactions and practices.76 Social space is therefore created by the relationships between bodies and objects. At the same time, space is not simply produced by overarching social forces. The second way that I approach space is as something that is formed and re-formed by the actions and movements of its inhabitants. Michel de Certeau writes of ‘spatial practices’, in which space is dynamic, experiential, and polyvalent.77 While social space is at least nominally dependent upon boundaries, experiential space is not geographically fixed and opens outward.78 Space is continually in the process of being built, imagined, and remembered; it is always in the process of becoming. 72 Ibid., 17. 73 In 2006 Peter Stearns recognized the ‘spatial question’ as one of the fundamental issues shaping the future of social history. “Social History and Spatial Scope,” 613–614. Indeed, the spatial turn has been so successful that it is not possible to survey the full literature here. In forming my own approach, the following studies of Medieval and Early Modern spaces have been particularly helpful: Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monastic Spaces; Flather, Gender and Space; Matthew P. Romaniello and Charles Lipp, Contested Spaces; Merri E. Weisner, Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces. For an overview of critical approaches to space, see Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift, Thinking Space. 74 The three frameworks described below are deeply indebted to Megan Cassidy-Welch, “Space and Place,” 1–12. 75 Lefebvre, The Production of Space. 76 Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion, 83–101; Doreen Massey, For Space, 90–98. 77 Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. 78 Massey, For Space.

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The approaches to space outlined above can be rather abstract because they often lack grounding in the material realm. I would therefore like to propose a third way to understand space: as the two- and three-dimensional planes and voids that make up the built environment. Art and architectural historians are uniquely equipped to bridge the gap between theory and objects. If space is an abstract, fluid, socially constructed concept, it is also something that exists in the physical world. The bricks, walls, and vaults of the Palazzo Te enclose and form space, even as its frescoes often open onto seemingly infinite vistas. At the same time, the placement of frescoed walls and physical doors framed corporeal and visual experience, offering tantalizing glimpses of gigantic bodies or brightly lit outdoor spaces that propelled the inhabitant’s body through the palace. Even the abstract spaces of linear perspective could impinge upon the spaces of the beholder. In the Camera di Psiche, frescoed figures reach around and over their painted frames (Pl. 4), and in the Sala dei Giganti, walls are painted away, collapsing pictorial and physical space (Pl. 9). In thinking of the Palazzo Te as an environment, I also seek to enliven its structures and circumstances. Architectural history has tended to see buildings as inert, and as closed and perfected objects. I propose, instead, that we approach the palace as an assemblage of practices and processes that are continually being realized.79 The spaces of the Palazzo Te are not simply physical, they are also social, experiential, and performative. As Helen Hills has argued, buildings do not merely perpetuate or express existing social relationships; rather, they make it possible for inhabitants to imagine and enact new identities and associations.80 The Palazzo Te is a building constructed in court society and used as a ceremonial center, and thus a space experienced through dances, banquets, and processions, as well as everyday leisure activities such as horseback riding and picnicking. Its use and even its fabric changed over time as the Gonzaga dynasty deployed it under changing political and social circumstances, added onto it, and refurbished it. To separate the Palazzo Te, or any building, from the society that produced it, the activities that occurred there, and the people that passed through it is to empty the building render it passive. In order to more fully understand the Renaissance built environment, we must first re-vitalize it. This is therefore not a book about the ways in which spaces and buildings were gendered or about gendered patronage, subjects that have been admirably explored by Katherine McIver, Giancarla Peritti, and Anabel Thomas and in collections of essays edited by Helen Hills and Sheryl E. Reiss and David Wilkins, to name only a few.81 79 Helen Stratford, “Unpleasant Matters,” 209–224. 80 Invisible City, 3–18. 81 Katherine McIver, Women, Art, and Architecture; Periti, Courts of Religious Ladies; Anabel Thomas, Art and Piety; Helen Hills, Architecture; Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, Beyond Isabella. Studies of the domestic interior have also dealt with gendered space. See, Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives; Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family; Erin J. Campbell, Stephanie R. Miller, and Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior.

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Nor is this, strictly speaking, a book about architecture and its histories. Instead, this book treats gender, experience, and space as intertwined discourses wherein identity is constructed, enacted, and reproduced through the constant play between surfaces, whether those are the surfaces of the built environment or of the body. Individuals’ ideas of themselves and their representations of those selves were constantly forming, shifting, and fragmenting in response to the physical and conceptual spaces in which they lived.82 Space, and especially architecture, may seem to be static and immutable, but it is in fact continually in the process of production by individuals interacting within a society. Simply put space, like gender, is performative. Renaissance spaces such as the Palazzo Te were places in which identity was constituted and enacted, rather than simply presented. They were also places in which individuals could negotiate socially prescribed gender roles while engaging in self-fashioning. Performative spaces are thus sites of ‘conflict, contradiction, negotiation, and transformation’.83 Through its multivalent form and ceremonial function the palace was an active participant in the construction and perception of femininity and masculinity at the Gonzaga court. The Palazzo Te was a fellow performer, acting upon its inhabitants even as their actions, movements, gestures, and utterances worked upon the palace and its environs.

The Performative Palace Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Te was designed and constructed over a roughly ten-year period from 1525 until 1535.84 Giulio Romano was often occupied with several projects as once, and his tightly organized workshop was responsible for executing much of the structure and its decoration according to his models.85 His vision of the palace accommodated the desires of his rather demanding patron, Federico II Gonzaga, his own artistic and courtly identity, and shifting ideas concerning the roles of imitation 82 Flather, Gender and Space, 1–16. 83 Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps, 18. This book’s approach to performance as a communal and cultural instance (rather than simply social) has had a deep impact on my thinking. 84 Kurt W. Forster and Richard J. Tuttle, “The Palazzo Te.” The earliest structures on the island were stables, but around 1525 Federico II Gonzaga had Giulio construct the initial phase of the villa, which included walls from the original stables and likely encompassed the Sala dei Cavalli through the Camera di Ovidio. The second building phase, which likely commenced in 1527, transformed the villa into a palace by adding the northern and western wings and probably half of the eastern wing. The third phase, which began after April 1530, comprised the eastern façade and Loggia di Davide and completed the eastern and southern wings. The southern loggia and exterior façade remained undecorated. Verheyen argues that Giulio’s first building phase also included the Camera di Psiche; see Egon Verheyen, “In Defense of Jacopo Strada,” 134–135. 85 For the attribution and dating of the interior frescoes and stuccoes, see Piera Carpi, “Giulio Romano,” 3–31; Frederick Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.105–160; Egon Verheyen, “Die Malereien in der Sala di Psiche des Palazzo del Te,” 33–68; Konrad Oberhuber, “L’apparato decorativo,” 336–379; Amedeo Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.193–206; Ugo Bazzotti, “Osservazioni,” 65–108.

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and innovation in art.86 As both architect and artist Giulio Romano also had unprecedented control over the spatial and visual forms of the palace.87 Through both architecture and decoration, Giulio created a dynamic environment that encouraged multiple interpretations and incited the production and performance of gendered identities. When completed, the plan of the Palazzo Te corresponded to that of an ancient Roman villa with rooms arranged around a central courtyard and airy loggias opening onto lush gardens. In addition to the secret garden and its accompanying apartment, the Palazzo Te comprises nineteen rooms that were decorated with frescoes, stuccoes, woodwork, and gilded leather hangings, as well as several service rooms and the famed Gonzaga stables (Fig. 5). Due to its focus on performative space, this book will discuss several rooms of the palace only briefly, or not at all, among them the Camera di Ovidio, Camera delle Imprese, the small rooms west of the Sala dei Giganti, and the Garden Apartment. This is not to suggest that these are not important rooms. Contemporary documents rarely mention them, and because the spatial mechanics of each are generally straightforward they posit a less dynamic relationship with their inhabitants.

86 The Palazzo Te has supported shifting interpretations of Federico II’s personality, Giulio Romano’s identity, and the definition of Mannerism. For an overview of the scholarship, see Paolo Carpeggiani, “La fortuna critica,” 13–33; Ernst H. Gombrich, “Il palazzo del Te,” 17–21. The palace has long been regarded as an example of Federico’s hedonism and sexual libertinism, particularly by Egon Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te. Verheyen’s biographical interpretation of the palace remains prevalent in recent publications: Ugo Bazzotti, Palazzo Te; Sally Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage. For a broader examination of Federico’s patronage strategies, see the essays in Francesca Mattei, Federico II Gonzaga. Scholarship has also approached the palace as evidence of Giulio’s artistic genius and intemperance: Johann Dominik Fiorillo, Geschichte der Mahlerei; Stefano Davari, Descrizione del palazzo del Te; Nikolaus Pevsner, The Architecture of Mannerism; Hartt, Giulio Romano. More recently, the palace has been interpreted in light of Giulio’s fashioning of an artistic identity based on an intimate familiarity with and ironic approach to the art of ancient Rome: Bob Allies, “Palazzo del Te,” 59–65; Volker Hoffmann, “Giulios Ironie,” 543–558. Until the term Mannerism went out of fashion around 1980, the Palazzo Te was used as a definitive example of the style. Gombrich used the palace as an example of the anxiety-laden, anti-classical nature of Mannerism, Ernst H. Gombrich, “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I,” 81–89. He later admitted that he overstated the anxiety of the Palazzo Te. In contrast, the palace has also been seen as characteristic of Mannerism’s courtly wit and erudition. See especially, Giusta Nicco Fasola, “Giulio Romano e il Manierismo,” 60–73; John Shearman, Mannerism, 140–158. 87 The subject of Giulio’s artistic control at the Palazzo del Te has been much debated, especially in reference to the asymmetrical nature of the façades. Gombrich and Hartt initially believed that the Palazzo del Te was constructed ex novo, and that its irregularities were the product of his artistic license. Gombrich, “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I,” 79–104; “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. II,” 121–150; Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.91. However, John Shearman brought attention to Giorgio Vasari’s vita of Giulio Romano, which states that the artist was instructed to make use of pre-existing structures. John Shearman, “Giulio Romano,” 354–368. The architectural study of Forster and Tuttle confirmed that Giulio incorporated an earlier structure into the palace, which led the authors to almost wholly reject the notion of artistic freedom at the Palazzo Te. Forster and Tuttle, “The Palazzo Te,” 267–293. Forster later admitted that he had overstated his previous claims, and current scholarship moderates between the two extremes. Amedeo Belluzzi and Kurt W. Forster, “Giulio Romano architetto,” 177–225.

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Fig. 5: Plan of the Palazzo Te Complex. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

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In many of the other rooms Giulio set up multi-layered relationships between the physical spaces of inhabitants and the fictive spaces depicted on the walls. The Camera delle Aquile derives its name from the four giant stucco eagles that spread their wings in the corners of the room (Pl. 2). The composition of the Camera delle Aquile implicates the beholder in the action of the ceiling fresco where Phaeton’s plunge to earth will soon bring him into the room. The architecture recedes in a series of niches, while decorative elements forcefully assert themselves; stucco busts protrude outward from the walls and Phaeton’s fall physically assaults beholders. The architecture therefore seems to vigorously thrust the painting into the physical space of the room. Vasari, who thought that the fresco depicted the fall of Icarus, nevertheless noted its impact, writing that ‘it seems to be real and true, for in it one sees the fierce heat of the sun burning the wretched youth’s wings, the flaming fire gives out smoke, and one almost hears the crackling of burning plumes’.88 The Camera delle Aquile implicates visitors in Phaeton’s plunge to earth, yet also calls upon inhabitants to recognize the frescoed artifice above them. Phaeton is physically assertive, but he is not the room’s only subject. Each niche contains six mythological frescoes surrounded by smaller tondi depicting spiritelli, Classical gods, and other mythical figures; four stucco plaques with narrative scenes lie between the niches; harpies rest on corbels; and more spiritelli wend their way through the ceiling on grape vines. The beholder is caught up in Phaeton’s tragic fall, but the sense of pathos is disrupted by the overabundance of images in the room.89 The concepts of dramatic tension and dynamism have long been recognized at the Palazzo del Te, specifically in the façades. Rusticated blocks on the outer façades appear to shift in and out of the building, creating a sense of depth and a syncopated rhythm that encourages visitors to look more closely (Fig. 9).90 The instability of moving masonry is intensified in the courtyard, where triglyphs slip downward as if they are about to fall out of place and a keystone ruptures the pediment it is supposed to support (Fig. 6). On the eastern garden façade, Giulio used a series of columns, pilasters, and colonettes combined with windows, archways, and niches to create movement along the façade, but also in and between its elements (Fig. 55). Giulio’s lively deconstruction of the façade has also been liked to sprezzatura, here expressed as a deliberate disdain for the rules of Classical architecture.91 The introduction of 88 Vasari, Lives, 2:129. 89 Sally Hickson has made a similar comment on the sensory impact of the Fall of Phaeton. However, she does not discuss the other images in the room or the way that they mitigate the beholder’s perception of physical involvement in the fresco. See, “More Than Meets the Eye,” 48–49. 90 Manfredo Tafuri, “Linguaggio, mentalità, committenti,” 20–25. 91 The term sprezzatura was first applied to architecture of the Palazzo Te by Amedeo Belluzzi and Walter Capezzali, Il palazzo dei lucidi inganni, 58. More recently, Tafuri identified sprezzatura as a motivating theme in Giulio Romano’s oeuvre, see Tafuri, “Linguaggio, mentalità, committenti,” 20–49. For a re-evaluation of the role of classicism in Giulio’s oeuvre, see Ernst H. Gombrich, “Architecture and Rhetoric,” 167; Allies, “Palazzo del Te,” 59–65.

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Fig. 6: Western courtyard façade, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

unfinished elements, such as the columns in the western loggia (Fig. 7), mirrors the intentional negligence of the courtier.92 Beholders attuned to the nuances of courtly theater and spectacle would have recognized and appreciated the emotional and dramatic registers of the Palazzo Te.93 The artifice of the façades – mere stucco pretending to be stone – reminded courtiers that their performances were also a pretense. In the very sophistication of its artifice the Palazzo Te provided an ideal space for the performance of gender. Like Castiglione’s ideal courtier, Giulio Romano’s palace activates self-conscious nonchalance and delights its beholders through a studied exhibition of marvels that appeared natural and effortless. The courtier’s nonchalance is made manifest through actions and utterances; the sprezzatura of the Palazzo Te is seen in the easy way in which Giulio combines seemingly disparate elements in a deliberate attempt to astound visitors. No two façades of the palace are exactly alike, and only the eastern façade is perfectly symmetrical. The appearance of symmetry is maintained through the rhythmic placement of architectural elements such as windows and columns; yet that rhythm is disrupted by purposefully incongruous elements such as rusticated portals and dropped triglyphs.94 The combination of contrasting elements found on the façade is mirrored on the interior. The tranquility 92 Gombrich, “Architecture and Rhetoric.” 93 Howard Burns, “Giulio Romano, il teatro, l’antico,” 237; Amedeo Belluzzi and Kurt W. Forster, “Giulio Romano architetto,” 77. The affective potential of the palace has also been explored in relation to its frescoes. See, Paula Carabell, “Breaking the Frame,” 87–100; Hickson, “More Than Meets the Eye,” 41–59. 94 For syncopated rhythm in Giulio’s architecture, see Tafuri, “Linguaggio, mentalità, committenti,” 20–23.

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Fig. 7: ‘Unfinished’ columns, western loggia, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

of the Sala dei Cavalli is followed by the opulence of the Camera di Psiche, and the overwhelming terribilità of the Sala dei Giganti is preceded by the austerity of the Camera degli Imperatori. The palace also obscures its form behind pictorial and physical layers. At times, these veils are swept aside, exposing tantalizing glimpses of the building’s flesh, a performance akin to the lady’s sprezzata purità. In the western loggia, seemingly unfinished columns and pilasters appear almost naked when topped by finished capitals (Fig. 7). In the Camera degli Imperatori, winged victories and spiritelli push

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back the curtain of the ceiling to reveal a glistening realm beyond (Fig. 29). In other instances, the curtain remains closed, inviting penetration, but never quite granting it. A small landscape scene in the Camera di Ovidio appears to depict the Palazzo Te in the midst of construction. The palace’s body is seemingly laid open for the beholder, and the image has even been used to trace the chronology of the building’s production.95 Rather than a document of completed work, the fresco is a representation that seems to grant access, but instead further shrouds the form and genesis of the Palazzo Te. Through its displays of sprezzatura and sprezzata purità the Palazzo Te drew praise similar to that of Castiglione’s courtier, and should therefore be regarded as akin to a fellow performer. The ideal courtier should elicit reactions of maraviglia (‘awe’ or ‘wonder’) from the audience.96 The beholder’s awed response signifies both delight at being presented with something unexpected, and an admiration for ingenuity and wit.97 This is exactly the reaction that the Palazzo Te elicited from its beholders. When he visited the palace in 1530, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was ‘completely awestruck (tutta maravigliosa)’ by the frescoes in the Camera di Psiche.98 And Giorgio Vasari wrote that the Sala dei Giganti was a marvelous work because ‘the whole painting has neither beginning nor end’.99 The awe that the Sala dei Giganti elicited from Vasari was due to its surprising inventiveness: the fact that the entire room was covered in one continuous narrative fresco was both a new development in painting and an unexpected visual delight. Male and female courtiers lived in a theatrical society based on the seeming naturalness of their constructed personas. Similarly, the Palazzo Te is constructed around a theatrical approach to architecture and an apparently easy balance between artifice and artlessness. Giulio’s innovative treatment of the façade, especially his use of rustication, caused the architect and theoretician Sebastiano Serlio to characterize the Palazzo Te as ‘partly the work of nature, and partly the work of artifice’.100 Likewise, Vasari called Giulio’s frescoes in the Camera di Psiche ‘abundant in invention and artifice’.101 The themes of artifice and theatricality are incorporated into the very fabric of the palace itself. While at first glance the building may seem to be constructed out of marble, it is in fact comprised of brick overlaid with stucco. The underlying core of the palace is hidden beneath a sculpted, almost painterly façade. The façade 95 Egon Verheyen, “Die Sala di Ovidio im Palazzo Te,” 161–170; Forster and Tuttle, “The Palazzo Te,” 268–274. 96 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 47. Cf. Castiglione, Courtier, 99, (II.38). 97 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 48. 98 Romano, Cronaca, 262. 99 Vasari, Lives, 2.132. 100 ‘[P]arte opera di natura, e parte opera di artefice’. Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte le opere, Book IV, 11v. 101 ‘[C]opioso d’invenzion e d’artifizio’. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, 3.331. Artifizio is sometimes translated as ‘craftsmanship’, as in Lives, 2.128. I have translated it as ‘artifice’ in order to retain a sense of the visual trickery implicit in Giulio’s compositions. See n. 102 below, where Vasari refers to Giulio’s ability to counterfeit materials.

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is an act, for it pretends to be what it is not; yet it is an act intended to be found out. A mere touch reveals not cool marble, but sun-warmed stucco. Half-finished columns in the entrance loggia and heavily rusticated portals similarly destabilize the façade. Inhabitants could therefore see as well as feel the pretense underlying Giulio’s structure, revealing the instability beneath their own constructed identities. The dissimulation seen in the materials revealed the performative nature of sprezzatura and the persons and spaces that enacted it. Inside the Palazzo Te, Giulio continues to deploy his materials in masterful ways, as well as to use di sotto in sù and illusionistic techniques to break open walls and ceiling vaults. Vasari’s remark concerning the inventiveness and artifice employed by Giulio in the Camera di Psiche refers to the credenza on the south wall (Fig. 12), wherein lustrous plates and goblets ‘seem to be of real silver and gold’, but are in fact ‘counterfeited with a simple yellow and other colors’.102 As in the façade, mundane materials are made to appear rich and vibrant. Similarly, the illusion is broken through architectonic elements: not stucco, in this case, but corbels that intrude upon the frescoed walls. The corbels remind beholders that what they see represented in front of them is just an illusion, as are the identities that they craft. Giulio also integrated the corbels into the narrative structure of the room, suggesting that courtiers should likewise collapse art and nature such that it is difficult for observers to determine the difference. Giulio similarly blurred the lines between nature and artifice in a fresco located in the Camera del Sole e della Luna. Here, the chariots of the sun and the moon, driven by Apollo and Diana respectively, race across the ceiling (Fig. 8). They are depicted as if seen from below, using steep foreshortening and perspective, such that the inhabitant actually feels as if she is looking upward at the progress of the sun and moon across the sky. As with other di sotto in sù works at the Palazzo Te, ‘besides seeming be alive’, the figures of the gods and their chariots ‘deceive the human eyes with a most pleasing illusion’.103 Vasari notes that the frescoes are both natural, that is objects modeled after Nature with the potential for lively movement, and artificial, or painted figures that counterfeit the natural world. This tension between nature and artifice created spaces in which courtier-actors performed their roles. As this book will demonstrate, the palace was a kind of courtly stage that encouraged the performance of gender roles.104 The spaces of the palace were constructed through these performances; through architecture and decoration which were

102 Lives, 2.128. On Giulio’s designs for silverware and banquet plate, see Ugo Bazzotti, “Disegni,” 454–465; Beth L. Holman, “Giulio Romano,” 94–68; Valerie Taylor, “Sketchbook to Princely Table,” 137–153. 103 Vasari, Lives, 2:127. 104 Howard Burns has previously likened Giulio’s treatment of the façade to courtly spectacle and theater. “Giulio Romano, il teatro, l’antico,” 227–243.

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Fig. 8: Camera del Sole e della Luna, ceiling vault, 1526–27. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the ­Comune di Mantova.

perceived through sight, touch, and sound; through Giulio’s Romano’s virtuoso handling of materials; and through the lived interactions of the palace’s inhabitants. A combination of perception, construction, and corporeal experience, the Palazzo Te facilitated a dynamic relationship between visitors and the spaces and images around them, and encouraged them to take the identities they enacted at the palace beyond its walls. Gender is performed on the surface of things ‘through a play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause’.105 The surfaces of the Palazzo Te – its façades and walls – are similarly a play of absence and presence that suggest, but never fully reveal, the methods of its construction. Built from brick and mortar, the organizing principle of the Palazzo Te is hidden behind a layer of stucco made to look like marble. Likewise, the surfaces of the interior walls purport to contain depths that conceal the existence of the wall, as in the Camera di Psiche or the Sala dei Giganti. In contrast, stucco figures of Roman triumphs that process around the Camera degli Stuchi do not attempt to create the illusion of depth. Rather, they sit on the surface of the wall, calling attention to its dual role as pictorial and architectural support. Giulio Romano’s surfaces are based upon an artifice that is meant to be recognized and appreciated, thereby encouraging the performance of a gender identity that was artificial in its construction and natural in its appearance. 105 Butler, Gender Trouble, 185.

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The performative spaces of the Palazzo Te allowed inhabitants to take up multiple positions and thereby facilitated the construction of gender identities. As we will see in the next chapter, the sensuous imagery of the Camera di Psiche could produce normative masculinity by inciting desire that courtiers could tame and direct via reasoned discourse. At the same time, images of mythological women depicted female sexual agency and transformed men into passive observers. In the chapters that follow I analyze the use and reception of the Palazzo Te from the 1530 arrival of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to the Sack of Mantua in 1630. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the palace played a key role at the Gonzaga court as a setting for banquets, dances, triumphal processions, and marriage rituals, and its multivalent spaces accommodated shifting functions and interpretations. Its suburban location meant the palace was a space wherein the strict hierarchies governing court society might be loosened and new possibilities examined. The fact that the palace housed an alchemical laboratory in the late sixteenth century suggests that the Gonzaga were aware of its ability to transform meanings and identities.106 The Palazzo Te is a place that exists in and through time, and one whose fabric and use changed throughout the years as guests and inhabitants interacted with the building. As this book reveals, the palace could incite the performance of normative gender identities by eliciting the display of sprezzatura and projective masculinity on the one hand, and receptive and artfully chaste femininity on the other. During the 1530 visit of Charles V, analyzed in the next chapter, movements of male dancers in the Sala dei Cavalli echoed the jumps and kicks of Federico’s famed horses, some of which were depicted on the walls around them. Through their bodily actions the men performed an active and robust masculinity, while female dancers enacted docile femininity through their more measured steps. Inhabitants might not always enact the social script, meaning that the complex images and spaces of the palace might also incite performances of female sexual agency and masculine inaction. In additions to the palace after 1530 Giulio employed an even more theatrical approach to art and architecture. In Chapter Three I argue that these later additions cited Classical and Renaissance exemplars and monuments in order to create spaces composed of multiple temporal trajectories. The palace and its spaces were not fixed in time, but were, I contend, always coming into being. During a second visit by Charles V in 1532, the palace’s images and spaces asked inhabitants to reconstitute imperial and Classical bodies through a series of signifying absences, thus revealing the volatile nature of gendered identity.

106 Two letters from 1592 attest to the construction and operation of an alchemical laboratory on the island. Lists of expenses were submitted as late as 1604. See, ASMn, A.G., b. 2656, fasc. VII, fol. 105r; Ibid., fol. 106r; and Ibid., b. 2687, fasc. IV, f. 54r.

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I therefore also contend that individuals negotiated socially prescribed gender roles within and through space, meaning that both the built environment and the identities it provoked were unstable, malleable, and, at times, transgressive. In Chapter Four I explore the ways in which the spaces of the Palazzo Te opened beyond the physical structures of the building. Via prints, drawings, and word of mouth the spaces and experiences of the Palazzo Te reverberated far beyond the confines of Renaissance Mantua. Through an appeal to monstrous corporeality, the built environment could elicit the performance of identities that were similarly open, troubling, and licentious. Moreover, beholders brought their own expectations and experiences to bear on the palace. When Vincenzo I Gonzaga’s second bride, Eleonora de’ Medici, entered the palace during her wedding procession in 1584, the Gonzaga no doubt intended that she would see its sexually suggestive imagery as an exhortation to conventional marital relations. But, as Chapter Five argues, Eleanora’s experience of the Palazzo Te was colored by Vincenzo’s disastrous first marriage and rumors surrounding his potency. The horse portraits and passionate encounters between gods and mortals she saw around her pointed to the virility and fidelity that her husband lacked. My study of the experience and reception of the built environment is indebted to Hans-Georg Gadamer, who posited that works of art invoked and revealed meaning, and that the meanings they produced are temporally conditioned.107 As this book will demonstrate, the use and interpretation of the Palazzo Te changed substantially throughout the sixteenth century, taking on significances that could not have been imagined by its architect and patron. I hope to avoid some of the pitfalls of reception by focusing, as much as is possible, on the responses of particular individuals rather than those of an ideal spectator or interpreter.108 However, as any scholar of the archival record will have found, Renaissance observers rarely provide us with the specificity of place, activity, and response that we would like. The problem is only exacerbated when one attempts to consider the receptions of women, whose experiences are often mediated through a male author. Moreover, I see reception as a dialectical and ongoing relationship between a space and its beholders. As agents, spaces and objects are involved in the making of their own reception. This is especially true of the Palazzo Te, which is dynamic, polyvalent, and engaging, thus engendering similarly unfixed and complex responses. This book seeks to uncover the manifold ways in which the Renaissance built environment produced, and was produced by, the gendered interactions and identities of its inhabitants. Like Castiglione’s court lady, I attempt to negotiate a certain difficult mean by examining the written record, the physical and conceptual spaces of the Palazzo Te, discourses of gender, and the lived experiences of Renaissance visitors. 107 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method. 108 For the benefits and challenges of Gadamer’s work for feminist scholars, see the essays in Lorraine Code, Feminist Interpretations. For problems with reception history in the context of Renaissance gender studies, see Diana Hiller, Gendered Perceptions, 4–5.

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Bibliography Archives ASMn, AG. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga.

Primary Sources Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Translated by Cecil Grayson. London: Phaidon, 1972. Aristotle. De generatione animalium. Translated by Arthur Platt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. Davari, Stefano, ed. Descrizione del palazzo del Te di Mantova, di Giacomo Strada, illustrate con documenti tratti dall’Archivio Gonzaga. Mantua: Stab. Eredi Segna, 1904. della Casa, Giovanni. Il Galateo overo De’ costumi. Venice: Nicolo Bevilacqua, 1558. Reprint. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1990. Ferrari, Daniela, ed. Giulio Romano: repertorio di fonti documentarie. 2 vols. Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1992. Guazzo, Stefano. La civil conversazione. Ed. Amedeo Quondam. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1993. Romano, Giacinto, ed. Cronaca del soggiorno di Carlo V in Italia (dal 26 luglio 1529 al 25 aprile 1530). Documento di storia italiana estratto da un codice della Regia Biblioteca universitaria di Pavia. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1892. Serlio, Sebastiano. Tutte le opere d’architettura et prospetiva. Venice: Francesco Marcolini da Forli, 1537. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architettori. Vol. 3, Florence: Giunti, 1568. Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston du C. De Vere. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Ingrid D. Rowland. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Secondary Sources Allies, Bob. “Palazzo del Te: Order, Orthodoxy and the Orders.” The Architectural Review 173, no. 1036 (1983): 59–65. Atkinson, Niall. The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. Bailey, Marlon M. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Bazzotti, Ugo. “Disegni per argenterie.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 454–65. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Bazzotti, Ugo. Palazzo Te a Mantova. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2012. Bazzotti, Ugo. “Osservazioni sul cantiere giuliesco di Palazzo Te.” In Federico II Gonzaga e le arti, edited by Francesca Mattei, 65–108. Rome: Bulzoni, 2016. Belluzzi, Amedeo. Il Palazzo Te a Mantova. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1998. Belluzzi, Amedeo, and Walter Capezzali. Il palazzo dei lucidi inganni. Palazzo Te a Mantova. Florence: Centro di Architettura Ouroboros, 1976. Belluzzi, Amedeo, and Kurt W. Forster. “Giulio Romano architetto alla corte dei Gonzaga.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 177–225. Milan: Electa, 1989.

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Berger, Harry, Jr. The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Biow, Douglas. On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Reprint 2002. Brown, Patricia Fortini. Private Lives in Renaissance Venice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Burns, Howard. ““Quelle cose antique et moderne belle de Roma”: Giulio Romano, il teatro, l’antico.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 227–43. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Burroughs, Charles. The Italian Renaissance Palace Facade: Structures of Authority, Surfaces of Sense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Burshatin, Israel. “Interrogating Hermaphroditism in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” In Hispanisms and Homosexualities, edited by Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519–31. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” New York: Routledge, 1993. Campbell, Erin J., Stephanie R. Miller, and Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, eds. The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, 1400–1700. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Campbell, Stephen J. The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Carabell, Paula. “Breaking the Frame: Transgression and Transformation in Giulio Romano’s Sala dei Giganti.” Artibus et Historiae 18, no. 36 (1997): 87–100. Carpeggiani, Paolo. “La fortuna critica di Giulio Romano architetto.” In Studi su Giulio Romano, 13–33. S. Benedetto Po, 1975. Carpi, Piera. “Giulio Romano ai servigi di Federico II Gonzaga (con nuovi documenti tratti dalll’Archivio Gonzaga, 1524–1540).” Atti e Memorie della R. Accademia Virgiliana 11–13 (1920): 35–151. Cassidy-Welch, Megan. Monastic Spaces and Their Meanings: Thirteenth-Century English Cistercian Monasteries. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Cassidy-Welch, Megan. “Space and Place in Medieval Contexts.” Parergon 27, no. 2 (2010): 1–12. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Code, Lorraine, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Coffin, David R. The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1979. Crang, Mike, and Nigel Thrift, eds. Thinking Space. New York: Routledge, 2000. Davis, Robert C. “The Geography of Gender in the Renaissance.” In Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis, 19–38. New York: Longman, 1998. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Dempsey, Charles. Inventing the Renaissance Putto. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Dunlop, Anne. Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Eck, Caroline van. Art, Agency and Living Presence: From the Animated Image to the Excessive Object. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2015. Fasola, Giusta Nicco. “Giulio Romano e il Manierismo.” Commentari 11 (1960): 60–73. Finucci, Valeria. The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Fiore, Francesco Paolo. “The Trattati on Architecture by Francesco di Giorgio.” In Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Architectural Treatise, edited by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, 66–85. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

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Fiorillo, Johann Dominik. Geschichte der Mahlerei in Rom. Göttingen: Röwer, 1798. Flather, Amanda. Gender and Space in Early Modern England. Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2007. Forster, Kurt W., and Richard J. Tuttle. “The Palazzo Te.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 30, no. 4 (1971): 267–93. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Allen Lane, 1977. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2nd ed. New York: Crossroads, 1989. Garrard, Mary. Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Gertsman, Elina. Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. Girouard, Mark. Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Gledhill, Christine. “Pleasurable Negotiations.” In Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, edited by Deidre Pribram, 64–89. London: Verso, 1988. Goffen, Rona. “Lotto’s Lucretia.” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 742–81. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I. Der Palazzo del Te”. Jarbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 8 (1934): 79–104. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. II. Versuch einer Deutung.” Jarbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 9 (1935): 121–50. Gombrich, Ernst H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. New York: Pantheon Books, 1960. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Il palazzo del Te: Riflessioni su mezzo secolo di fortuna critica: 1932–1982.” Quaderni di Palazzo Te 1 (1984): 17–21. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Architecture and Rhetoric in Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del Te”. In New Light on Old Masters, 161–70. London: Phaidon, 1986. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Hartt, Frederick. Giulio Romano. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Hickson, Sally. “More Than Meets the Eye: Giulio Romano, Federico II Gonzaga, and the Triumph of Trompel’oeil at the Palazzo del Te in Mantua.” In Disguise, Deception, Trompe-l’oeil, edited by Leslie Boldt-Irons, Corrado Federici and Ernesto Virgulti, 41–59. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009. Hickson, Sally. Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua: Matrons, Mystics and Monasteries. Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. Hiller, Diana. Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Hills, Helen, ed. Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Hills, Helen. Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hoffmann, Volker. “Giulios Ironie. Eine Bemerkung zum Palazzo del Tè in Mantua.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43 (1999): 543–58. Holman, Beth L. “Giulio Romano: Designs for Court Living.” In Disegno: Italian Renaissance Designs for the Decorative Arts, edited by Beth L. Holman, 94–98. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1997. Exhibition catalogue. Howard, Deborah, and Laura Moretti. Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.

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Jones, Amelia. “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The Uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History.” In Art and Thought, edited by Dana Arnold and Margaret Iversen, 71–90. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Jones, Ann R. “Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Women’s Lyric.” In The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in the History of Sexuality, edited by Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. London: Methuen, 1987. Jones, Ann R. The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, 137–67. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956. Kuchta, David. The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Lapraik Guest, Clare. The Understanding of Ornament in the Italian Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Lindow, James R. The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Lowic, Lawrence. “The Meaning and Significance of the Human Analogy in Francesco di Giorgio’s Trattato.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983): 360–70. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005. Mathews, Thomas. The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971. Mattei, Francesca, ed. Federico II Gonzaga e le arti. Rome: Bulzoni, 2016. McIver, Katherine. Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580: Negotiating Power. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. New York: Humanities Press, 1962. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Intertwining – The Chiasm.” Translated by Alphonso Lingis. In Visible and Invisible, edited by Claude Lefort, 130–55. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Oberhuber, Konrad. “Palazzo Te: L’apparato decorativo.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 336– 79. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Periti, Giancarla. In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Pevsner, Nikolaus. The Architecture of Mannerism. London: Routledge, 1946. Rampley, Matthew. “Art History and Cultural Difference: Alfred Gell’s Anthropology of Art.” Art History 28, no. 4 (2005): 524–51. Randolph, Adrian W.B. Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Rebhorn, Wayne A. Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978. Reiss, Sheryl E., and David G. Wilkins, eds. Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001. Romaniello, Matthew P., and Charles Lipp, eds. Contested Spaces of Nobility in Early Modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Rykwert, Joseph. The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. San Juan, Rose Marie. “The Court Lady’s Dilemma: Isabella d’Este and Art Collecting in the Renaissance.” Oxford Art Journal 14, no. 1 (1991): 67–78.

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Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Shearman, John. “Giulio Romano, tradizione, licenze, artifici.” Bollettino del Centro Internazionale di Studi d’Architettura A. Palladio IX (1967): 354–68. Shearman, John. Mannerism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Shearman, John. Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Springer, Carolyn. Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Starn, Randolph, and Loren W. Partridge. Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300–1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Stearns, Peter. “Social History and Spatial Scope.” Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (2006): 612–13. Stratford, Helen. “Unpleasant Matters.” In Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, edited by Katie Lloyd Thomas, 209–24. London: Routledge, 2007. Tafuri, Manfredo. “Giulio Romano: linguaggio, mentalità, committenti.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 15–63. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Taylor, Valerie. “From Sketchbook to Princely Table: Giulio Romano’s Silverware Designs.” In Giulio Romano e l’arte del Cinquecentro, edited by Ugo Bazzotti, 137–53. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2014. Thomas, Anabel. Art and Piety in Female Religious Communities in Renaissance Italy: Iconography, Space, and Religious Woman’s Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Tronzo, William. “The Medieval Object-Enigma, and the Problem of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo.” Word and Image 9, no. 3 (1993): 197–228. Verheyen, Egon. “Die Sala di Ovidio im Palazzo Te.” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 12 (1969): 161–70. Verheyen, Egon. “Die Malereien in der Sala di Psiche des Palazzo del Te.” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 14 (1972): 33–68. Verheyen, Egon. “The Palazzo del Te: In Defense of Jacopo Strada.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31 (1972): 133–37. Verheyen, Egon. The Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Images of Love and Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Waddy, Patricia. Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Webb, Jennifer D. “All is not fun and games: conversation, play, and surveillance at the Montefeltro court in Urbino.” Renaissance Studies 26, no. 3 (2011): 417–40. Weisner, Merri E., ed. Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Whigham, Frank. “Interpretation at Court: Courtesy and the Performer-Audience Dialectic.” New Literary History 14, no. 3 (1983): 623–39. Wigley, Mark. “Untitled: The Housing of Gender.” In Sexuality and Space, edited by Beatriz Colomina, 327–89. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Warburg Institute, 1949. Young, Iris Marion. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality.” Human Studies 3, no. 2 (1980): 137–56. Young, Iris Marion. On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Plate 1: Camera di Psiche, detail of the east wall, Jupiter and Olympia, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

  

Plate 2: Camera delle Aquile, ceiling vault, 1527–28. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 3: Camera di Psiche, west wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 4: Camera di Psiche, east wall, 1526–1528. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 5: Sala dei Cavalli, east and south walls, 1526–27. Fresco with gilt wood ceiling. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 6: Loggia di Davide, view looking south, after 1530. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 7: Sala dei Giganti, ceiling vault, 1530–32. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 8: Perino del Vaga, Sala dei Giganti, Fall of the Giants, 1530–32. Villa Doria, Genoa. Fresco. © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, NY.

Plate 9: Sala dei Giganti, north wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Plate 10: Loggia delle Muse, 1526–28. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

2. Spaces of Ceremony Abstract: This chapter analyzes the banquets, dances, and other activities arranged at the Palazzo Te by Federico II Gonzaga for the visit of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. The ceremonial use of the palace demonstrates the ways in which bodies, identities, and spaces intersected. Movements of male dancers in the Sala dei Cavalli echoed the jumps and kicks of Federico’s famed horses, some of which appeared on the walls around them. Through their corporeal actions the men performed an active, robust masculinity, while female dancers enacted docile femininity through more measured steps. Conversely, this chapter also investigates the ways in which the complex images and spaces of the palace could incite performances of female sexual agency and masculine inaction. Keywords: Banquet, Ceremony, Conversation, Dance, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

In the spring of 1530 the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Habsburg visited Mantua as part of his tour of Italy. He was greeted with all the pageantry that Federico II Gonzaga could muster: thousands of marching soldiers and mounted knights in rich costumes, booming artillery salvos, the fanfare of tambourines and horns, the welcoming shouts of the Mantuan populace, and a day of entertainments at Federico’s palatial retreat on the Isola del Te. The banquets, dancing, and conversations that occurred at the Palazzo Te encouraged visitors to dynamically interact with the building in ways that produced gendered identities. Charles’ visit therefore provides a lens through which we can examine intersections between the staging of space and the performance of gender. Charles V arrived in Mantua on 25 March 1530, a little more than month after his coronation by Pope Clement VII in Bologna. His visit cemented the political alliance between the Holy Roman Empire and Mantua, which had recently been strengthened when Federico allowed imperial troops to march freely through his territory on their way to Rome in 1527. In exchange for his loyalty, Charles V elevated Federico to the status of Duke on 8 April 1530, a long-awaited political and social triumph for the Gonzaga dynasty.1 For Federico the imperial visit was not only an occasion to celebrate rising Gonzaga fortunes, but also a representation of magnificence and splendor that would impress his new status upon visiting dignitaries, as well as nobles within his own court. 1

Leonardo Mazzoldi and Mario Bendiscioli, Mantova: la storia, 286–301.

Maurer, Maria F., Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462985537/ch02

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To welcome the Emperor Federico and Giulio Romano staged a triumphal entry, an ephemeral production that depicted Charles V as the ideal emperor and Federico II as the model host and vassal. In contrast, the Palazzo Te has often been understood as cementing a lasting image of Federico as the ideal prince.2 The spaces of the palace do reflect the values that Baldassarre Castiglione and other members of court society attached to elite masculinity: prudence, chivalry, physical prowess, intellectual wit, and a noble lineage. Yet, during the Emperor’s visit, the Palazzo Te was still under construction and its structures were still in the midst of production. The spaces of the palace were constituted through the practices and performances of inhabitants. Beholders’ interactions with one another and with the spaces of the Palazzo Te also produced ideas of gender. As we will see, Charles V showcased his wit and virility in his appreciation of the Camera di Psiche, but as he demonstrated his virtues he also constructed them. The palace acted on its visitors and shaped their displays of masculinity and femininity. On the one hand, this performative aspect of the Palazzo Te reinforced normative gender roles with images and spaces that exhorted visitors to ‘do their gender right’.3 Charles V, Federico II, and their courtiers certainly wanted to be perceived as embodying the masculine ideal. However, I also want to suggest that the Palazzo Te’s dynamic spaces and multi-layered images troubled stable gender binaries, and thus allowed for alternative performances. The primary documentary source for the performances of Federico, Charles, and their courtiers is the Cronaca del soggiorno di Carlo V in Italia. The manuscript records the Emperor’s progress through Italy, providing an account of his activities from his arrival in Genoa to his departure from Gonzaga territory.4 While the Cronaca recounts Charles’s visits to the Gonzaga palace at Marmirolo, his attendance of mass at various Mantuan churches and monasteries, and his numerous hunting expeditions, the visit to the Palazzo Te is second in length and importance only to the triumphal entry staged upon the Emperor’s arrival in Mantua. The detail with which the chronicle describes the events at the Palazzo Te suggests that the author was present for most if not all of the activities arranged there.

Masquerades and Façades On 1 April Federico II and his guests rode toward the Palazzo Te from the city center, passing through the Porta Pusterla, which defined the edges of Renaissance Mantua, and onto the Isola del Te. The gardens and surrounding fields on the island must have presented immense open spaces after the crowded streets of the city (Fig. 1). The 2 See especially Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te. 3 Butler, Gender Trouble, 178. 4 Romano, Cronaca. Due to the Cronaca’s focus on Federico II and Mantua, the courtier Luigi Gonzaga of Borgoforte is generally recognized as the author of the unsigned manuscript.

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Fig. 9: Northern exterior façade, detail, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

palace sat near the edge of the island, its façade dazzling white and magnified by its reflection in the water. Contrasting visual elements communicated diverse courtly messages. Rusticated portals that bristled outward suggested robust strength and the use of the Doric order likewise alluded to the sturdy manliness of the Gonzaga family, while the ashlar masonry of the façade and the chivalrous devices in the metopes offered a more refined vision of the dynasty. Moreover, the façade of the Palazzo Te is just that, a stucco veneer that masquerades as marble and disguises the brick and mortar heart of the building (Fig. 9). The variety of the façade and the wit necessary to appreciate it are visual expressions of sprezzatura.5 The façade therefore conveyed the superior nonchalance of Federico II and incited displays of courtly virtue from his visitors. It also elicited the visitor’s participation: only a display of Classical learning and courtly sophistication could penetrate the layers of illusion, and only a courtier secure enough in his knowledge to walk up and touch the façade could unmask its brick core. Through his performance of these values a visitor such as Charles V demonstrated his adherence to masculine gender norms while also reproducing and reinforcing those practices. The façade therefore set the tone for the Emperor’s visit in that it spoke to the ideal princely qualities of the Gonzaga dynasty while also eliciting a performance of those qualities from its visitors. As he moved through the palace Charles V encountered spaces which likewise depicted and provoked displays of ideal masculinity. The 5

Tafuri, “Linguaggio, mentalità, committenti,” 20–40.

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events organized to entertain the Emperor in 1530 were situated within the spaces of the palace, thereby forging a connection between space and performance that would shape the form and function of the Palazzo Te for the next century. The chronicle of the Emperor’s sojourn at the Palazzo Te highlights the interconnectedness of the building and the activities that occurred within it. Entertainments arranged for the Emperor and his entourage were calculated to present the Gonzaga dynasty as princes whose vigor, wit, and virtue gave them the right to rule Mantua as dukes. At the same time, the Gonzaga also arranged events and spaces to coincide in ways that encouraged their guests to dynamically interact with the building in ways that produced and reinscribed ideal gender roles.

Dining on Desire After a brief circuit of the palace Charles V, Federico, and other Italian nobles adjourned to the Camera di Psiche to dine under a ceiling depicting the travails of Psyche and amidst frescoes of mythological banqueters and amorous gods. Guests were served ‘an abundance of diverse dishes’ in the midst of lush landscapes, sumptuous feasts, and images of erotic encounters.6 The location of the banquet in a new palace and the profusion of food and drink furnished for hundreds of guests were overt displays of Federico II’s splendor and magnificence.7 Yet, the Cronaca also tells us that after the meal was finished Charles V remained in the Camera di Psiche ‘for some time, engaged in various and diverse conversations’ with Federico II, Alfonso I d’Este, and other Italian princes.8 Given the close associations between eating, conversation, and mythological imagery it seems likely that the diners spent some time talking about the room and its decoration.9 In the context of the Renaissance dining practices, the complicated spatial arrangements of the Camera di Psiche and arcane textual sources of many of the frescoes provoked displays of wit and intellect and facilitated masculine homosocial bonding. The Renaissance banquet was grand theater with props such as ornamented tableware and perfumed dishes, an elaborate stage in the form of the Camera di Psiche, and prescribed roles for the host and his guests.10 The formal rituals of dining established hierarchical relationships amongst participants, and their adherence to the etiquette of the banquet also allowed them to demonstrate masculine self-control.11 6 ‘[T]anta abbondantia di robba di diversi sorti’. Romano, Cronaca, 266. 7 Rupert Shepherd, “A practical definition of magnificence,” 52–58; Lindow, Renaissance Palace in Florence. 8 ‘Dopo sendo stato sua M.tà alquanto in vari et diversi ragionamenti con il S.r Marchese [Federico II], et con il S.r Duca di Ferrara [Alfonso I d’Este] et col Principe di Besignano [Pietro Antonio Sanseverino], March. dil Guasto [Alfonso d’Avalos] et molti altri S.ri et Principi ragionando di varie cose’. Romano, Cronaca, 263. 9 John L. Varriano, Tastes and Temptations, 175–178. 10 Ken Albala, The Banquet. 11 Sharon Wells, “Manners Maketh the Man,” 67–81.

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Fig. 10: Ippolito Andreasi, Plan of the Palazzo Te, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 107.8 x 82.3 cm, inv.10937. © Museum Kunstpalast – ARTOTHEK. Tinello located on lower right, north of current visitor’s entrance; Gran loggia located top center on the eastern side of the palace.

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Diners were seated according to social station, and rank was indicated by proximity to the guest of honor.12 At the Palazzo Te the Emperor and the highest ranked nobles were seated in the Camera di Psiche, other members of the Emperor’s entourage were seated in the Camera dei Venti and surrounding rooms, and those of the lowest station were exiled to the tinello, a separate dining chamber located some distance from the Camera di Psiche that was designed to seat those of inferior rank (Fig. 10).13 Humanist treatises and conduct manuals stressed the importance of conversation during formal dining rituals, as it provided entertainment, established relationships between the participants, and provided intellectual rigor to what might else be termed a sinful indulgence of the senses. The banquet was ‘a microcosm of good society’, a moment when social and gender relationships were constructed through seating arrangements which separated persons by rank and sex, and when congenial conversation established civility amongst the participants.14 The feast served at the Palazzo Te allows us to consider the interconnected roles of sensually appealing space, dining, and gender. Images of the delights of food and flesh that Giulio and his assistants painted in the Camera di Psiche participated in a larger trend in early sixteenth-century art that focused on the secular and sensual aspects of dining. Like the scenes in the Camera di Psiche, Bartolomeo di Giovanni’s Wedding of Peleus and Thetis (c. 1490) and Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (1514) depict open air banquets attended not by the saints and apostles common in earlier Medieval and Renaissance images, but by creatures from ancient Greek and Roman mythology.15 It also seems to have been relatively common to decorate Renaissance dining chambers with images of banquets. Raphael’s frescoes in the Loggia of Psyche at the Villa Farnesina (Fig. 34) and Giulio’s Camera di Psiche are well-known examples, but in 1516 several artists decorated a chamber at Belriguardo with images of diners, and the banqueting frescoes at the Castello di Malpaga in Bergamo were executed in the 1520s.16 In part, these dining frescoes seem to be a secular extension of the practice of depicting the Last Supper in monastic refectories with similar expectations that the images would incite and shape behaviors.17 Monastic imagery communicated ideas of authority, hospitality, sacrality, and even denial, but courtly dining frescoes are set amongst lush landscapes or ornately decorated interiors that emphasize abundance and magnificence. The fantastical dinner guests painted by Giulio and his assistants eat, drink, converse, and frolic across the walls, reflecting the activities of visitors as well as encouraging them to join in the festivities. 12 Roy C. Strong, Feast, 176. 13 For seating arrangements at the Palazzo Te, see Romano, Cronaca, 265–266. 14 Strong, Feast, 157. 15 Ibid., 158–159. 16 For the frescoes at Belriguardo, see ASMo, Camera Ducale, Munizioni e Fabbriche, b. 58, f. 51v-52r. See also Andrea Marchesi, Delizie d’archivio, 1, 1.30. For the frescoes at the Castello Malpaga, which are attributed to Marcello Fogolino, see Franco Mazzini, I pittori bergamaschi 2, 229–239. 17 Hiller, Gendered Perceptions, 113–176.

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Fig. 11: Camera di Psiche, ceiling vault, 1526–28. Fresco and gilt wood ceiling. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

In contrast to the calm decoration of the Sala dei Cavalli or the academic intricacies of the Camera dei Venti, in the Camera di Psiche Giulio Romano depicted a profusion of actions and images using gold, pink, and flesh tones to create a spectacle of opulence and indulgence. The story of Cupid and Psyche unfolds in the ceiling frescoes (Fig. 11), while the south and west walls are filled with depictions of mythic diners set amidst an Arcadian landscape (Fig. 12 and Pl. 3). The north and east walls contain frescoes of the amorous relationships of gods and mortals, lending the Camera di Psiche a distinctly more sensual air than any of the other rooms in the palace (Fig. 13 and Pl. 4). Banqueting scenes dissolve into deep landscapes, images of erotic encounters appear to hang on the wall as framed paintings, and the ceiling frescoes are rendered di sotto in sù. The Camera di Psiche therefore offers multiple viewpoints and multiple ways of organizing pictorial space, allowing inhabitants to visually explore the vistas of the wall frescoes and marvel at the foreshortened bravura of the ceiling decoration. The Camera di Psiche is also physically insistent: frescoed scenes circle the ceiling, meaning that beholders must move throughout the room in order to see and engage with all of them.

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In addition to their visual complexity, the frescoes of the Camera di Psiche are intellectually challenging. If the physical structure of the room calls upon the courtier to enact visual intelligence, the narrative relationships in the room ask courtiers to display their classical education and wit. The ceiling frescoes depict the story of Cupid and Psyche as related in the Golden Ass, written in the second century CE by Lucius Apuleius. Both Giulio and his audience would have been familiar with the tale, for it was in vogue at the Italian courts, where it appeared in art and literature.18 The banqueting frescoes on the south and west walls have been connected to Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), in which two lovers are brought to the Isle of Venus by Cupid and Psyche.19 Colonna’s book also served as a textual and visual source for the frescoes of Mars and Venus at the Bath and Mars Chasing Adonis, both located on the north wall (Fig. 13).20 The scenes of mythological lovers on the south and east walls are based on passages in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, as well as his Metamorphoses and Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (Fig. 12 and Pl. 4). Moreover, James Grantham Turner has recently illuminated the visual and iconographic connections between the figures in the Camera di Psiche and lost façade frescoes executed by Baldassare Peruzzi at the Villa Chigi.21 Finally, a Latin inscription that runs around the room lists Federico’s titles and proclaims that he ‘ordered this place built for virtuous leisure after work to restore rest and quiet’.22 The inscription’s explicit contrasting of relaxation and labor refers to the active and contemplative lifestyles expected from the ideal prince.23 The numerous textual and visual sources of the Camera di Psiche have spawned several attempts to discern an overarching iconographic program for the room: a moralizing commentary on the theme of love and lust; an allusion to Federico’s relationship with his mistress, Isabella Boschetti; or an illustration of the motto amor vincit omnia.24 None of these interpretations are completely satisfying. A purely iconographic reading of the room reduces the frescoes to mere textual illustration.25 18 Visual references include a Hall of Cupid and Psyche at the Este palace of Belriguardo, several fifteenthcentury Tuscan cassoni, and the Loggia of Psyche at the Villa Chigi. Giulio participated in the latter when he was a member of Raphael’s workshop. Werner L. Gundersheimer, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole d’Este; Hubertus Gunther, “Amor und Psyche;” Sonia Cavicchioli, Le metamorfosi di Psiche. In addition to Apuleis’s narrative and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (discussed below), Gonzaga courtiers would also have been familiar with Niccolò da Correggio’s 1491 poem, Psiche, dedicated to Isabella d’Este. Ugo de Maria, La favola di Amore e Psiche; Julia Haig Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass. 19 Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te, 25–26. 20 Ernst H. Gombrich, “Hypnerotomachiana,” 124–125. 21 Eros Visible, 129–133. 22 FEDERICUS GONZAGA II MAR. V MAN. ET REIP. FLOR. CAPITANVS GENERALIS HONESTO OCIO POST LABORES AD REPARANDAM VIRT. QUIETI COSTRVI MANDAVIT 23 Brian Vickers, “Leisure and idleness I;” “Leisure and idleness II.” 24 Respectively, Hartt, Giulio Romano; Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te; Rodolfo Signorini, La Fabella di Psiche. 25 For a defense of iconography as a method of interpretation, see Anthony Colantuono, Renaissance Science of Procreation, 12–23.

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Fig. 12: Camera di Psiche, south wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

It smooths over the narrative inconsistencies in the images, overlooks the ways in which they communicate on a visual and physical level, and often ignores the role of beholders in making meaning. The ceiling frescoes are enclosed in a painted and gilded wooden armature that frames the scenes and gives a semblance of narrative arrangement to the paintings. The wooden framework of the ceiling provides a sense of order that is, in fact, lacking. On the west wall, the three lunette frescoes are out of sequence: the scene of Psyche at the River Styx separates two later narrative moments depicting Psyche in the underworld and Cupid’s return to Psyche (Pl. 3). Not only are the frescoes narratively disordered, but Giulio has included images that are not part of Apuleius’ text. On the ceiling Giulio inserted a fresco of a lascivious satyr spying upon a sleeping Psyche in a wooded landscape (Fig. 11, lower right octagon). The fresco draws upon the iconography of a nymph spied upon by a satyr, but no such scene is mentioned in any narrative rendition of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.26 Explanations for the disarray 26 D’Arco believed that the octagon depicted Psyche Comforted by Pan, which although greatly out of narrative order, was generally accepted until Signorini proposed an identification with a satyr spying on a nymph from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Carlo D’Arco, Istoria, 32; Rodolfo Signorini, “Two Mantuan fantasies,” 200.

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of the frescoes range from Giulio’s misinterpretation of the iconographic program to his desire to create a visual labyrinth on the ceiling.27 Yet, as Marilyn Lavin demonstrated in her investigation of Italian churches, it was common for artists to overlook narrative and chronological order in favor of compositional unity and dramatic effect.28 There is no clear beginning to the sequence in the Camera di Psiche, and interpretations may have varied depending upon one’s seat at the table, or where one chose to look first. Moreover, the frescoes do not share a common ground line, but are arrayed around the central scene of the couple’s triumphant marriage. Visitors must walk around the room, craning their necks and twisting their bodies in order to properly see each scene. Meaning was made through inhabitants’ experiences of the space. The participants in Federico’s banquet physically and intellectually engaged with the frescoes in order to demonstrate their Classical learning and good taste. The interactive decoration of the Camera di Psiche required visitors’ participation in unraveling meaning and enacting scenes of indulgent feasting and vigorous passion depicted around them. The complex iconographic scheme of the room and the many Classical and Renaissance texts upon which the frescoes relied elicited the audience’s visual, corporeal, and vocal participation in piecing together different elements of the story, relating them to known literary sources, and debating possible relationships between the images. Classical and Renaissance treatises on dining acknowledged and praised the conviviality of the banquet, and argued that conversation transformed the diners’ physical delight in the meal into intellectual and moral satisfaction. In his Laws Plato describes the banquet as a means of ordering society, while Plutarch portrayed the banquet as a fundamental social good which allowed men to converse and commune with one another.29 The Mantuan humanist Bartolomeo Sachi, known as Platina, celebrated the virtuous pleasures of dining in his De honesta voluptate et valetudine (c. 1465). In contrast to a religious tradition that associated the sensual pleasures of the meal with gluttony, Platina argued that the healthfulness of the food legitimized the diner’s physical and emotional enjoyment.30 For Platina good conversation and an aesthetically pleasing table were as important to the virtuous appreciation of the meal as the food, and he regarded conversation as an aid to digestion. He celebrated the indulgence of the senses by praising the sights, smells, tastes, and textures of the banquet. When coupled with good conversation, appetizing dishes, and visually pleasing dining atmosphere, the physical delights of eating were honorable because 27 Respectively, Verheyen, “Die Malereien in der Sala di Psiche des Palazzo del Te,” 47–48; Daniel Arasse, “Giulio Romano e il labirinto di Psiche.” Arasse’s argument is compelling, but courtiers would have needed paper and pen to keep track of the route he outlines. 28 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative. 29 Strong, Feast, 158. 30 Bartolomeo Sacchi, De honesta, 56, 141.

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they were healthful.31 The diners in the Camera di Psiche were physically stimulated and pleased by the rich foods and sensual imagery, but the banquet was also an activity made virtuous by an abundance of healthy foods and intellectual discourse. The Renaissance banquet was thus a method for ordering society and controlling the appetite. It was also a celebration of excess that could produce, or at least accommodate, transgressive behavior.32 Renaissance writers and poets from Teofilo Folengo and Rabelais to Pietro Aretino, Annibale Caro, and Francesco Berni celebrated the physical and sexual delights of eating. Moreover, they often did so using playful or even vulgar literary styles, such as the macaronic Latin of Folengo, the coarse language of Rabelais and Aretino, and the punning of Caro or Berni.33 Painters like Raphael, Bronzino, and Vincenzo Campi and maiolica artists in Deruta and Faenza similarly played upon associations between the eroticized body and various food stuffs. In art and literature cucumbers and parsnips were euphemisms for the penis, the male behind was often portrayed as a peach, and overripe and bursting melons or pomegranates were used to allude to the vagina.34 Dining was an affair of the senses, and sexual appetite was believed to be closely related to the appetite for food.35 On one level, the references to various types of sexual intercourse in Renaissance art and literature express the transgressive and non-normative side of desire that is found and even encouraged in the frescoes of the Camera di Psiche. Yet, in testing and even crossing boundaries, the frescoes only establish the lines more clearly.36 Images of indulgent diners and sexual arousal may have granted Federico and his guests some liberty in their social and sexual behavior, but in delineating transgressive acts the room also constituted normative behaviors more firmly. Conversations which occurred between Charles V, Federico, and the other noblemen displayed their masculine reason and intellect, but the uninhibited and sexualized atmosphere of the Camera di Psiche also facilitated homosocial bonding in ways that constructed and reinforced Renaissance gender roles. On the west wall satyrs prepare for a rustic banquet, yet Giulio indicates that they desire not only the food and wine being set before them, but the semi-nude nymphs at whom they gaze with lascivious expressions and obvious erections. On the north and east walls Giulio Romano depicted scenes of mythological lovers: Mars and Venus bathe together, Bacchus lounges with Ariadne, Mars pursues Adonis after he discovers the huntsman with Venus, Jupiter seduces Olympia, Pasiphae dons a bovine disguise to mate with the bull, and Polyphemus jealously watches Galatea and Acis.

31 Ibid., 109, 19. 32 Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words, 97–106. 33 Ibid., 199–227; Linda Wolk-Simon, “Rapture to the Greedy Eyes,” 49–52. 34 Simons, Sex of Men, 246–253. 35 Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance, 143–151. 36 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger.

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Fig. 13: Camera di Psiche, north wall, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

The frescoes of Venus and Mars that dominate the north wall weave together visual and textual sources in order to create associations between love, sexual pleasure, and jealousy (Fig. 13). To the left of the window, Venus and Mars enjoy a bath, assisted by Cupid and his winged followers. The scene echoes Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, in which Mars throws off his armor to join Venus in a bath where they ‘embraced, not with human blandishments and caresses, but knotting themselves together with divine gestures and passion’.37 Although Giulio’s mythological bathers do not embrace, the figures of Ariadne and Bacchus in the fresco just over the window are intertwined in a way that echoes Colonna’s sensual description. To the right of the window, in another story related by Colonna, Mars chases Adonis from Venus’ chamber. When the goddess attempts to curb Mars’ wrath, she steps on a rose thorn, drawing blood.38 The two scenes do not appear to follow a coherent 37 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 368. Gombrich suggested that the male figure was Adonis, not Mars. Gombrich, “Hypnerotomachiana,” 125. If one is seeking narrative logic his argument makes sense, yet the bathing figure has divested himself of sword, armor, and shoes that appear similar to those worn by Mars in the neighboring fresco. 38 Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 372.

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narrative sequence, but they are adjacent to one another in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and the bathing scene closely resembles a woodcut illustration of Adonis’ tomb from the same text. To well-educated and savvy visitors, the narrative and visual connections between the frescoes, as well as their placement on the same wall would have encouraged seeing them as pendant scenes. On a narrative level they might be read as a condensed saga of Mars’ relationship with Venus, or a commentary on the fidelity of women. Visually, the contrast between poised stillness at the bath and swift activity as Mars chases his rival echoes the contemplative and active lifestyles referenced in the room’s inscription. The appearance of suspended motion in the bathing scene is heightened by Mars’ outstretched right hand, clearly appropriated from Michelangelo’s Sistine Adam, who likewise lacks the spark of liveliness. In contrast, the figure of Adonis in the neighboring fresco is based upon Raphael’s Joseph Fleeing Potiphar’s Wife in the Vatican Loggia.39 The addition of a third figure as well as the interfering spiritello adds to the tumult of the scene, while the substitution of Adonis for Joseph elicits sympathy for the human hunter rather than the angry god. Adonis’ bare bottom also suggests an element of humor, or perhaps derision, aimed at the figure. Rather than relating a coherent narrative or allegorical meaning, the frescoes of Venus and Mars present tantalizing views of nude bodies that seduce the eye even as they question the relative merits of contemplation and action. In contrast to the frescoes of Mars and Venus, wherein the figures are represented in illusionistic spaces, Giulio portrayed Bacchus and Ariadne, Jupiter and Olympia, and Pasiphae and the Bull as framed paintings that hang over each of the windows (Fig. 13 and Pl. 4). In other scenes in the room the walls are painted away, but here the fictive frames recall the physicality of the wall as a structure necessary to support the paintings. The vast panoramas of the banqueting scenes are absent and the framed lovers are constrained within shallow spaces against dark or gold backgrounds, a visual device which heightens the eroticism of the scenes. The lovers are pushed close to the picture plane, their forms starkly sculptural against the flatness of the backgrounds. In each scene the female figure breaks the frame of the painting to enter the physical space of the room: the hem of Ariadne’s dress drapes over the frame and she leans on a basket that appears to hang over the edge of the painting; Olympia grasps the frame in the midst of her sexual encounter with Jupiter (Pl. 1); and the tail of Pasiphae’s cow costume whips out of the painting to arc across the frame (Fig. 17). The frames separate the lovers from the other figures in the room, while suggesting a narrative or iconographic unity that is demonstrably absent.40 The figures reach over and 39 Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.30, 1.128. 40 Attempts to construct a unified iconography between the three scenes have been largely unsuccessful. Scholars have generally argued that they are a commentary on the nature of love and lust, as well as a possible biographical allusion to Federico’s affair with Isabella Boschetti. D’Arco, Istoria, 34–35; Hartt, Giulio Romano,.1.136; Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te, 26; Oberhuber, “L’apparato decorativo,” 345.

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around the painted boundary, as if they could descend from the wall into the room. Coupled with the overt eroticism of the images, their palpable physicality creates a space which heightens and celebrates the senses. Federico II, Charles V, and their dining companions were invited to participate in this same freedom from restraint, and to enjoy the physical pleasures offered to them at the Palazzo Te. Copious food and wine coupled with eroticized female bodies created an atmosphere in which the male diners at the afternoon banquet might engage in intellectual discourse as well as bawdy conversation. The decoration of the Camera di Psiche provoked discussion and forged relationships between Federico and his guests as they demonstrated wit and intellect, and those bonds were homosocial and sexualized.41 The Camera di Psiche gives form to the relationship between food, wine, indulgence, and sexuality. On the southern wall Bacchus and his fellow deities drink and celebrate around a grand Renaissance credenza, effectively eliding consumption with concupiscence (Fig. 12). On the neighboring west wall ithyphallic satyrs help nymphs prepare a rustic banquet (Pl. 3). The mingling of lusty gazes, nude flesh, and food links the beholder’s desire for sexual and nutritional sustenance. The nude and semi-nude forms of nymphs, goddesses, and other mythological women are represented at every turn, often with their bodies turned outward for the visual delectation of the beholder, as in the form of Olympia on the east wall. If Jacopo Sansovino’s Venus was installed in the room, then it certainly would have contributed to the sensual atmosphere by causing the ‘libidinous thoughts’ that Pietro Aretino promised it would inspire.42 The abundance of food, wine, and eroticized female bodies created a sensual atmosphere in which intellectual discourse, bawdy jokes, and light-hearted amusement enabled homosocial bonding. While heterosexual relationships are prominently pictured, they are not the only avenue for eroticized viewing in the Camera di Psiche. Apollo, Bacchus, and Cupid sit, lean and recline, providing a series of poses that offer tantalizing visions of nude male flesh (Fig. 12). Across the room a well-muscled Mars steps into the bath, aided by a shapely young Cupid (Fig. 13). The frescoes represent heterosexual relationships, but they also offered Federico and his male guests alluring sights of sexualized 41 Sedgwick, Between Men. For homosocial bonding at the Palazzo Te, see Maria F. Maurer, “A love that burns,” 370–388. 42 ‘Credo che messer Iacopo Sansovino rarissio vi ornarà la camera d’una Venere sì vera e sì viva che empie di libidine il pensiero di ciascuno che la mira’. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.230–231. Since Gombrich, art historians have assumed that Aretino’s letter refers to the Camera di Psiche and that Sansovino’s sculpture was completed and installed there. Gombrich, “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I,” 95; Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.140. However, Aretino’s letter uses the future tense (ornarà), which seems to indicate that he is recommending Sansovino for work rather than describing work that is complete. The inventory of the Palazzo Te completed after Federico’s death in 1540 does not list any sculpture. Daniela Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 66–69. For the relationship of the statue, or at least Aretino’s characterization of it, to the legend of the Cnidian Venus, and thus the ability of art to arouse corporeal responses, see Turner, Eros Visible, 242–252.

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young men. In the Camera di Psiche eroticized male and female bodies combined with the indulgences of the banquet to facilitate masculine homosocial bonding. The images further encouraged a performance of normative masculinity by producing desire while also suggesting that noblemen could ultimately restrain and direct such desires.43 The images of dining and love-making encouraged visitors to participate in the “virtuous leisure” which Federico described as his just reward in the room’s inscription. In interpreting the inscription, most scholars have bypassed the word honesto (‘virtuous’), and have argued that the leisure offered in the Camera di Psiche, and the palace as a whole, was explicitly sexual.44 However, recent scholarship has pointed to the positive valences of Renaissance eroticized leisure. The rediscovery of Lucretius’s De rerum natura, a text that was in vogue at the Gonzaga court, legitimized the role of the senses and allowed audiences to view otium as a necessary part of an ethical life.45 Like fine food, the frescoes stimulated physical pleasure; as noted in Federico’s inscription, that pleasure was virtuous. Moreover, James Gratham Turner has recently argued that erotic images embodied art’s ability to physically and intellectually penetrate beholders, potentially producing ‘a conventionally female passivity’ in Federico and his guests.46 I am not certain penetration necessarily equals passivity – one has only to look at Giulio’s fresco of Olympia and Jupiter to see a figure that is both active and sexually penetrated. However, I think Turner is correct that sexually charged images and spaces constructed beholders as receptive objects who were laid open to the effects of images and spaces. The lush vistas and eroticized bodies of the Camera di Psiche ask beholders to abandon their reserve and participate in the license and amusement of the feast. They also captivate inhabitants, transforming them into surfaces upon which the Camera di Psiche could work. By reaching into the space of the visitor, the images and architectural elements of the room subtly break down the barriers between illusion and reality, and between nature and artifice, compelling male beholders to engage in actions that coded their bodies as both masculine and feminine. At the same time, the practices of the room’s inhabitants left traces on the Camera di Psiche, implicating its spaces in the celebration of sexual appetite, active, robust masculinity, and receptive femininity.

43 Patricia Simons, “Homosociality and erotics,” 41; Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 189–190. 44 Bette Talvacchia is one the few scholars to address the issues of honesto ocio at the Palazzo Te, but she concluded that the word honesto represented an ironic joke on the part of Giulio Romano and Federico II, and that the leisure to be found in the palace was thus disonesto. Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 109–110. 45 Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 79–86. See also, Alison Brown, The Return of Lucretius. 46 Turner, Eros Visible, 32.

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The Nature of Virility The most rigorous activities organized by Federico II took place in the gardens of the Palazzo Te. After their banquet in the Camera di Psiche, Federico, Charles V, and their guests engaged in athletic competition and horseback riding. These ­recreational activities provided opportunities for the enactment of social hierarchies and the performance of masculine gender roles. The vast gardens of the palace contained exotic fruit trees and fountains, as well as a ball court and the famous Gonzaga stables.47 As Claudia Lazzaro has argued, the Renaissance garden was a space wherein art imitated nature and nature imitated art.48 The play between nature and artifice found in the careful selection and arrangement of plants, the abundant water flowing through fountains and fish ponds, and the placement of sculpture mirrors the courtier’s sprezzatura. The courtier’s performance is only truly successful if he conceals its artifice under the guise of nature, just as the garden is a place wherein art flourishes by counterfeiting nature. The gardens at the Palazzo Te were thus an ideal place in which to stage activities that demonstrated the courtier’s seemingly effortless performance of physical feats such as horseback riding and physical exercise, both of which required the easy appearance of corporeal control. Following their midday meal, the company adjourned to the ball court where Charles V chose teams from amongst his own entourage and that of Federico II. The gioco di palla, often translated as ‘tennis’, but probably closer to modern handball or racquetball, was among the recreational games most favored by Castiglione. It allowed the male courtier to show off ‘the disposition of body, the quickness and litheness of every member’, and afforded him the ability to impress the crowd with his prowess.49 Playing ball was the ideal way to showcase the male physique as well as the courtier’s skillful command of his body because the game encouraged the players to develop and display their stamina, agility, and robust physicality. The symbiotic relationship between art and nature that Lazzaro recognizes in the Renaissance garden can likewise be seen in the sports match staged therein: the artful way in which the courtier played the game purportedly emphasized his natural skills. In addition to displays of the masculine body, the outdoor activities at the Palazzo Te included a demonstration of Gonzaga horsemanship. Two courtiers entered the garden astride richly caparisoned horses from the Gonzaga stables and performed a series of exercises for the Emperor. While Charles V watched from the shelter of the eastern façade of the palace, the riders advanced their mounts ‘with jumps as high 47 Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.53–62. Later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century maps as well as more recent archaeological excavations, reveal that gardens at the Palazzo Te were extensive, including an ornamental garden just beyond the eastern façade, and, by the seventeenth century, gardens that produced fruit and vegetables as well as a hedge maze. 48 Renaissance Garden, 8–19. 49 Castiglione, Courtier, 29 (I.22).

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as the height of the horses’.50 Like the gioco di palla, horsemanship was regarded as a necessary masculine skill, as well as a way for the courtier to display his physical talents.51 For the Renaissance courtier, horsemanship was not simply a utilitarian skill. Indeed, the movements executed by the riders and their mounts at the Palazzo Te seem to have been an early form of what would later be known as ‘airs above the ground’. These complex exercises required extreme control of the horse by its rider and were a means by which the courtier could demonstrate his sprezzatura. When successful, such equestrian feats combined militaristic athleticism and courtly grace.52 By controlling his horse and leading it through complicated jumps and kicks the courtier demonstrated his masculine authority and superiority, as well as his graceful nonchalance. In the same passage where he discusses horsemanship Castiglione further advises that in addition to possessing knowledge about horses and riding, the courtier should ‘put every effort and diligence into outstripping others in everything a little, so that he may be always recognized as better than the rest’.53 This passage elucidates the role of performance and perception in Castiglione’s formulation of the ideal courtier. For Castiglione and the courtly culture in which he participated, the possession of skills only mattered in light of their representation. The silks and velvets used to outfit the horses therefore mattered as much as the skill of the Gonzaga riders because together they made a ‘very beautiful sight’.54 The riding expertise of Federico’s courtiers was not simply a display of their abilities, it was also a performance calculated to construct the pre-eminence of the Gonzaga stables, their court, and their dynasty. As in the conception of the Renaissance garden, natural skill was highlighted by artful demonstration. The Gonzaga horses played an important role in the formation of the family’s dynastic identity. The rulers of Mantua were famed for their stables and shrewdly used their horses as gifts to ruling houses throughout Europe, including potentates as far afield as the Ottoman sultans.55 The family cultivated a close identification with their horses through the production of at least three Sale dei Cavalli, rooms in Gonzaga palaces which featured lifelike depictions of horses.56 Like their owner, 50 ‘[C]on salti tant’alti quanto l’altezza delli cavalli’. Romano, Cronaca, 264. 51 Cf., Castiglione, Courtier, 28 (I.21). 52 Treva J. Tucker, “Early Modern French Noble Identity,” 273–309. 53 Castiglione, Courtier, 28 (I.21). 54 ‘[C]he faceva tanto bel vedere’. Romano, Cronaca, 264. 55 Documents attesting to the importance of the Gonzaga razze in forming and maintaining diplomatic relationships with foreign rulers are published in Giancarlo Malacarne, Il mito dei cavalli gonzagheschi. For the desirability of Gonzaga horses by foreign princes see Miriam Hall Kirch, “Horse Racing,” 89–93. 56 The most famous of the Sale dei Cavalli is located in the Palazzo Te and will be discussed at greater length below. At least two other Sale dei Cavalli had been commissioned by Federico’s father, Francesco II Gonzaga, for palaces in the towns of Marmirolo and Gonzaga. Both of these palaces were demolished in the eighteenth century. Molly Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 113–115. Around 1536 Giulio and his workshop began a fourth room dedicated to horses in the Palazzo Ducale. Although Hartt has suggested that two drawings from the

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the Gonzaga horses were pure of blood and bred from the best stock in order to produce superior specimens. Federico’s personal involvement in selecting and breeding the horses created a close identification between the prince and the horses he produced.57 The horses therefore recall Count Lodovico’s words regarding the pedigree of the courtier, who should ‘be of a noble and genteel family’.58 Noble birth is fundamental to the ideal courtier because it ‘makes manifest and visible deeds both good and bad, kindling and spurring on to virtue as much for fear of dishonor as for hope of praise’.59 For the gentlemen gathered at the Palazzo Te aristocratic parentage further illuminated the worthy qualities of the courtier, while simultaneously provoking greater feats from him as he sought to live up to his illustrious name. Their horses were synonymous with the Gonzaga dynasty, and the horses’ good breeding signified the noble lineage of the lords of Mantua. Federico exploited the symbiotic relationship between the Gonzaga dynasty and its horses by presenting both of the steeds to Charles V. Early Modern courts often exchanged diplomatic gifts, and they appear to have regarded horses as particularly fine and luxurious offerings.60 Gifts were an important element of diplomacy since they established bonds between families and territories by creating a reciprocal relationship, placing the receiver in the giver’s debt until a counter-gift was bestowed.61 In addition to their diplomatic function, gifts were a sign of princely liberality, a concept that united ideas of hospitality, largess, and generosity.62 In the case of Charles V’s visit, the horses formed only a small part of Federico’s munificence. The Marquis spent lavishly on clothing for his retinue, hangings and decorations for the guest chambers, and food to be served at the banquets. In his account of Charles V’s visit, the author of the Cronaca emphasizes Federico’s largesse through detailed descriptions of the vestments of his courtiers and the leather hangings and tapestries in the Emperor’s rooms, none of which were borrowed, he notes, and by listing the number and nobility of guests at each of the many banquets arranged by the Marquis. At every turn, the chronicler makes clear that ‘everything was done at the expense of the Marquis’,63 and at one point he clarifies that the abundance of a meal being served Nationalmuseum in Stockholm might represent studies for the room, no trace of these horses survives. Cf. Clinio Cottafavi, “Le sale dei Cavalli,” 278–86; Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.167–168. 57 Magdalena Bayreuther, “Breeding Nobility,” 116–120. 58 Castiglione, Courtier, 21 (I.14). 59 Ibid., 21. Castiglione may be using the dialogue format here to question the importance of lineage, but aristocratic readers would undoubtedly have interpreted this passage as a defense of their nobility. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 152–153. 60 Mario Damen, “Princely entries and gift exchange,” 238–239. 61 The classic study is Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. In the field of Early Modern history, the role of gifts in creating social relationships has been examined by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Griselda Complex,” 213–246; Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France. 62 The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, 15–22. 63 ‘[T]utto fu a spese del p.to S.r Marchese’. Romano, Cronaca, 263. A similar construction is used on pages 256 and 260, all in reference to banquets.

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‘told all [in attendance] of the greatness and liberality of the Marquis’.64 As gifts, the horses were meant to incur obligation from and curry favor with the Emperor, while also serving as living, corporeal manifestations of Federico’s virtues. In sixteenth-century art and literature horses were also metaphors for male sexuality, and the unbridled horse was a symbol of passionate male lust that could only be tamed by marriage. Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love features an unbridled, rearing horse on the sarcophagus at the center of the composition. The implication is that the lustful desires of the groom will be reigned in by his love for and sexual access to his wife.65 The term cavallo (‘horse’) was a common euphemism for the male sexual organ, and the verb cavalcare (‘ride’) was a metaphor for sexual intercourse.66 Pietro Aretino, the licentious poet who was a guest at Federico’s court and penned the Sonetti lussuriosi to accompany Giulio Romano’s I modi, used the horse as a euphemism for the male phallus, and in his salacious Ragionamenti Aretino also referred to sexual intercourse as ‘mounting’ or ‘riding’.67 Like Titian, Aretino also portrayed unrestrained male sexuality as an unbridled horse.68 The Gonzaga dynasty produced both horses and men that were robust and vigorous. Yet, unlike the unbridled horses of contemporary art and literature, the horses that graced the walls of Federico’s palace, as well as those that he showcased in the garden and presented to the Emperor, were restrained. The painted horses stand calmly in place and exhibit none of the wild behavior seen in other artistic representations (Pl. 5). Likewise, the horses in the garden were under the control of their riders and only jumped and kicked when directed to do so. Tamed and bridled, the Gonzaga horses signified robust masculinity controlled by superior reason. For a famously unmarried man like Federico, associations with unrestrained sexuality could have proved troublesome.69 By 1530 the Marquis-cum-Duke’s bachelor state was the subject of gossip and mockery with a whiff of scandal.70 Although he had exchanged rings with the nine-year-old Maria Paleologa in 1517, Federico had been seeking other prospective brides since 1522. When the time for Maria’s arrival in Mantua and consummation of the union arrived in 1524, Federico put her off, eventually accusing her family of complicity in the plot to kill his mistress in order to get out of the match. By the time the imperial party arrived at the Palazzo Te, Federico had 64 ‘[A] dire a tutti della grandezza et liberalità dil p.to S.r Marchese’. Ibid., 256. 65 Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic, 118–119. See also, Chapter 5. 66 Valter Boggione and Giovanni Casalegno, Lessico erotico, 102–105. 67 Pietro Aretino, Dialogues, 15, 141, 263, 366; Simons, Sex of Men, 82–83. 68 Aretino, Dialogues, 15, 98–99. 69 Federico’s labyrinthine marriage negotiations are detailed in Stefano Davari, “Federico Gonzaga,” 421– 469; “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologo.”; Roberto Maestri, “Gli sponsali,” 29–42. 70 Deanna Shemek convincingly argues that Aretino’s Il Marescalco, which was written in 1526–1527 during the poet’s stay in Mantua, satirizes Federico’s apparent unwillingness to marry. Although the play was not published in Venice until 1533, in the tight-knit and competitive world of the European court it is probable that Federico’s ‘marriage woes’ served as a source of humorous gossip. Deanna Shemek, “Aretino’s Marescalco,” 366–380.

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agreed to marry Charles V’s cousin, Giulia of Aragon, in order to cement the relationship between the newly created Duke of Mantua and his feudal overlord.71 The abundant painted and live horses throughout the Gonzaga territories could have called to mind Federico’s unmarried, and thus unbridled, sexuality. Given Giulia’s age, the parties assumed that she would be unable to produce children and the Emperor had agreed to officially legitimize Federico’s natural son, Alessandro.72 The noble blood line embodied in the horses was about to suffer an interruption, calling into question the ability of both the physical specimens and Giulio’s frescoes to clearly signify dynastic continuity and virility. The close association between the Gonzaga dynasty and their horses meant that the animals were caught in a web of associations. As gifts distributed throughout Italy and abroad, the horses spread the message of Gonzaga nobility, liberality, and robust sexuality to enemies and friends alike. Like their horses, the Gonzaga dynasty was formidable in war, pure of blood, and sexually potent. The display of horsemanship at the Palazzo Te was intended to emphasize the rationality and superiority of the Gonzaga dynasty. Federico had bred and tamed the horses, and in so doing he had demonstrated his ability to control nature and to present it in an artful and pleasing manner. Yet, Federico’s political and nuptial circumstances meant that the horses and their painted counterparts could be interpreted in ways that were not as flattering. Federico’s opportunistic marriage strategies and the precarious succession of the duchy may have caused onlookers to question the new Duke’s ability to reign in his horses and his urges.

Bodies at Rest and in Motion According to the Cronaca, the presentation of the horses in the gardens was followed by dancing in the Sala dei Cavalli, where the imperial party was invited to behold and participate in Mantuan displays of balletic mastery. Upon entering the Sala dei Cavalli, the Emperor would have been struck by the lifelike portraits for which the room is named (Pl. 5). After the vigorous, jumping horses which he had just seen in the gardens, the frescoes must have truly given the impression that they lived and breathed on the walls in front of him. The agility and skill displayed in the garden would be echoed in the Sala dei Cavalli, where courtiers executed dance sequences that inscribed their gendered identities upon their bodies.

71 Davari, “Federico Gonzaga,” 429–433 and 443–444. 72 This state of affairs was well known throughout the Italian courts, for a letter to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga written in June of 1530 mentions ‘certain rumors that he [Federico] was trying to obtain a dispensation from the emperor for the son of la Boschetta (certa murmuratione che ivi era di cercharsi dispensa per lo figiolo dela Boschetta dalo imperatore per potere sucedere nel stado)’. ASMn, AG, b. 1250, 27 June 1530.

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In the Sala dei Cavalli Giulio Romano created painted illusions that mimicked nature and implicated visitors in the complex spatial and interpretive structures of the room. The horses stand in front of painted Corinthian pilasters that frame fictive windows into idyllic landscapes strewn with castles and towns. Above the real windows of the room painted niches contain classicizing busts, while larger imitation niches at either end of the room hold standing statues of Olympian gods. Not only has Giulio created overlapping layers of fictive space, he has also experimented with texture: between the pilasters, the wall appears to be covered with marble revetment, fictive bronze plaques located above the horse portraits depict scenes from the life of Hercules, and gilded leather hangings stamped with golden columns would have covered the walls below, continuing the illusionistic architecture.73 The layers of space created by fictive architectural elements make it appear as if the horses stand in the room, and would have required Charles and his courtiers to enact visual skill in order to distinguish between painted fantasy and architectural support. The room is as iconographically complex as the spaces it constructs. While four of the painted Herculean reliefs depict the hero’s mythic Labors, the Rape of Deianira and Hercules and Antaeus are not part of his traditional toils. The statues of the gods in the niches are identifiable as Jupiter and Juno on the east wall and Mars and Venus on the west wall, while Vulcan rests over the fireplace. Giulio depicted busts of Antinous and Cleopatra on the north wall, but the busts of the other figures are unidentifiable. Two of Federico’s most ubiquitous imprese (‘devices’), the Mons Olympus and the salamander, are worked into the ceiling. As in the Camera di Psiche, the Sala dei Cavalli has eluded the attempts of scholars to fit the horses, classicizing sculptures and Herculean reliefs into a unified program.74 Given the prevalence of antiquities collecting, Herculean imagery, and horse portraits in Gonzaga patronage, I would suggest that Federico selected such seemingly disparate elements in an effort to connect himself to the larger visual program of his dynasty.75 However, Giulio Romano and Federico Gonzaga would also have been aware of the status of Hercules as a paragon of masculine virtue, the association of horses with male virility, and the sexual exploits of the Olympian gods.76 The invitation to interact with the spaces and images of the Sala dei Cavalli is also an invitation to enact masculine virility and virtue. 73 Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 66. The inventory of the palace conducted by Odoardo Stivini after Federico’s death lists eight sets of ‘red leather hangings decorated with gold columns’ in the Sala dei Cavalli. 74 Verheyen, whose iconographic analysis has dominated discussions of the Sala dei Cavalli, proposed that the room encapsulates his two defining themes of the Palazzo Te: love and politics. Verheyen reads the horses, busts, and reliefs as political and the statues of Roman gods as representations of love. The Palazzo del Te, 29–30. However, Verheyen provides no evidence that Renaissance spectators interpreted the images in such a way, and his analysis bifurcates the imagery and reduces it to mere symbolism. 75 Isabella d’Este’s fame as a collector of antiquities is well-documented by Clifford M. Brown, Antiquarian Collection. Images of Hercules also appear in the Mantegna’s frescoes at the Camera Picta in the Palazzo Ducale, which was created under the patronage of Federico’s great-grandfather Ludovico Gonzaga. 76 Patricia Simons, “Hercules in Italian Renaissance Art,” 632–664; Cathy Santore, “The tools of Venus,” 192.

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Fig. 14: Sala dei Cavalli, detail of north wall with (left to right) Dario, Hercules and the Lernean Hydra, and Bust of Cleopatra. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

An iconographical reading of the room misses a key aspect of its decoration: the lifelike quality of the horse portraits, which was remarked upon by more than one visitor to the palace.77 While some of the horses at the Palazzo Te are static and posed, others turn their heads toward inhabitants and invite identification and interaction with the images and spaces of the room. Dario is perhaps the most lifelike: his glance is directed downward at beholders, his muscles tensed to move, and it appears as if his tail has just come to rest, perhaps after twitching at a fly (Fig. 14). As with the other portraits Dario seems to breathe, and a suggestion of incipient movement is created through the slight angle of his head and the play of light and shade on his muscles. The horses observe visitors with no apparent concern or alarm. 77 In 1567 Jacopo Strada described the horses as ‘ritratti dal vivo (portraits from life)’. Davari, Descrizione del palazzo del Te, 14. And in 1576 Blaise de Vignère likewise noted that the horses were ‘peints au natural (painted from nature)’. Blaise de Vigenère, La somptveuse et magnifique entrée, 8.

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Fig. 15: Titian, Federico II Gonzaga, 1529. Oil on panel, 1.25 x 0.99 m. Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, NY.

Their nonchalant poses and superior position in the room recall the hauteur of the courtier’s sprezzatura. In his apparent recognition of the beholder, Dario recalls Titian’s portrait of Federico II (Fig. 15), wherein one of the duke’s dogs has rushed to his side. John Shearman identified the dog’s act as affirming the ability of painting to counterfeit life, thereby ‘asserting a triumph of Art’.78 In the Sala dei Cavalli, however, the horses look inward toward the room and its inhabitants, not only establishing a connection between the fictive space of the fresco and the physical space of beholders, but also suggesting that action in the room is as fictitious as the images on its walls.79 78 Shearman, Only Connect, 146–147. 79 Ibid., 139–140; 230–231. Shearman suggested that humans and animals that look out of paintings establish communication between the painting and the spectator.

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In conjunction with their naturalistic depiction, the fact that most of the horses are identified by name gives them a claim to corporeality that is lacking in other depiction of animals in the palace.80 While the frescoes in the neighboring Camera di Psiche depict an elephant, a camel, several tigers, and even a giraffe with startling accuracy, these animals remain firmly within the room’s painted fantasy world. The labels reassure beholders that these are real horses owned by Federico II Gonzaga. However, not only are Giulio’s horses images rather than flesh, in some cases they are not even portraits from life. Morel Favorito is a depiction of a horse that died several years before Giulio arrived in Mantua, yet he is one of the most lifelike.81 The labels therefore set up a troubled relationship between beholder and image. They proclaim a corporeal presence which is noticeably absent, arguably a tension in much of the naturalistic art of the Renaissance. Yet, the frescoes and their labels go one step further by claiming to be visual records of specific Gonzaga horses that were never seen by Giulio or his assistants. The images present beholders with two layers of artifice: fresco masquerading as flesh, and seeming flesh masquerading as portraiture. The double façade of the frescoes obscures both the brick core of the building and the artifice of Giulio’s fictive portraits. The painted horses become a Butlerian series of signifying absences that suggestively represent an essential image while masking the organizing structural and artistic principles of the palace. Rather than reaffirming the fidelity of representations to nature, for canny visitors, the horses call into question the disjunctions between a performantive surface and an essential substance that is never truly revealed. The horses stand in front of pilasters and ledges that at first glance appear to be part of the architecture of the palace, and thus they regard visitors from a space that seems to be coextensive with that of the room. As in the façade of the Palazzo Te, Giulio Romano constructed architectural recesses and protrusions that seem to threaten the beholder’s space even as they retreat into the distance. In both the façade and the Sala dei Cavalli, Giulio creates the illusion of architectural support only to contradict it. Like the stucco pilasters on the façade, the pilasters of the Sala dei Cavalli only appear to serve an architectural function. They seem to support the architrave, but that impression is immediately opposed by a frieze of vegetal designs and cavorting spiritelli (Fig. 14). The mischievous putti sit astride mustachioed masks with protruding tongues and exhibit a variety of poses, some lewd, as in the figure who stands on his head and gestures towards his genitalia, others derived from ancient sculpture, such as the putto in the pose of the Spinario. They make only half-hearted attempts at supporting the ceiling. Their limbs often dangle over the architrave, 80 Identifying labels for six of the eight horses can be seen in the extant frescoes or in Ippolito Andreasi’s drawings of the room, executed in 1567. The base of one of the unnamed horses is trimmed by a doorway, even in Andreasi’s drawing, while the second unnamed horse is located on a wall for which no sixteenth-century visual record exists. For Andreasi’s drawings, see Egon Verheyen, “Jacopo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings,” 62–70. 81 Malacarne, Il mito dei cavalli gonzagheschi, 147–157.

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calling attention to its pretensions to reality. Their antics mock social order, just as their failure as architectural supports mocks spatial order, and they ironically call attention to Giulio’s masterful artifice. Like the falling triglyphs in the courtyard, the spiritelli in the Sala dei Cavalli remind inhabitants that the architectural structure of the room is simply an illusion: the horses are not actually present and the building is not actually about to fall down. Giulio’s painted horses nevertheless assert a physical presence and are so naturalistically depicted that his artistic performance appears effortless. In the ease of their appearance, the painted horses of the Sala dei Cavalli asked courtiers to enact their own naturalistic displays of sprezzatura and sprezzata purità. The complex spatial arrangements created by Giulio Romano’s trompe l’oeil architecture encouraged dynamic interaction between the dancers, the spectators, and the spaces of the Sala dei Cavalli. References to virile male sexuality contained in the sculptures of Olympian lovers, Herculean reliefs, and equestrian portraits were performed and interpreted by the young men and women invited to dance for Charles V. The ball organized in the Sala dei Cavalli represented a moment when gender was socially performed and produced through the intersection of Giulio’s conception of space and the perceptions, experiences, and actions of inhabitants. The daytime activities at the Palazzo Te appear to have been reserved for male courtiers and nobles, but in order to create ‘a beautiful celebration and give enjoyment’ to his guests Federico invited sixty of the most beautiful women in Mantua to attend a ball held in the evening.82 Renaissance dancing was an opportunity to display athletic skill, grace, and, most importantly for the purposes of this study, gender identity. In fact, because bodily movements were inextricably linked to a person’s rank, age, and gender and different parts were danced by men and women, the movements of the dance repeated and reinforced existing social and gender roles and inscribed them onto the bodies of participants.83 When dancing, men were expected to move with forceful, agile steps described as gagliardo, while women’s leggiardrìa movements were more delicate and graceful.84 Castiglione recognized the gendered implications of dance, and cautioned the female courtier to avoid ‘masculine exercises’, and to guard herself lest her movements appear ‘too robust (troppo gagliardo)’.85 By admonishing women to appear feminine and men to appear masculine, Castiglione reveals the potential for gender slippage and demonstrates that the moving body was not simply seen as a sign or expression of gender identity, but a key surface on which masculinity and femininity were performed. 82 ‘[P]er fare una bellisima festa per dar spasso a sua M.tà dove il p.to S.r Marchese havea fatto convitare forsi sessanta S.re et Gentildonne delle prime et delle più belle si ritruovano in Mantova’. Romano, Cronaca, 264. 83 Jennifer Nevile, “Disorder in Order,” 154–155. 84 Sharon Fermor, “Gender and Movement,” 130. 85 Baldassare Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, III.8.176. Troppo gagliardo has also been translated as ‘too forceful’ or ‘too energetic’, as in the translations by Bull and Singleton, respectively.

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The Renaissance dance was also deeply implicated in the formation, use, and experience of space. Courtly dances took place in buildings or outdoor spaces designed by artists and architects, and, in the case of the dance at the Palazzo Te, the proportions and location of the Sala dei Cavalli suggest that it was intended for dances and large communal gatherings. Renaissance dances also created patterns in the air and on the ground, and were concerned with proportion and geometry in ways that echo the work of contemporary architects.86 Moreover, as I will argue, social attitudes towards gender were produced through dynamic interactions between the moving body and the spaces of the Sala dei Cavalli. The Cronaca recounts that the young men of Mantua ‘danced the galliard (alla gagliarda) in front of His Majesty, in our way and style’.87 The galliard was a relatively new and popular courtship dance that privileged the improvisational and athletic skills of the male dancer.88 The male part of the galliard consisted of four sprung steps in which the shift from one foot to another was accomplished by holding the free foot away from the body in a variety of positions. The dancer then executed an athletic jump, usually comprised of additional kicking movements; the dance was finished with a smooth landing.89 The male dancer could incorporate many variations, allowing for a high degree of improvisation and originality.90 In his Del origin et nobilità da ballo (c. 1610) Giulio Mancini wrote that the galliard ‘imitates the actions of the young lustie gallant who, with various gestures, movements, and jumps, demonstrates his strength and bravura’.91 In contrast, the female part consisted primarily of dancing in place, rendering it relatively passive and allowing the woman to appreciate the vigorous movements of her partner.92 The galliard was a dance designed to display male balletic prowess that was witnessed first and foremost by his female partner, but also by the admiring crowd. When Castiglione cautions women against steps that are troppo gagliardo, he therefore means that they should avoid the rapid athletic movements of the galliard, which was an exhibition of robust and active masculinity.93 The galliard was an aptly named display of gagliardezza, the physical strength, skill and robustness 86 Jennifer Nevile, “The Cosmic Structure of Dance,” 295–311. 87 ‘[M]olti gioveni gentilhomini Mantoani fu ballato avantu a sua M.tà Ces.a alla gagliarda al modo et usanza nostra’. Romano, Cronaca, 265. 88 Barbara Sparti, “Improvisation and Embellishment,” 120. 89 Thoinot Arbeau, Orchésographie, 95–97. 90 Lutio Compasso, Ballo della gagliarda. Compasso, who was writing in 1560, lists thirty two ‘easy variations’, fifty three ‘double variations’, and eighty of ‘the most difficult and most beautiful variations’. Jennifer Nevile has argued that improvisation was a uniquely Italian practice in “Disorder in Order,” 159–160. 91 BAV, MS Barb. Lat. 4315, f. 164r. See also, Barbara Sparti, “Improvisation and Embellishment,” 121. 92 Margaret McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, 98–99. 93 Castiglione also disapproves of gentlemen performing ‘those quick movements of foot and those double steps’ which characterize the galliard, though he does not mention the galliard by name. Castiglione, Courtier, 75 (II.11).

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associated with men.94 The term gagliardezza had a long history, particularly in chivalric romances wherein it signified the physical vigor of adult men. However, by the sixteenth century, it was also associated with difficulty and the overt display of skill, both of which were epitomized by the galliard.95 While dance itself was seen as a natural phenomenon, the movements of the galliard were also designed to impress onlookers with the virtuoso skill, agility, and artfulness of the male dancer.96 The dance was more than the execution of intricate steps. It was also a performance of virility: the rapid kicking and thrusting of the legs mandated by the galliard seem designed to exhibit the attractiveness of the male body, as well as to demonstrate the male’s robust vigor and sexual stamina. The more sedate movements of the women likewise adhered to Renaissance conceptions of gendered comportment. A Renaissance noblewoman was expected to exhibit ‘soft and delicate tenderness’, and her movements, speech, and appearance should ‘always make her appear the woman without any resemblance to a man’.97 The female part of the galliard did not call for the vigor or improvisational abilities demanded from male dancers. Rather, the women followed Castiglione’s dictates that, when dancing, a lady’s movements should exhibit ‘that gentle delicacy that we have said befits her’.98 Renaissance attitudes towards gender and sexuality called for women to be passive recipients rather than active participants, a role that that the female dancers at the Palazzo Te inscribed upon their bodies. Within the context of the Sala dei Cavalli, the movements of the galliard took on additional meaning. Surrounded by portraits of Federico horses, fresh from seeing living examples of the Gonzaga stables, the dancers and spectators would have experienced the dance within the context of the room’s decoration, that is, as related to horses and horse culture. In fact, terms used to describe the dance at the Palazzo Te were also used by Federico II Gonzaga to refer to his horses. In a 1526 letter describing the pair of horses he planned to give to the emperor when he came to Italy, Federico writes that one of the horses ‘is perhaps gentler, but much taller, and the other is gagliardo, and we hope that one and other will satisfy him’.99 The term gagliardo was therefore expressly applied by Federico to his horses, and at the very time when Giulio Romano and his assistants would have been executing the equine paintings at the Palazzo Te.

94 Fermor, “Gender and Movement,” 139. 95 Ibid., 138–139. 96 Nevile, “The Cosmic Structure of Dance,” 296. Nevile does not specifically mention the galliard, but she convincingly argues that Renaissance dance was ‘seen as both a natural activity and as an art’. 97 Castiglione, Courtier, 150 (III.4). 98 Ibid., 154 (III.8). 99 ‘[F]orsi maggio bonta ma al quanto più alto, e l’altro è gagliardo, e speriamo che l’uno a l’altra lo satisfarà’. ASMn, AG, b. 2930, lib. 268, f. 78r.

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The interactions between dancers, beholders, and the Sala dei Cavalli functioned on a number of interrelated levels. The frescoes intermingle fictive and physical space, creating a tension between nature and artifice, between seeming and being. This tension was activated by the dancers. The young Mantuan men who danced for the Emperor displayed gagliardezza, which Federico and his guests would have understood as related to the robust physical strength of the horses depicted on the wall. The agile jumps and kicks of the dancers might have called to mind the similar physical feats of the Gonzaga horses in the garden. The sexual virility performed so evocatively by the men was echoed in the virility of the horses and the sexual undercurrents found in the room’s painted sculptures and bronze reliefs. The female dancers might have associated themselves with the passivity of the horses depicted in the Sala dei Cavalli. Like the painted horses, the female dancers were relatively static and consigned to watch the athletic exploits of the men. The action (or inaction) of the horses closely mirrored the role of women in the galliard. Moreover, the horsemanship displayed in the gardens and the vigor of the galliard both required male courtiers to demonstrate sprezzatura, while the female dancers were enjoined to practice sprezzata purità. The women were not merely a receptive audience, they also gave men access to their bodies through a seemingly careless display of ankles, wrists and teeth, while also standing apart so as to refuse their partners tactile contact. Through the corporeal movements of the dance, the courtiers and the spaces of the Sala dei Cavalli were mutually defining. Courtiers enacted their gendered subjectivity in collaboration with the horses, both painted and real, and in a space which represented masculinity as active, yet controlled, and femininity as docile and receptive. At the same time, the fictive and physical spaces of the Sala dei Cavalli were activated by the gendered steps of the galliard. The Sala dei Cavalli was a performative space, a room alive with the forceful, gagliardo movements so closely associated with masculine gender performance. The calm classicism of the room and its decoration highlighted the forceful movements of the male dancers, while complementing the less active role of the female performers. The tension between invented and physical space created an atmosphere in which courtiers were encouraged to provide spectators with highly artificial, though seemingly natural, gendered performances.

The Art of Conversation At two points during his stay at the Palazzo Te Charles V broke apart from the organized activities to hold informal conversations with other guests. The Emperor and his companions finished the evening meal before the rest of the party, and so filled their time with a visit to the Camera dei Venti, where they discussed the room and its decoration. Later, after the dancing in the Sala dei Cavalli had recommenced, Charles

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singled out a young woman named Livia Cathabena da Gonzaga, and, with her mother acting as chaperone and Cardinal Cybo working as interpreter, held a conversation with her that lasted more than half an hour. These two interludes allow us to examine the gendered nature of discourse in the Renaissance, as well as the ways in which the spaces of the Palazzo Te might have shaped discourses of gender. Although the Emperor had indicated a desire to dine with the Mantuan ladies in the evening, he instead ate in the Camera di Psiche accompanied only by Cardinals Cybo and Medici. The ladies and their husbands dined in the Sala dei Cavalli.100 Because they were a small group, the Emperor and the two cardinals finished eating before the rest of the party. Charles then adjourned to the Camera dei Venti where he: [C]onversed broadly with Cardinal Cybo for an hour, greatly praising the rooms, and thus the master and inventor of them, and the many different things shown and represented there, and in this way His Majesty was able to understand everything in detail.101

In other words, visitors explained and understood the decorative program of the rooms at the Palazzo Te through conversation. The Camera dei Venti is certainly a room which requires explanation. On the ceiling Giulio and his assistants depicted the signs of the zodiac and the months’ labors in fresco and stucco, while painted tondi below show the effects of the constellations on persons born under them (Fig. 16). Frescoes in the middle of the ceiling portray the actions of gods, and the Gonzaga device of Mount Olympus rising out of the water reigns over the room from its place at the very center of the vault decoration. Unlike similar frescoes at the Villa Farnesina that seem to represent the zodiac at the time Agostino Chigi’s birth, the images in the Camera dei Venti do not represent Federico’s astrological chart.102 Instead, the frescoes and stuccoes depict the role 100 It is perhaps fruitless to speculate about Charles’ failure to dine with women in the Camera di Psiche, though given the highly regimented manner of the Renaissance banquet it seems most likely that Federico II Gonzaga had laid careful plans that would have been disrupted if seating arrangements had been changed. In fact, directly after recording where the ladies and gentlemen of Mantua dined, the Cronaca relates ‘that evening the illustrious Marchese of Mantua wanted to act as steward […] and this his excellency did in a manner so that things were well ordered (Ill.mo S.r Marchese di Mantoa volse fare il Sescalco […] et questo fece sua Ex.tia acciòche le cose andassero meglio ad ordine)’. Romano, Cronaca, 266. This seems to indicate that Federico did have a specific plan; not that the women were explicitly banned from dining with the Emperor, or from dining in the Camera di Psiche. 101 ‘[E]t sua M.tà si ritirò nella camara delli venti, et ragionò per un’hora così publicamente con il Car.le Cibo, laudando molto queste camare, et così il M.ro et inventore di esse et di tante diversitati di cose vi furno et erano, et così minutamente sua M.tà voles intendere il tutto’. Ibid., 266–267. It is difficult to discern whether the Emperor’s praise for the room’s ‘master and inventor’ refers to Federico II as patron, Giulio Romano as artist, or the humanist who devised the decorative program. 102 Ernst H. Gombrich, “Sala dei Venti,” 195–196. For contrary opinions, which link the frescoes to elements of Federico’s biography, see Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.119–120; Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te, 27.

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Fig. 16: Camera dei Venti, south wall and ceiling vault, c. 1528. Fresco and stucco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

of the stars in human endeavors, and an inscription over the door emphasizes that the beholder’s fate depends upon those stars which ‘lay hold of you’.103 Although his identity has not been determined, a humanist scholar must have provided Giulio with a program for the decoration of this room, which Ernest Gombrich has shown was based upon treatises and poetry by the Classical authors Manilius and Firmicus Maternus.104 103 DISTAT ENIM QVAE SYDERA TE EXCIPIANT. Translated by Gombrich, “Sala dei Venti,” 189. Gombrich noted that excipiant may also be translated as ‘catch you’ or ‘please you’, and that such ambiguity might be purposeful. 104 Ibid., 189–201. Gombrich proposed the astrologer Lucius Gauricus as the deviser of the room’s program, an assertion which was supported by Kristen Lippincott, “Astrological Decoration,” 216–222. Belluzzi proposed the humanist Parida da Ceresara, who had been used by both Isabella d’Este and Federico II to devise iconographic programs for paintings and imprese. Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.119.

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In contrast to many of the other rooms in the Palazzo Te, the Camera dei Venti does not involve inhabitants in a play between fictive and physical space. The tondi on the walls are compositionally closed and the figures are arranged parallel to the picture plane. No figure looks out of the frescoes to engage beholders, nor do any elements of the paintings threaten the picture plane. Perhaps Giulio understood that visitors would need all of their faculties simply to unravel the meaning of the images. In fact, misinterpretations of the Camera dei Venti are plentiful. Giorgio Vasari, who visited the Palazzo Te in the company of Giulio Romano, found the room so impenetrable that he confused it with its neighbor, the Camera delle Aquile.105 Later visitors fared no better. In 1567 Jacopo Strada identified the tondi as depictions of actions performed in each of the twelve months.106 Twenty years later, the poet Raffaele Toscano described the room as a key to which stars were favorable and which were malevolent.107 Little wonder that Charles V required an hour with Cardinal Cybo to comprehend the room and its decoration. The frescoes and stuccoes in the Camera dei Venti illustrate the effects of the stars upon the visitor’s destiny. It is therefore a room that encourages discussion, as inhabitants compare the images to one another, and the attributes depicted to actual persons born under those signs. Renaissance commentators considered the ability to converse with wit and sophistication to be a mark of moral and intellectual excellence.108 As early as 1401 the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni praised the art of conversation and argued that disputation laid open the process of reason.109 The Book of the Courtier returns several times to the importance of good speech and conversation, and the text is structured as a dialogue. In the first book, Count Lodovico advises the courtier to ‘show grace in all things and particularly in his speech’.110 Furthermore, conversation is a way for a man to demonstrate that ‘the thoughts expressed by the words are fine, witty, acute, elegant, and solemn, according to the need’.111 Giovanni della Casa gives precise advice regarding the topics and manner of polite conversation, and he similarly notes that remarks reveal ‘the movements of the mind’, and that speech should therefore be carefully monitored.112 Stefano Guazzo wrote that a ready and pleasant wit was a ‘sign of goodness’ that provided ‘testimony of brilliance’.113 Whether about art, politics, philosophy, or life at court, conversation exposed the mental faculties of the speaker, showing him to be an intelligent and moral person. 105 Vasari, Lives, 2.129. 106 Davari, Descrizione del palazzo del Te, 26. 107 Raffaele Toscano, L’edificatione di Mantova, 26. 108 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 151. 109 Eugenio Garin, Prosatori latini del quattrocento, 1.48–52. 110 Castiglione, Courtier, 35 (I.28). 111 Ibid., 41 (I.33). 112 Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, 69. 113 ‘E sì come quella dà segno della bontà, così questa rende testimonanza dell’ingegno’. Guazzo, La civil conversazione, 112.

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Conversation allowed courtiers to demonstrate their adherence to elite masculine ideals such as reason, self-control, and good judgement.114 Disputation was thus a primary way in which men performed their masculinity. For Castiglione, the art of speaking well comprised the voice and gestures of the speaker, and he advises the male courtier to have ‘a good voice, not too thin or soft as a woman’s, not yet so stern and rough as to have a boorish quality, but sonorous, clear, gentle, and well constituted’.115 When speaking, the courtier’s gestures should not be ‘affected or violent’, but should ‘give grace’ to his words.116 Della Casa similarly advises the gentleman to be mindful of how his words and movements are perceived.117 Guazzo’s Annibale claims that the Early Modern man ‘comes to know himself by means by civil conversation’.118 Elite masculine identity was constructed in and through discourse with others. Rather than suggesting that the manner of speech expressed the reasoned intellect of the speaker, the authors of Renaissance courtesy literature demonstrate that masculine intelligence, wit, and restraint were produced through the courtier’s speech. Sixteenth-century art, especially art created for the court, was often designed to test the visual and intellectual skills of its beholders. Such works presupposed the existence of correct interpretations, as well as an audience that could arrive at them.119 A room like the Camera dei Venti communicated an allegorical or iconographical meaning, but the difficulty involved in arriving at that meaning played upon Renaissance ideals of status and gender. In order to unravel the complexities of the room Charles V performed masculine reason and elite erudition, and in so doing he fashioned himself as an ideal prince. Yet, as both Early Modern observers and Modern art historians have demonstrated, the Camera dei Venti often frustrates the interpretive impulse. Even reasoned masculine discourse could fail to penetrate its intentionally complex and obscure decoration.120 The room therefore demonstrates the very limits of the values it purportedly upholds. In seeking to provoke displays of wit and intellect, the intricacies of Camera dei Venti could lead instead to error and confusion. The failure of a supposedly rational and triumphant male actor to penetrate the meaning of the room might effeminize, or it might call into question the process of making Renaissance masculinity. Thus, a space meant to encourage the formation of a normative masculine identity could instead construct the opposite.

114 Margaret A Gallucci, Benvenuto Cellini, 112–120. 115 Castiglione, Courtier, 40–41 (I.33). 116 Ibid., 41. 117 della Casa, Galateo, 45. 118 ‘[C]onfermo che l’uomo […] si veste della cognizione di se stesso per mezzo della civil conversazione’. Guazzo, La civil conversazione, 81. 119 Bret Rothstein, “Making Trouble,” 97. 120 Beginning with Carlo D’Arco scholars have universally acknowledged the difficulty of unraveling the meaning of each image, and thus the likelihood that the ambiguity was intentional. D’Arco, Istoria, 45.

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However, the Cronaca records that the Emperor ‘was able to understand everything in detail’, suggesting that Charles V was ultimately successful.121 While the Camera dei Venti had the potential to enact other kinds of masculinity, the conversation between the Emperor and Cardinal Cybo seems to have been a performance of masculine reason, sophistication, and virtue. As a room designed by a humanist and informed by ancient and humanist philosophy, the Camera dei Venti was the ideal location in which to stage such a courtly dialogue. Like a good discussion, the roundels in the Camera dei Venti illustrate various points of view: at times they depict negative forces, as in the case of the prisoners depicted in conjunction with Sagittarius, but at others they bring positive aspects to the fore, as when a gladiator, rather than a man devoted to luxury, is chosen to represent Taurus.122 To understand the room and its decoration Charles V and Cardinal Cybo would have had to discuss both Classical and Renaissance treatises on astrology, thereby constructing their identities as educated and intellectual men. In addition, the Camera dei Venti encourages the spectator to enact masculine control, not over his body as in the physical activities staged in the gardens, but over the heavens themselves. Through discourse on the role of the stars in determining his fortune, Charles V could deconstruct the movements of the stars. The Emperor’s control over the room and its stars became a symbol of his political control over Europe as well as his favorable treatment by those stars. Like Castiglione’s ideal courtier, Charles V could become the master of his fortune by showing that he knew how to manipulate the stars of fate, and thus ‘how to order his whole life’.123 By demonstrating such self-control and reason, Charles also exhibited his adherence to masculine gender norms. The gendered implications of conversation can be further examined when we compare the Cronaca’s description of the all-male discussions that occurred in the Camera di Psiche and the Camera dei Venti with its account of Charles’ encounter with a female speaker. Following the Emperor’s interlude in Camera dei Venti with Cardinal Cybo, the ladies retired to the Camera di Psiche so that the Sala dei Cavalli could be prepared for another round of dancing. At that point Charles began a conversation with Livia Cathabena da Gonzaga, one of the beautiful Mantuan noblewomen Federico had invited to the ball.124 As in his accounts of other conversations held at the Palazzo Te, the author of the Cronaca does not provide the details of the dialogue, but gendered conventions regarding speech and visual interpretation allow 121 Romano, Cronaca, 266–267. 122 For the frescoes related to Sagittarius, see respectively, Gombrich, “Sala dei Venti,” 195; Kristen Lippincott, “Astrological Decoration,” 220–221. 123 Castiglione, Courtier, 71 (II.7). 124 Romano, Cronaca, 267. Almost nothing is known of Livia Cathabena da Gonzaga. The patronym ‘da Gonzaga’ was an honorific granted to valued members of the Mantuan court and most likely does not represent familial kinship. Her mother, Isabella Benadusa, seems to have been acquainted with Baldassarre Castiglione, as she appears in one of his letters as the bearer of gifts sent by Castiglione’s mother. Vatican City, BAV, Vat. Lat. 8210, f. 323r. Accessed 4 September, 2018. https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.8210.

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us to consider the ways in which Livia and the other female guests interacted with and experienced the performative spaces of the Camera di Psiche. Unfortunately, writers such as Castlgione, della Casa and Guazzo tell us more about how men believed women should speak, listen, and see than about what women actually did. For example, in the Book of the Courtier the male courtier is advised to woo women with ‘verse and prose’ because they are ‘usually fond of such things’.125 Women prefer light conversation, not the heavy discourse of politics, philosophy, or rhetoric. In fact, one of the few conversations regarding rhetoric in The Book of the Courtier is interrupted by Emilia Pia, who calls the argument ‘long and tiresome’.126 She similarly interrupts Magnifico Giuliano in the third book, asking him to leave off his philosophical analysis of Aristotle because the women are not following his argument.127 While Emilia’s disruptions show a measure of feminine control over the conversation, they also reveal gendered expectations regarding intellectual discourse.128 One of the requirements of the court lady is that she speak easily, and even flirtatiously, with courtiers. She must be able to entertain men with ‘agreeable and comely conversation suited to the time and place and station of the person with whom she speaks’.129 Castiglione admits that her task is difficult, for while the court lady must spurn coarse talk, she should not ‘abhor gay company or any talk that is a little loose’.130 She must therefore produce desire, while at the same time rebuffing it. The court lady was also expected to be well-educated and conversant in the arts, and women such as Isabella d’Este, Veronica Gambara, Vittoria Colonna, and Eleonora of Toledo were prominent patrons of art and literature.131 It therefore seems likely that Livia Cathabena was familiar with the story of Cupid and Psyche as well as most, if not all, of the other frescoed scenes in the Camera di Psiche. And, given the fact that they did not speak the same language, it is also likely that Livia and the Emperor turned to the room and its decoration to provide a common ground for communication. How would Livia, her mother, or any of the other women at the ball that night have responded to the opulent, and at times frankly erotic, imagery of the Camera di Psiche? Art historians have not concerned themselves with female visitors to the Palazzo Te, and have only rarely investigated female responses to erotic art.132 Given the many proscriptions regarding female chastity in the Renaissance, as well as 125 Castiglione, Courtier, 52 (I.44). 126 Ibid., 47 (I.39). 127 Ibid., 159 (III.16). 128 Stephen Kolsky, Courts and Courtiers, 53. 129 Castiglione, Courtier, 151 (III.5). 130 Ibid. 131 For the textual tradition that informed the paintings of Isabella d’Este’s studiolo, see Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. For female patrons of art see the essays in Reiss and Wilkins, Beyond Isabella. 132 Recent exceptions include Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, “Erotic objects and marriage,” 150–159; Patricia Simons, “The cultural history of ‘Seigneur Dildoe’,” 84–85; Turner, Eros Visible, 304–309.

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Castiglione’s own advice concerning the propriety of vulgar speech, this particular academic lacuna is perhaps not surprising. However, a large body of surviving objects from Early Modern Italy contain erotic imagery, and sexually suggestive maiolica was displayed in shops, marriage chambers, dining rooms, and studioli.133 While the supposedly moralizing artistic patronage of Isabella d’Este has often been contrasted with that of her purportedly hedonistic son, Federico II Gonzaga, Stephen Campbell has demonstrated that Isabella’s paintings were intimately concerned with ideas of love and passion.134 Frescoes such as Jupiter and Olympia or Pasiphae and the Bull could not have been shocking to women, and, given the Cronaca’s offhand reference to the presence of women in the Camera di Psiche, the frescoes must not have been considered unfit for the eyes of ladies. Giulio, Federico II, and Charles V may have presumed that Livia and her female companions would not comprehend the bawdy humor of a scene like Pasiphae and the Bull, which depicts the Cretan queen preparing to commit an act of bestiality (Fig. 17). Indeed, Giulio seems to have delighted in the more sordid details of the story, for the rear end of Pasiphae’s bovine costume is coincident with the picture plane and it protrudes into the beholder’s space, offering a posterior penetrative view that suggests the possibilities of alternative sexual positions. The beholder is, in effect, invited to mount and penetrate the cow, just as Giulio’s Pasiphae does as she ascends into the apparatus Daedalus has designed. In addition, Pasiphae’s pose derived from a 3rd century CE sculpture located under the hill of Aracoeli in Rome in which Mithras subdues a bull with his knee.135 Giulio used the same pose in his portrayal of Hercules and the Bull in the neighboring Sala dei Cavalli. By using a heroic male posture to depict her, Giulio imagines Pasiphae as a woman who has contravened nature by taking on a male role. Pasiphae’s figure, the transgressive sexual position of the cow, and even the docility of the male bull also share a sense of humor that plays on sexual inversion. In Bernardo Dobizzi da Bibbiena’s La Calandria, a play with which both Federico and Giulio would have been familiar, the twins Santilla and Lidio similarly play with gender identity by cross-dressing and even exchanging sexual members.136 Although her actions violate established gender and sexual roles, Giulio’s humorous visualization of Pasiphae makes her a figure of burlesque derision rather than a source of danger.137

133 Ajmar-Wollheim, “Erotic objects and marriage,” 143–156. 134 Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. 135 Phyllis Pray Bober, Rubinstein Ruth, with contributions by Woodford Susan, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, no. 46. Although the sculpture was often identified as Hercules, in the sixteenth century it was also identified as a nymph slaying a bull and as a depiction of the Rape of Europa. Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 171–173. 136 Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade, 189–223. 137 For a more detailed analysis of images of Pasiphae and their reception at court, see Maria Maurer, “The Trouble with Pasiphaë.”

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Fig. 17: Camera di Psiche, detail of the east wall, Pasiphae and the Bull, 1526–28. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

Livia may have missed the humor of Pasiphae and the Bull and instead interpreted it in light of Renaissance marriage and natal objects directed toward a female audience. Giulio’s fresco participates in the tradition of Renaissance cassoni, spallieri, and birth wares that depict sexual misbehavior, failed marriages, and violence against women as negative exemplars.138 Like Pasiphae and the Bull, images of Medea and Dido envisioned female desire as threatening to matrimony and social order, and thus exhorted men and women to perform established gender roles. Yet, the image at the Palazzo Te also shows Pasiphae as a female partner who actively takes part in and directs the sexual act. She is the driving force of the narrative and the composition, and is the object of erotic gazes from both the bull and the beholder. A female beholder such as Livia could identify less with Pasiphae’s aberrant sexuality and more with her agency. While Pasiphae represented the dangers of female libido, at the Palazzo Te she is also envisioned as a dynamic and powerful figure who subjects male desire to her own wishes. Spaces, especially those of the Palazzo Te, are neither coherent nor stable. Rather, they are created through a sedimentary process as layers of practice and experience accumulate over time.139 When Federico and his male guests convened in the Camera 138 Cristelle Baskins, Cassone Painting, 50–74 and 128–159. 139 Massey, For Space, 138–142. Massey’s description of space as something built up through accretions is evocative of Butler’s formulation of gender as a series of repeated acts that create ‘a sedimentation of gender norms’. Cf. Butler, Gender Trouble, 190–191.

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di Psiche, the lavish and eroticized decoration of the room facilitated homosocial bonding. Their discussion allowed them to identify themselves and one another as rational and virile agents who were acting in accord with established gender norms. Livia Cathabena and the other Mantuan ladies who inhabited the room also saw nude male and female bodies, and on one level they may have seen themselves as sexualized objects of male desire. The fictive and material spaces of the Palazzo Te resisted uniform interpretation and thereby provoked both normative and transgressive gendered performances. Through conversation, which allowed women a participatory, and at times even controlling, role in court social life, Livia could also dynamically interact with the frescoes in the Camera di Psiche. Visually, women are prominent in the room, and while they are often eroticized, they are also shown taking a vigorous role in determining their fate and satiating their sexual desires. Livia could see Pasiphae, Psyche, and even Galatea as women who pursued their love interests over the objections of others. Far from constructing and reinforcing normative gender roles, the frescoes in the Camera di Psiche in fact trouble binary conceptions of masculinity and femininity. During the Emperor’s visit the Palazzo Te was both stage and performer, providing the backdrop against which male and female courtiers enacted gender roles, while also inciting behaviors and reactions from the actors. At the confluence of perception, representation, and experience, the spaces of the Palazzo Te shaped and responded to sixteenth-century ideals of masculinity and femininity. In the images and spaces of the palace, Federico II, Charles V, and their guests saw the visual embodiment of these ideals: masculine virility, virtue, prowess, and intellect, and feminine elegance, passivity, and receptivity. Through the material practices staged within the palace beholders performed those ideals, making social spaces through social interactions and rendering their bodies socially legible by inscribing gender norms upon them. The performative spaces of the Palazzo Te also had the potential to destabilize the very roles they attempted to construct. Precisely because gender is not a fixed or stable position, but a constant process of construction and performance, the actions of the palace’s inhabitants shaped their gendered experiences. The painted steeds in the Sala dei Cavalli signified restrained masculinity and the presence of a prince whose sexual urges were in need of constraint. The images of the Camera dei Venti at times proved impenetrable to superior masculine reason. The very polyvalence of the frescoes in the Camera di Psiche meant that they could slip out of interpretive control, taking on subversive meanings that challenged the view of femininity as passive even as they reified ideas of insatiable female lust. The actions of Federico and his guests also transformed the spaces of the palace. As we will see in the next chapter, work at the Palazzo Te completed after 1530 was deeply indebted to both the physical presence of the Holy Roman Empire in Mantua, and the classicizing possibilities that celebrating his arrival afforded. When the Emperor returned to Mantua in 1532, he found spaces that sought to more clearly depict virtuous figures for him to model, while at the same time collapsing and confounding times and spaces.

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Secondary Sources Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta. “‘The spirit is ready, but the flesh is tired’: erotic objects and marriage in early modern Italy.” In Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, edited by Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, 141–69. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Albala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Arasse, Daniel. “Giulio Romano e il labirinto di Psiche”. Quaderni di Palazzo Te 7 (1985): 7–18. Barkan, Leonard. Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Baskins, Cristelle. Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Bayreuther, Magdalena. “Breeding Nobility: Raising Horses at Early Modern German Courts.” In Animals and Early Modern Identity, edited by Pia F. Cuneo, 109–29. Farnham Ashgate, 2014. Belluzzi, Amedeo. Il Palazzo Te a Mantova. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1998. Bober, Phyllis Pray, Rubinstein Ruth, with contributions by Susan Woodford. Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Boggione, Valter, and Giovanni Casalegno. Dizionario del lessico erotico. Turin: UTET Libreria, 2004. Bourne, Molly. Francesco II Gonzaga: The Soldier-Prince as Patron. Biblioteca del Cinquecento, 138. Rome: Bulzoni, 2008. Brown, Alison. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Campbell, Stephen J. The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Cavicchioli, Sonia. Le metamorfosi di Psiche: l’iconografia della favola di Apuleio. Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Colantuono, Anthony. Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Cottafavi, Clinio. “Le sale dei Cavalli e delle Teste.” Bollettino d’arte 8, no. 6 (1928): 278–86. D’Arco, Carlo. Istoria della vita ed delle opera di Giulio Pippi Romano. Milan: Torchi di Gaspare Truffi, 1838. Damen, Mario. “Princely entries and gift exchange in the Burgundian Low Countries: a crucial link in late medieval political culture.” Journal of Medieval History 33, no. 3 (2007): 233–49. Davari, Stefano. “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologa di Monferrato.” Giornale ligustico 17 (1890): 421–69. Davari, Stefano. “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologo del Monferrato (1515–1533).” Giornale ligustico 18, no. 1–2 (1891): 40–67, 81–109. Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France. The Curti Lectures. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. de Maria, Ugo. La favola di Amore e Psiche nella letterature e nell’arte italiana. Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1899. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966. Fermor, Sharon. “Movement and Gender in Sixteenth-Century Painting.” In The Body Imagined: The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance, edited by K. Adler and M. Pointon, 129–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Finucci, Valeria. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Gaisser, Julia Haig. The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Gallucci, Margaret A. Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artistic Identity in Renaissance Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I. Der Palazzo del Te”. Jarbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 8 (1934): 79–104.

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Gombrich, Ernst H. “The Sala dei Venti in the Palazzo del Te.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, no. 3/4 (1950): 189–201. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Hypnerotomachiana.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, no. 1/2 (1951): 119–25. Gunther, Hubertus. “Amor und Psyche. Raffaels Freskenzyklus in der Gartenloggia der Villa des Agostini Chigi und die Fabel der Amor und Psyche in der Malerei der italienischen Renaissance.” Artibus et Historiae 22, no. 44 (2001): 149–66. Hall Kirch, Miriam. ““For Amusement, Merrymaking, and Good Company”: Horse Racing at a German Princely Court.” In Animals and Early Modern Identity, edited by Pia F. Cuneo, 89–107. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Hartt, Frederick. Giulio Romano. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Hiller, Diana. Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Jeanneret, Michel. A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance. Translated by Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Huches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. “The Griselda Complex: Dowry and Marriage Gifts in the Quattrocento.” Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. In Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, 213–46. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Kolsky, Stephen. Courts and Courtiers in Renaissance Northern Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2003. Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Lazzaro, Claudia. The Italian Renaissance Garden: From Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Lindow, James R. The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Lippincott, Kristen. “The Astrological Decoration of the Sala dei Venti in the Palazzo del Te.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47, no. (1984): 216–22. Maestri, Roberto. “Gli sponsali di Margherita Paleologo e Federico Gonzaga.” In “Vincoli d’amore” Spose in casa Gonzaga tra XV e XVIII secolo, edited by Paola Venturelli, 29–42. Milan: Skira, 2013. Malacarne, Giancarlo. Il mito dei cavalli gonzagheschi: alle origini del purosangue. Verona: Promoprint, 1995. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005. Maurer, Maria F. “The Trouble with Pasiphaë: Engendering a Myth at the Gonzaga Court.” In Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, edited by Marice Rose and Alison C. Poe, 199–229. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Maurer, Maria F. “A love that burns: Eroticism, torment and identity at the Palazzo Te.” Renaissance Studies 30, no. 3 (2016): 370–88. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W.D. Halls. New York: Routledge, 1990. Mazzini, Franco. I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Vol. 2. Bergamo: Bolis, 1986. Mazzoldi, Leonardo, and Mario Bendiscioli, eds. Mantova: la storia. Vol. 2, Da Lodovico secondo marchese a Francesco secondo duca. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1961. McGowan, Margaret. Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Nevile, Jennifer. “Disorder in Order: Improvisation in Italian Choreographed Dances of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” In Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Timothy J. McGee, 145–69. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2003. Nevile, Jennifer. “Order, Proportion, and Geometric Forms: The Cosmic Structure of Dance, Grand Gardens, and Architecture during the Renaissance.” In Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250–1750, edited by Jennifer Nevile, 295–311. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2008. Oberhuber, Konrad. “Palazzo Te: L’apparato decorativo.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 336–79. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue.

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Panofsky, Erwin. Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic. The Wrightsman Lectures. New York: New York University Press, 1969. Randolph, Adrian W.B. Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Rebhorn, Wayne A. Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978. Reiss, Sheryl E., and David G. Wilkins, eds. Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001. Rothstein, Bret. “Making Trouble: Strange Wooden Objects and the Early Modern Pursuit of Difficulty.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (2013): 96–129. Santore, Cathy “The tools of Venus.” Renaissance Studies 11, no. 3 (1997): 179–207. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Shearman, John. Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Shemek, Deanna. “Aretino’s Marescalco: marriage woes and the duke of Mantua.” Renaissance Studies 16, no. 3 (2002): 366–80. Shepherd, Rupert. “Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti and a practical definition of magnificence in the context of Renaissance architecture.” In Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers, 52–65. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Signorini, Rodolfo. La Fabella di Psiche e altra mitologia: secondo l’interpretazione pittorica di Giulio Romano nel Palazzo Te a Mantova. Mantua: Sintesi, 1983. Signorini, Rodolfo. “Two Mantuan fantasies: Lombardy in the image of a garden and an architectural vertigo. The fortunes of the Hypnerotomachia in Mantua.” Word & Image 14, no. 1/2 (1998): 186–202. Simons, Patricia. “Homosociality and erotics in Italian Renaissance portraiture.” In Portraiture: Facing the Subject, edited by Joanna Woodall, 29–51. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Simons, Patricia. “Hercules in Italian Renaissance Art: Masculine Labor and Homoerotic Libido.” Art History 31 (2008): 632–64. Simons, Patricia. “The cultural history of ‘Seigneur Dildoe’.” In Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, edited by Allison Levy, 77–91. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Sparti, Barbara. “Improvisation and Embellishment in Popular and Art Dances in Fifteenth- & SixteenthCentury Italy.” In Improvisation in the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Timothy J. McGee, 117–44. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2003. Strong, Roy C. Feast: A History of Grand Eating. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. Tafuri, Manfredo. “Giulio Romano: linguaggio, mentalità, committenti.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 15–63. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Tucker, Treva J. “Early Modern French Noble Identity and the Equestrian ‘Airs Above the Ground’.” In The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World, edited by Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker, 273–309. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Turner, James Grantham. Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Varriano, John L. Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Verheyen, Egon. “Jacopo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings of 1567–68.” The Art Bulletin 49, no. 1 (1967): 62–70. Verheyen, Egon. “Die Malereien in der Sala di Psiche des Palazzo del Te.” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 14 (1972): 33–68.

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Verheyen, Egon. The Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Images of Love and Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Vickers, Brian. “Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalance of otium.” Renaissance Studies 4, no. 1 (1990): 1–37. Vickers, Brian. “Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalence of otium.” Renaissance Studies 4, no. 2 (1990): 107–54. Wells, Sharon. “Manners Maketh the Man: Living, Dining and Becoming a Man in the Later Middle Ages.” In Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Nicola F. McDonald and W.M. Ormrod, 67–81. York: York Medieval Press, 2004. Wolk-Simon, Linda. ““Rapture to the Greedy Eyes”: Profane Love in the Renaissance.” In Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, edited by Andrea Bayer, 43–58. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

3. The Palace in Time Abstract: Chapter three examines changes made to the Palazzo Te after 1530, with particular attention to the ways in which additions to the palace recall both the presence and absence of the Holy Roman Emperor. Post-1530 additions to the palace cited Classical and Renaissance exemplars and buildings, and included multiple references to famed monuments in contemporary Mantua. The palace and its spaces were not fixed in time, but were, instead, composed of multiple temporal trajectories. The Palazzo Te was always coming into being. During a second visit of Charles V in 1532, the palace’s images and spaces asked inhabitants to reconstitute imperial and Classical bodies through a series of signifying absences, thus revealing the volatile nature of gendered identity. Keywords: Absence, Exemplum, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Temporality, Triumphal Procession

Charles V returned to Mantua in November of 1532. As before, Federico II welcomed the Emperor with a triumphal procession and arranged a day of courtly entertainment at the Palazzo Te.1 The palace Charles visited in 1532 was not the same building he had seen two years earlier. Almost immediately after the Emperor’s departure in 1530, Federico and Giulio Romano undertook extensive additions to the palace, nearly doubling the footprint of the building and executing a decorative program based on themes of imperial triumph and princely virtue depicted in an even more classicizing style. The 1532 visit of Charles V allows us to examine the ways in which the palace intersects with discourses of space and time through a spiraling web of visual and historical citations. Instead of proposing a unified relationship between space and time, the Palazzo Te creates multiple temporal trajectories. It is a space in continuous production, and therefore a space that urges inhabitants to construct and enact a gender identity that is similarly open, performative, and temporally fractured.2 Performative practices at the Palazzo Te occurred at specific points in time, 1 Few records remain of what happened during this second visit. Federico II was clearly concerned that the activities at the Palazzo Te would go smoothly, for on 1 November he was reassured by Ippolito Calandra that ‘[e]verything is ready at Te (In sul Te è aconcio ogni cosa)’. ASMn, AG, b. 2517, f. 136r. 2 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A thousand plateaus; Massey, For Space, 1-15, 25-29. Maurer, Maria F., Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462985537/ch03

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but were in dynamic conversation with spaces that hovered between past, present and future.3 In addition to representing differing temporal trajectories, the images and spaces of the latter phase of the palace were indebted to and intertwined with the ephemeral triumphal processions staged in Mantua during the early 1530s.4 These grand parades allowed Giulio to explore the relationship between representations of the imperial past and its re-creation in contemporary Mantua. As official overseer of the streets and works, Giulio directed the design and construction of the ephemeral decorations that greeted the Emperor, experiences that led him to create spaces that were activated by the corporeal movements of beholders. The garden façade (Fig. 55) came into being as beholders marched through it, transforming it into a triumphal archway. Like many of the elements of this latter phase of construction, the façade is also indebted to both Roman and Mantuan forms, and it therefore oscillates between past and present, and between representing exemplary traditions and inciting their production. Whether based upon ancient emperors, biblical seductresses, living princes, or artistic traditions, the spaces of the Palazzo Te produce gender roles via idealized and classicizing exemplars. The palace reconstitutes, or at least re-presents, the splendors of ancient Rome in the form of triumphal arches and classical reliefs. It also represents the ruination of Classical monuments through seeming collapse in both the courtyard and the Sala dei Giganti. At the same time, the building uses sly artistic citations to tie itself to the Mantuan art of the recent past, and suggests its novelty through unfinished columns and blocks of stone that appear to have just arrived from the quarry. Because the palace implicated inhabitants in its performative, polysemous, and multi-temporal spaces, beholders moved between models and times, enacting personas that were as likely to upset established order as they were to reinforce it. Scholarly discussions of exemplum tend to focus on iconography, and thereby consider representation as something that suspends time.5 Instead, I propose that we approach exemplars as representations that prompted beholders to consider themselves in – not out – of time. In modeling themselves after exemplars beholders created façades of timelessness, but their performances occurred at specific moments 3 I take seriously the distinctions between substitution and performance advanced by Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, where substitution constructs artistic authority through a supposedly unbroken chain of representations leading to the past, and performance poses authority as coming from the instantiated moment of artistic creation. Though I am less interested in artistic authority than Nagel and Wood, I do see the Palazzo Te as an anachronic building that resists attempts at temporal anchoring. Anachronic Renaissance, 7-19. 4 In addition to two entries produced for the Holy Roman Emperor in 1530 and 1532, Giulio oversaw the triumphal arrival of Margherita Paleologa, bride of Federico II, in 1531. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.423-424 and 1.430-432. 5 One need only examine the scholarship on Mantuan art for classic examples: Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te; Rodolfo Signorini, Opus Hoc Tenue. Iconographic readings of virtuous figures remain common, especially in scholarship on the Early Modern court; cf., Colantuono, Renaissance Science of Procreation.

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and under particular circumstances. As they took on the roles of virtuous kings, captured barbarians, beautiful women, and monstrous giants inhabitants of the Palazzo Te manufactured their gendered subjectivity. They performed gender over time, via repeated visits, and through time, as they interacted with and teased out the many spatio-temporal possibilities around them. Exempla were therefore an important way in which Early Modern beholders built up the ‘sedimentation of gender norms’ that constituted the illusion of an abiding, timeless self.6 During his first visit in 1530 Charles V saw a palace that was still in the midst of its conceptual and physical creation. At that time, the Palazzo Te was roughly halfway complete and the rooms from the Camera di Ovidio to the Camera delle Aquile, as well as the courtyard, northern and western façades and service rooms to the west had been constructed and decorated (Fig. 5). The emperor left Mantua in late April of 1530, and by July work on the Palazzo Te had recommenced.7 Giulio was overseeing several projects at that time, including the construction of the Palazzina Paleologa and additions to the villa at Marmirolo (both now destroyed), and members of his workshop therefore executed his designs for the Palazzo Te. By the time of the Emperor’s return in 1532 it appears that the Loggia di Davide, garden façade, Camera degli Stucchi, and Camera degli Imperatori were complete, with the Sala dei Giganti only partially frescoed.8 The smaller rooms to the southwest of the Sala dei Giganti and the Appartamento del Giardino were likely finished after the Emperor’s departure, though they similarly demonstrate the interest of both artist and patron in classicizing imagery and virtuous exemplars.9 In 1532 the Palazzo Te was a building that had responded to Charles V’s earlier visit, but one that was also in the process of coming into being.

Setting an Example In constructing their courtly personas Giulio Romano and his beholders looked to the humanist tradition of exemplum, which provided models to imitate as well as those to avoid. While exemplum was first and foremost a rhetorical and textual 6 Butler, Gender Trouble, 190-191. 7 On 11 July 1530 Primaticcio referenced ongoing work ‘sul Te’ in a letter to Federico. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1. 342. 8 Few documents survive that record this phase of work on the Palazzo Te. However, the garden façade appears to have been complete and frescoes in the Loggia di Davide also seem to have been finished by November 1532, although many of the stuccoes were executed later. No extant documents record payments for work in the Camera degli Stucchi or the Camera degli Imperatori; there is general agreement that these rooms were complete by 1532 because the years 1530-1532 correspond to a lack of specificity in the documents which would account for the omission of these rooms from payment records. Oberhuber, “L’apparato decorativo,” 365-374. The vault of the Sala dei Giganti had been completed by October 1532, though it appears that the walls took substantially longer; two years later in 1534 only the eastern and southern walls had been frescoed. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.571,.1. 633-634. 9 Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.23-44.

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practice, it also provided fertile ground for Renaissance artists and patrons.10 Exemplars appear throughout the Palazzo Te, but they are especially prevalent in the portions of the building completed after 1530. David defeats Goliath and commits adultery in the Loggia di Davide, serving at once as a positive and negative example; Scipio Africanus refuses ransom for a female prisoner and returns her to her family in the Camera degli Imperatori; the giants are soundly punished for their failed attempt to conquer Olympus in the Sala dei Giganti; and Atilius Regulus goes valiantly to his death in the rooms of the Secret Garden. Exemplum and allegory were some of the primary modes of interpretation in the Renaissance, meaning that courtly beholders would have been well-versed in piercing their veiled layers of significance.11 Exemplary images were rhetorical in that they intended to persuade the audience to follow virtue and reject vice.12 They persuaded precisely because beholders forged relationships with historical and fictitious bodies that, at the Palazzo Te, often hover above or tower over them.13 Rather than positing the body as closed, exampla demonstrate that Renaissance beholders were receptive to the models they saw pictured around them. The self could be penetrated and acted upon by images and spaces that were emotionally and physically touching.14 In addition to their ethical purpose, allegories and exempla also provided entertainment for courtiers who could demonstrate their erudition and virtue, as well as their superior artistic taste. Interpretation was, in fact, part of the fun. Giulio added another layer of interpretive pleasure through his repeated references to the art and architecture of both Rome and Mantua. With its concentric rings of gawking deities, the Sala dei Giganti engages with Andrea Mantenga’s oculus, located in the nearby Palazzo Ducale; the Sala’s impression of tumbling buildings also recalls the ruins of Rome. Such visual imitation not only allowed beholders to demonstrate their erudition; it also displayed the artist’s engagement with artistic traditions, and his ability to follow and create virtuous models. Vasari praised artists who imitated the best models, whether those were ancient or modern.15 Castiglione likewise advised the courtier to pursue grace through selective imitation, recommending that he take from each model ‘that which seems most worthy of praise’.16 Giulio’s allusions to well-known Roman and Mantuan monuments were not simply a matter of visual 10 For textual exemplum and imitation, see especially G.W. Pigman, “Versions of Imitation,” 1-32; Timothy Hampton, Writing from History. 11 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 112-114. I am somewhat collapsing allegory and exemplum, for both aimed to persuade beholders through the depiction of abstract images associated with virtue or vice, and both required a knowledgeable and engaged beholder. 12 Hans Belting, “The New Role of Narrative,” 151-168. 13 Hampton, Writing from History, 9. 14 For the permeability of beholders to works of art, see Stephen J. Campbell, “Mantegna’s Camera Picta,” 314-333; Randolph, Touching Objects; Turner, Eros Visible, 13-23. 15 Sharon Gregory, “The unsympathetic exemplar,” 7-16. 16 Castiglione, Courtier, 32 (I.26).

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one-upmanship. Rather, through repeated depictions of exemplary art and architecture, Giulio demonstrated his ability to imitate the art of antiquity and of the Renaissance, a feat that earned him the praise of Pietro Aretino who called Giulio’s work ‘anticamente moderno e modernamente antico’.17 In addition to fashioning his own artistic identity, Giulio created a palace that contained multiple temporal strands and potentialities, and a place that was activated by inhabitants who built up spaces through repeated performances and practices. Exemplars at the Palazzo Te collapse time. They ask inhabitants to model their behavior after a previous act or person, thereby merging past and present through action and experience.18 The Palazzo Te invited Federico, Charles, and their courtiers to reenact the triumphs of Roman emperors, the virtues of Scipio, and the erudition of Alexander the Great. The examples cited at the Palazzo Te exhorted beholders to make the past reappear in the present by performing the virtues they saw depicted in the spaces around them. Furthermore, this process of identification and imitation was repeated in the city streets, where triumphal processions hailed Charles V as a new Caesar and exhorted participants to recreate the glories of ancient Rome in contemporary Mantua. The spaces of the palace were produced over time, both physically as workers fitted bricks together to make walls, and socially as inhabitants interacted with and activated the images and structures around them. Exempla do not simply reflect ideal behaviors and virtues, but seek to produce and instill them. Renaissance exemplars are therefore bound up in the construction and negotiation of identity.19 The central ceiling fresco of the Camera degli Imperatori depicts a moment in which the victorious Julius Caesar ordered the captured plans and correspondence of Pompey to be burnt so that Caesar and his armies would not have an advantage over their enemies (Fig. 27). In proposing Caesar as a model of magnanimity the fresco admonishes Federico II and Charles V, both of whom led armies, to enact the same princely virtue and to incorporate it into their princely personas. Exempla can be said to be performative because they aim to produce the fantasy of an essential subject. Although exemplary behaviors are performed through corporeal signs and utterances, they nevertheless create the impression that virtue flows from an inner, unreachable source. As he processed through the triumphal arches erected throughout Mantua, including the Porta del Te and the garden façade of the Palazzo Te, Charles V was not expressing his victorious and virtuous nature, but manufacturing an identity based upon the repeated performance of imperial conquest.

17 This phrase might be loosely translated as ‘classically modern and modernly classical’. Ettore Camesasca, Lettere sull’arte, 1.215. 18 John D. Lyons, Exemplum, 11. 19 Hampton, Writing from History, 10.

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While exempla had far ranging uses, they were perhaps most effective when addressed to the respective roles of men and women in society.20 Examples could construct and enforce normative gender roles by portraying laudable actions to be copied, and by depicting the consequences of transgressive conduct. The Palazzo Te confronted Federico and his guests with examples of ancient emperors, military heroes, and biblical kings. Like the elaborate costumes and armor they donned for triumphal entries, courtiers could try on and inhabit various classicizing personas. These performative façades obscured the construction of masculinity by presenting it as timelessly heroic.21 Individuals could also identify across genders.22 While the most recognizable example might be that of men on the Renaissance stage playing the parts of women, exemplars could also incite transformative identification. As we will see, female beholders at the Palazzo Te could partake in the victory offered by the garden façade, and men could see themselves as the object of an evaluating gaze in the Camera degli Imperatori. Courtiers enacted a shifting series of façades that were as incomplete and fragmentary as the palace and its unfinished rooms. Like the courtier’s exemplary persona, gender is produced on the surface. Gestures, speech, mannerisms, and movements signify the presence of an abiding gender identity that is, in fact, ephemeral. Gender is a ‘play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause’.23 Gender as normatively performed always points to what it is not: masculine is not feminine, and feminine is not masculine. Individuals might act as if they are expressing a gender identity that already exists, but masculinity and femininity are malleable façades that are built up over time through repeated, and even mundane, gendered behaviors. Gender is just as impermanent as the decorations that Giulio Romano created for the triumphs of Charles V, and it is as constructed as the spaces of the Palazzo Te. Examples also carry a contradiction within themselves.24 Figures and stories chosen as examples of laudable actions are themselves abnormal, and they thus paradoxically attempt to inspire normative action by citing exceptions. Scipio Africanus became an example of mercy because other Roman generals routinely mistreated their prisoners, perhaps especially their beautiful female prisoners. Many of the exempla at the Palazzo Te are also indebted to multiple literary and pictorial texts, and meaning is thus something made as individuals and groups navigate competing significances.25 Moreover, allegories and exempla were thought to represent the ‘beauty and truth of all the Virtues and Arts’, that in the words of Christoforo Giarda, were ‘divorced from all matter and yet adumbrated, if not perfectly expressed, in 20 Margaret Franklin, “Boccaccio’s Amazons,” 13-20. 21 Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 29-30. 22 Valerie Traub, Thinking Sex, 24-25, 229-64. 23 Butler, Gender Trouble, 184-185. 24 Lyons, Exemplum, 33. 25 Belting, “The New Role of Narrative,” 164; Periti, Courts of Religious Ladies, 155.

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colours’.26 In other words, moralizing examples set up a play of visual surfaces that signified an essential identity. Yet, as Giarda hints, the representation could not fully communicate inner truth because exemplarity was not an abiding moral concept, but a discourse.27 Exempla are one way that gendered façades are produced. They call on beholders to model their behavior after historical or mythological characters, thereby constructing an identity that seeks to mask its ephemeral nature by appearing immutable and timeless. At the Palazzo Te exemplars invite beholders to penetrate representational surfaces to find that virtue and identity are not stable, but are discursively produced. The images and spaces of the palace re-present multiple pasts and presents, while asking inhabitants to participate in the creation of a future self. The palace therefore staged gender identity as something that is constructed through successive performative acts. Because such examples contain layers of meaning that require interpretation by an audience, they also contain the possibility of confusion and subversion.

Mantua Triumphant During the Emperor’s visit in 1530, and again in 1532, Mantua became Rome, clothing itself in the art, architecture, and ritual of the ancient city. However, Mantua’s transformation was only skin deep, a performance of imperial spectacle created through ephemeral stucco arches and statues that masqueraded as marble. Giulio was intimately involved in the planning and execution of the Emperor’s triumphal entries into Mantua, providing drawings and plans for the monuments that marked important civic sites.28 Those drawings and plans, in turn, were incorporated into his later work at the Palazzo Te. On one level, the palace gave enduring form to temporary processional architecture. However, I want to argue that Giulio’s purposeful re-use of designs from triumphal entries in the post-1530 phase of the palace created heterogeneous spaces that moved between temporal and geographic loci. The Palazzo Te is not a space of stasis; rather, it is a space that constructs and accommodates multiple durations, manifold narratives, and numerous identities.29

26 Christophoro Giarda, Bibliothecae Alexandrinae Icones Symbolicae. For the original text and further interpretation, see Ernst H. Gombrich, “Icones Symbolicae,” 163-192. 27 Lyons, Exemplum, 18. 28 Vasari notes that ‘[f]or the entry of the Emperor Charles V into Mantua, Giulio, by order of the Duke, made many most beautiful festive preparations in the form of arches, scenery for dramas, and a number of other things’. Vasari, Lives, 2.134. The Emperor’s 1530 visit does not appear to have included a drama, and it therefore seems that Vasari collapsed both the 1530 and 1532 triumphal entries into one, meaning that Giulio designed the apparati for both entries. 29 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender; Massey, For Space. Cf., Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory.

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The Renaissance triumphal entry united two long-lived traditions: the ancient Roman triumph and the Medieval royal entry. The arches, statues, and inscriptions employed in the Renaissance triumph made use of Classical iconography; the composition of the procession, which placed the king under a canopy attended by nobility and the clergy and followed by civic and guild representatives, was Medieval in character.30 Although triumphal entries had been staged in Renaissance Italy before the arrival of Charles V, the revival of the Roman Empire that Charles represented allowed artists, humanists, and Italian nobility to fully deploy the Classical language of the entry.31 Through the arches, garlands, and statues designed by Giulio Romano Mantua briefly became an ideal Classical city. Its principal buildings were highlighted and its winding Medieval streets were forged into a coherent processional route.32 Entries were also carefully orchestrated social events that allow us to examine the gendered experiences of the participants. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly has argued that such ceremonies were not simply demonstrations of political and dynastic relationships, but were also the means by which such relationships were created.33 Likewise, entries and the rituals associated with them established, perpetuated, and displayed normative gender roles. Moreover, triumphal processions provided the opportunity for individual actors to negotiate, and at times even subvert, socially mandated gender roles. The gendered implications of Renaissance triumphal processions have not been fully explored. Triumphal entries are generally analyzed as political maneuvers aimed at representing the (male) prince’s military prowess, erudition, and magnificence.34 Women could also be the primary focus of an entry, but these were almost always associated with marriage and have been treated largely as a separate genre.35 Men and women might thus be expected to experience the triumphal parade differently, 30 Bonner Mitchell, “Triumphal Entry,” 410; Roy C. Strong, Art and Power, 7. 31 In 1443 Alfonso of Aragon entered the city of Naples using the form of a Classical triumph. Ten years later Borso d’Este entered Reggio thronged by triumphal carts, chariots and virtues such as Justice and Genius. Petrarch’s Trionfi and Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili also fueled interest in the Classical triumph. Strong, Art and Power, 44-46. 32 Ibid., 74; 86-87. 33 “Early Modern European Festivals,” 15. 34 Strong, Art and Power; Bonner Mitchell, The Majesty of the State; J. R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring, Court Festivals; J. R. Mulryne, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, and Margaret Shewring, Europa Triumphans; Margaret Ann Zaho, Imago Triumphalis. 35 There are several notable exceptions to this rule, mostly during the seventeenth century. In 1638 the Dutch welcomed Marie de’ Medici to Amsterdam with a triumphal entry, presenting her downfall at the French court as a victory. Caspar van Baerle and Moeyaert Claes Cornelisz, Marie de Medicis entrant dans Amsterdam, ou, Histoire de la reception faicte à la reyne mere du roy tres-chrestien, par les bovrgmaistres & bourgeoisie de la ville d’Amsterdam. The entry of Mary Stuart, Princess of Orange, into Amsterdam in 1660 was organized to celebrate the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. Charles did not participate and Mary therefore stood in as victor. Jochen Becker, “The Princess of Orange’s Welcome into Amsterdam in 1660,” 575-583. For a nuanced approach to women’s movements in the Early Modern city, see Alice E. Sanger, Art, Gender and Relgious Devotion.

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especially because female participation in civic ceremony was largely restricted to that of observer.36 Male participants might become the embodiment of imperial virtue and military strength associated with triumphal arches in the Renaissance.37 In contrast, the bridal entry focused on the woman as a symbol of exchange between noble houses and a vehicle of dynastic continuity, while paradoxically allowing her an unusually public role in court ceremony.38 Female participants might therefore be expected to experience the procession as a moment of agency that celebrated their visibility, and also a moment of erasure as their own identities were once again subsumed into those of their male kin. When ephemeral triumphal arches were given lasting form at the Palazzo Te, they did not still the durational aspect of Renaissance entries, nor lock them into precise meanings. Rather, they created spaces for the continual and iterative staging of masculinity and femininity. Gendered performances unfolded over and through time as inhabitants experienced and interacted with the palace as well as the ephemeral spaces it represented. The triumphal garden façade might have afforded a pleasurable experience of transgression to its beholders, regardless of their gender. Men could take on the role of the emperor, thereby becoming victorious over their enemies and the ruler of vast territories, but they might also see themselves as the defeated captives over whom winged victories presided. Women could assume masculine attributes of command, fortitude, and victory. In many ways, Giulio functioned as a set designer, creating a city-wide theater in which Charles V, Federico II, ladies, and courtiers could perform the fealty, magnificence, and nobility expected of them. Yet, the stage affected the performance, creating exemplary personas that the Emperor and his vassal were asked to inhabit. Giulio’s apparati participated in the construction of an ideal of imperial rule that was presented to the newly-crowned Emperor as he marched through Italy.39 One of the arches erected in 1530 depicted Charles amongst the panoply of Holy Roman Emperors as conqueror and peace-bringer, while a statue of Victory atop a Trajanic column was constructed in such a way that it seemed about to alight from its perch to crown the Emperor with a laurel wreath (Fig. 18).40 Coupled with the many salvos from Gonzaga artillery, the triumphal apparati communicated the ideal of imperial peace brought about through military conquest.41 The precedence of the entry, which stipulated Federico’s position in the cavalcade behind both the Emperor and the Duke of 36 For women’s limited, but meaningful, participation in civic ceremony, see Adrian W.B. Randolph, “Renaissance Genderscapes,” 21-49. 37 Zaho, Imago Triumphalis, 61. 38 See Chapter 5, which focuses on Gonzaga bridal processions in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 39 Strong, Art and Power, 79-81. 40 Romano, Cronaca, 242. 41 Amedeo Belluzzi, “Carlo V a Mantova e Milano,” 49-50.

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Fig. 18: Giulio Romano, Victory, 1530. Pen and ink, brush and brown wash on paper, 38.5 x 25.7 cm, inv. no. 332. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna.

Ferrara concretized social hierarchies even as it reminded the Mantuan Marquis of his imminent elevation to the title of Duke. The multiple triumphal arches covered in garlands, the tapestries hanging from the windows, and the impressive wardrobe of Federico and his courtiers constructed the Gonzaga dynasty’s magnificence, even as they served as evidence of the family’s wealth. For Giulio Romano, the Emperor’s triumphs presented a further opportunity to exploit his intimate knowledge of Rome and its ruins. When he recommenced work at the Palazzo Te in 1530, Giulio re-examined the Classical heritage of Rome and its

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revival in Renaissance Mantua, formulating an approach that drew upon the artistic traditions of both cities. Doubled visual and temporal references collapsed past and present, creating spaces that produced performances of courtly gender even while revealing that product to be a fantasy. After Charles V’s departure the physical absence of both ancient and contemporary emperors was hidden behind layers of imagery that referenced the glorious Classical and Mantuan pasts. The Palazzo Te became the site wherein the imperial presence could be re-produced through architecture, painting, and performance, and where that presence could instill virtue in its beholders. Throughout the spaces of the Palazzo Te, Giulio Romano and Federico II Gonzaga sought to create the illusion of a timeless imperial essence in Mantua, and in so doing revealed the ephemeral and constantly shifting façade of courtly and gender identity. The latter phase of the Palazzo Te is, if possible, even more overtly classicizing than the areas of the palace completed before 1530. Frescoes in earlier rooms such as the Camera di Ovidio or the Camera di Psiche draw on Greek and Roman mythology, and the actual and depicted architecture of the palace likewise recalls ancient precedents, but the work completed after 1530 makes reference to specific buildings and monuments from ancient Rome and Renaissance Mantua. The dual allusions to Rome and Mantua tied the new duchy and its ruling dynasty to the imperial tradition of ancient Rome and the Holy Roman Empire of contemporary Europe. As inhabitants walked through its spaces and opened themselves up to its imagery the Palazzo Te became a place wherein the victorious Roman past and the magnificent Mantuan present intersected. In collusion with its beholders, the palace continually produced bodies and subjects that would spread beyond its walls, taking its structures and practices into the future.

Past, Present, Absent As he stood in the Loggia di Davide in November of 1532, Charles might have remembered a conversation that took place two years earlier. Federico had shown the Emperor the unfinished loggia in 1530, and at that time the Duke had explained ‘everything which was to come’ to his guest.42 By 1532 the loggia and its façade were complete and Charles V could compare his vision of what the space would be with its realization. The Loggia di Davide bridges the temporal gap between the earlier and later building phases of the palace and connects spaces within it (Fig. 5). It lies at the intersection of the earlier wing to the north and the latter wing to the south, while also providing a transition between the courtyard, the interior spaces of the palace, and the extensive gardens. It is a place of possibility wherein inhabitants may choose 42 ‘[I]l tutto di quello havea a riuscire’. Romano, Cronaca, 262.

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to return to the palace proper, enter the courtyard and eventually exit the grounds of the Palazzo Te, or advance in the vast gardens visible just beyond the loggia. The loggia is a vast, barrel-vaulted place as imposing for the sheer volume of space it encompasses as for its frescoes and other decorations (Pl. 6). At eye level, inhabitants might have been surrounded by busts of contemporary military leaders including Gattemellata, Consalvo Ferrante, Matthias Corvinus, Francesco Sforza, and Alfonso I d’Este.43 Frescoed lunettes above either door depict David’s defeat of Goliath: above the entrance to the Camera delle Aquile David vigorously decapitates his enemy, while over the doorway to the Camera degli Stucchi the biblical hero relaxes after his victory, strumming his lyre while resting one foot on the giant’s head. Above the entrance to the courtyard winged victories lift the Gonzaga impresa of Mount Olympus to the heavens, flanked on either side by lunettes depicting David wrestling a bear and a lion. On the ceiling vault David engages in another kind of conquest, first spying upon the beautiful Bathsheba and then killing her husband in order to win her. The transitions that occur in the loggia are both spatial and temporal: biblical, Classical, and contemporary histories are all represented in a locus that allows movement between the spaces and phases of the palace. As inhabitants walked through the loggia they experienced the victories and loves of David, the triumphs of the Romans, and the virtues of contemporary warriors simultaneously. The loggia stands at the intersection of time and space, implicating beholders in a history that moves between pasts and presents. Time collapses and expands under the beholder’s gaze, as it would have for Charles V as he imagined what would become of the loggia during his initial visit in 1530. Upon his return to the Palazzo Te in 1532 the Loggia di Davide represented the beginning, rather than the end, of the Emperor’s visit. As he walked through the space Charles V moved between past to present, witnessing both the passage of human history figured in the loggia’s decoration, and the dissonance between the current realization of a space that he had previously only imagined. The loggia therefore set the stage for the revival of Classical virtue that would occur through visitors’ interactions with the Palazzo Te. It instructed through example by picturing biblical and contemporary figures that could serve as models for appropriate princely behavior. Yet, the loggia does not present a stable frame of reference. Chronologies, personalities, and narratives merge together to create a space that offers a plethora of exemplary personas that courtiers may adopt, replace, or reject, just as they may choose how to move through the palace.44 43 In 1530 Federico commissioned these busts for the Palazzo Te from the sculptor Alfonso Lombardi. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.343-344, 1.361. They were completed and delivered, but it is difficult to ascertain whether or not they were installed. An inventory of Federico’s possessions prepared after his death in 1540 lists twenty-three antique and modern busts in his collection as the Palazzo Ducale, but provides no further details. No sculpture is recorded at the Palazzo Te. Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 310. 44 Cf. Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.

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Fig. 19: Loggia di Davide, view looking east toward the gardens, after 1530. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

Standing under the massive barrel vault, inhabitants were lured outside by the sights, sounds, and smells of the lush gardens with their fruit trees and fountains (Fig. 19). On a clear day, the bright Mantuan light contrasts sharply with the loggia’s shade, pulling the body through the eastern façade where the theme of virtuous victory continues. The northern, western, and courtyard façades playfully allude to courtly wit and artistic artifice with the combination of ashlar and rustic masonry, slipped triglyphs, enigmatic imprese, and leering masks. In contrast, the garden façade takes the form of a massive triumphal arch that overwhelms and even subsumes inhabitants. In the sixteenth century the arched façade was topped not by its current pediment, but by an attic, as can be seen in a drawing by Ippolito Andreasi executed in 1567 (Fig. 20).45 With its attic, the garden façade of the Palazzo Te would have closely resembled ancient Roman examples such as the Arch of Constantine. At the center 45 The drawing is part of a set of renderings of the architecture and decoration of the Palazzo Te, as well as some of the frescoes and paintings in the Palazzo Ducale. They were discovered and identified by Egon Verheyen, “Jacopo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings,” 62-70. Verheyen argues that the drawings are not artistic copies, but precise reproductions ordered by Jacopo Strada, who was, in turn, working at the behest of Albrecht V of Bavaria. The identification of Ippolito Andreasi as the artist behind the drawings was first made by Renate von Busch, “Studien zu deutschen Antikensammlungen,” 204-205. For the accuracy of the drawings as a record of the sixteenth-century appearance of the Palazzo Te, see Verheyen, “In Defense of Jacopo Strada,” 133-337. For a thorough account of the renovations of the palace in the eighteenth century, including the addition of the current pediment, see Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.229-279.

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Fig. 20: Ippolito Andreasi, Eastern façade of the Palazzo Te, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 18.2 x 84 cm, inv. 10920. © Museum Kunstpalast – Horst Kolberg – ARTOTHEK.

of the façade, three arches spring from trabeated columns, forming a serliana portal. The trabeation creates the effect of a broken entablature, which, like the dropped triglyphs of the courtyard, can be restored by the visitor’s imagination. On either side of the central archway four more rounded arches spring from slender columns which would have originally been echoed by the colonettes of the attic. At the time of the Emperor’s visit the façade was painted with winged victories standing over defeated barbarians further emphasizing the triumphal nature of the architectural forms (Fig. 56). Giulio modeled the forms of the garden façade after ephemeral and ancient triumphal arches, as well as other monuments that surrounded him in his native city of Rome. Giulio also modified the form of his arch, most notably in his use of serlianas and the equal height of all three arched openings. These transformations are indebted to the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine and to Giulio’s own architectural projects in Rome, such as the Villa Madama.46 Like the garden façade of the Palazzo Te, both Roman buildings have three massive barrel vaults of equal height that open into deep recesses. In addition to Roman precedents, Giulio had an example of triumphal Renaissance architecture available to him in Mantua: Leon Battista Alberti’s Sant’Andrea (Fig. 21). The basilica was designed in 1470 for Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga to house a relic of the blood of Christ and to accommodate the pilgrims that would come to venerate it.47 At the same time that he was overseeing work on the Isola del Te, Giulio also supervised a new building campaign at Sant’Andrea. His privileged access to the

46 Forster and Tuttle argued that Giulio derived the composition of the garden façade from a sixth-century mosaic of Theodoric’s palace at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. There is no evidence that Giulio ever traveled to Ravenna and no other visual citations from that city appear in his work. “The Palazzo Te,” 277. 47 In a letter dated October, 1470 Alberti wrote to Ludovico concerning his plan for Sant’Andrea clarifying that ‘the principal intention was to have a large space where many people will be able to view the blood of Christ (la intentione principale era per havere gran spatio dove molto populo capesse a vedere el sangue de Cristo)’. Transcribed by Eugene J. Johnson, S. Andrea, Appendix II, doc. I.

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Fig. 21: Leon Battista Alberti, Façade, designed c. 1470. Sant’Andrea, Mantua. Photo by author.

plans and fabric of the Mantuan basilica provided him with intimate knowledge of the building, as well as a unique opportunity for competitive imitation.48 Like the garden façade of the Palazzo Te, the façade of Sant’Andrea is based upon a Roman triumphal arch, while the interior is indebted to the enormous coffered vaults of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine. The rhythm of Giulio’s garden 48 The second building campaign began around 1530 and comprised the erection of the transepts to the height of the inner cornice, the north porch, the choir, sacristies, and part of the apse. Johnson has argued that Giulio’s fidelity to Alberti’s design meant that Giulio had access to the church’s original plans. Ibid., 23-26.

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Fig. 22: Leon Battista Alberti, Interior elevation. Sant’Andrea, Mantua. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

façade replicates that of the interior elevation of Sant’Andrea (compare Figs. 55 and 22). Like Alberti’s basilica, Giulio’s façade is organized around a monumental central archway with smaller arched openings that radiate outward. Additionally, like Alberti, Giulio alternated barrel-vaulted openings with smaller niches enclosed by pilasters and conceived of the Loggia di Davide as a series of intersecting barrel vaults. Finally, at Sant’Andrea Alberti incorporated a string course that runs around the interior of the building, weaving in and out of the barrel-vaulted side chapels and only disrupted by the massive pilasters. Giulio used a similar horizontal element at the Palazzo Te where an architrave runs continuously along the façade dipping into windowed niches and broken only by the central arches. While Giulio’s architrave is supported by pilasters rather than interrupted by them, it likewise unifies the structure and creates a horizontal visual movement that balances the vertical elevation. As in the interior of Sant’Andrea, the visual focus of the palace’s façade is the central archway, which not only captures the visitor’s eye, but propels her body through the building. In both structures the sense of rhythm created by alternating columns and archways and the broken string course or architrave compel corporeal movement. Like Alberti before him, Giulio did not create copies of previous architectural monuments. Instead, the Roman artist reorganized the interior elevation of Alberti’s basilica as an exterior façade in order to imbue the Palazzo Te with both the

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Fig. 23: Giulio Romano, Design for the Porta del Te, c. 1530-36. Pen and brown ink, 38.9 x 57.3 cm, inv. 14204. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna.

architectural rhythm and emotional impact of Sant’Andrea. Giulio combined Classical and contemporary elements to create a façade that was a hybrid of Rome and Mantua. Such a façade could evoke the victories of ancient Rome and remind inhabitants of the magnificence of the Gonzaga dynasty in Mantua. Moreover, both buildings create a sense of drama and awe that dwarfs the human figure and a processional impetus that draws inhabitants through the archways to enact their own procession. In contrast to the falling triglyphs of the courtyard or the robust rustication of the northern and western façades, the garden façade exemplifies Giulio’s growing interest in grand and triumphal spatial statements that engulf beholders. In addition to its relationship to Roman and Mantuan triumphal architecture, the garden façade of the Palazzo Te along with its nearby portal also re-enact the ephemeral apparati that Giulio created for the entries of Charles V in 1530 and 1532. No extant drawings record the arches that Giulio created in Mantua, but plans for the Porta del Te and a series of woodcuts in Giovanni Albicante’s Trattato del’intrar in Milano di Carlo V (1541), recording arches and apparati created by Giulio, provide insight into the kinds of decorations he might have produced in Mantua. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Porta del Te was closely related to the façades of the nearby palace (Fig. 23).49 49 The Porta del Te was destroyed in the nineteenth century, but there is general scholarly agreement that three surviving drawings represent the project: Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 360/1863; Vienna, Albertina, 14203; Vienna, Albertina, 14204. Albertina 14204 has the highest degree of finish and is considered to be the most definitive record of the archway’s appearance. Tafuri, “La porta del Te,” 380-383.

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Like the palace, the monumental gateway depicted the passage of time with heavily rusticated blocks, dropped triglyphs, and keystones that ruptured the pediments they supposedly supported. The Milan arches also employ architectural and sculptural motifs of varying temporalities. One arch uses the Doric Order and is surmounted by an equestrian statue of Charles V that evokes the well-known image of Marcus Aurelius, thought to represent ancient emperors from Constantine or Lucius Verus to Commodus.50 Between the attic and the arched doorway a frieze of triglyphs and metopes is reminiscent of the northern and western façades of the Palazzo Te. Like the Porta del Te and the ephemeral decorations in Milan, Giulio’s apparati celebrating Charles’ arrival in Mantua would have depicted the Emperor as a victorious hero who could make the Classical past live again. The eastern façade of the Palazzo Te creates a web of associations that play against one another: Mantuan, Roman, ephemeral, and enduring. The identities that Federico and his guests enacted as they walked through the façade were similarly unsettled. Meaning was made at the intersection of past and present through absences that signified: Mantua was a ‘new Rome’, not the Classical city.51 Emperors were everywhere depicted, but, except for his brief visit in 1532, the imperial body was absent. Inhabitants therefore looked to the past to mold a persona that was thoroughly modern. The presence of the imperial past is also emphasized in the Camera degli Stucchi where stucco soldiers in antique costume march around the room, mythological figures cover the barrel vault, and Hercules and Alexander the Great recline in lunettes at either end (Fig. 24). The soldiers mimic ancient relief sculpture and are arranged in two registers of marching and mounted figures. They stride boldly forward accompanied by wagons and pack animals carrying spoils. Giulio coupled energetic poses and gestures with a densely layered composition and varying depths of relief to create a sense of immediacy that counteracts their placement high on the wall. The procession surges forward, despite the backwards glances of its figures and the tangle of lances and limbs. Like the Sala dei Cavalli or the Camera di Psiche, the Camera degli Stucchi engages in a dialogue between illusory and physical spaces, yet, unlike its predecessors, the Camera degli Stucchi does not employ trompe l’oeil effects. As its name suggests, the Camera degli Stucchi was the only space in which Giulio eschewed painting and relied solely on stucco work to adorn the room. Ernst Gombrich argued that the stucco figures were Giulio’s attempt to resolve the tension between architecture and painting, for it is in the Camera degli Stucchi that the picture becomes a part of the 50 Bober, Ruth, and Susan, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, no. 176. The Lateran bronze is also used as a key example of Renaissance misdating and anachronic collapse by Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 135-146. 51 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, 5.56. Vasari praised many a city as the ‘new Rome’, which perhaps blunts the observation. However, it seems to me that Vasari was referring to the ability of a city or a work of art to be both classicizing and modern.

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Fig. 24: Camera degli Stucchi, south and west walls with ceiling vault, 1530-32. Stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

supportive wall.52 Rather than resolving tension, I would suggest that the stuccoes call attention to the function of the wall as pictorial support, making it a room that is dominated by the plastic presence of the walls, rather than by their disappearance. The stucco figures celebrate surface rather than depth, and privilege corporeality over illusion. They physically inhabit the room, both asserting their presence and reminding beholders that the performance of courtly values happens on the surface, and that every movement creates both an illusion and a physical reality. The Camera degli Stucchi also emulates both Roman and Mantuan monuments. In their simulation of relief sculpture arranged in registers and the use of ancient Roman military figures, the stuccoes recall the Column of Trajan. In fact, the room’s similarity to the Column of Trajan was what made it noteworthy. Giorgio Vasari remarked that the room contained ‘all the soldiers that are on Trajan’s Column in Rome’.53 In 1567 Jacopo Strada commented that the dress and appearance of the 52 Gombrich, “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I,” 98-99. 53 Vasari, Lives, 2.129.

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Fig. 25: Giulio Romano, Victory Inscribing the Name of Charles V on a Shield, 1530. Pen and brown ink, 2.22 x 1.39 cm. Uffizi, Florence, 1492E.

figures was ‘similar to those of the Column of Trajan’.54 However, the figures in the Camera degli Stucchi do not represent a military campaign, but a victorious return.55 Giulio borrowed themes and compositional arrangement from the Column of Trajan, but the processional experience of the room was inspired by the ceremonial and artistic life of the Gonzaga court. Giulio had previously created a facsimile of the Column of Trajan for the 1530 arrival of Charles V in Mantua.56 He then used the drawings for these and other triumphal decorations as models for figures in the Camera degli Stucchi, further strengthening the bonds between ancient Rome, contemporary Mantua, and the Palazzo Te. Victory Writing on a Shield, a small stucco located on the west wall, is closely related to an earlier drawing of Victory Inscribing the Name of Charles V on a Shield, which was one of the many allegorical figures that greeted the Emperor in 1530 (Figs. 24 and 25).57Another version of Victory and her scribal shield appear 54 ‘[S]ono imitatj simili a quelli della colonna traiana’. Transcribed by Verheyen, “Jacopo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings,” Appendix II, 69. 55 Oberhuber, “L’apparato decorativo,” 367. 56 Bruno Adorni, “Apparati effimeri urbani e allestimenti teatrali,” 498-499. 57 Hartt argued that the drawing was a preparatory sketch for the Camera degli Stucchi. However, Verheyen has noted several differences between the drawing and the stucco and argued that the drawing was instead linked to the entry of Charles V. Hartt, Giulio Romano, cat. no. 199; Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te, 124-125.

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again in designs for the fresco decoration of the garden façade (Fig. 56).58 By the time the figures of the Camera degli Stucchi were created the Column of Trajan had accumulated its own Mantuan heritage. It was no longer solely a monument that signified the might and glory of ancient Rome; the column also signified the glorious presence of the Holy Roman Emperor in Mantua. Like the Loggia di Davide, the Camera degli Stucchi collapsed time, creating several temporal trajectories at once. The loggia gathered figures from different historical eras together in one space, but in stucco Giulio represented an ancient monument that he had already imbued with a Mantuan character. The Camera degli Stucchi also references Mantuan artistic traditions, namely Andrea Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar, a series of paintings likely commissioned by Federico II’s father, Francesco II Gonzaga (Fig. 26).59 By 1532 the paintings hung at the Palazzo San Sebastiano, a building on the edge of Mantua proper, and just across the river from the Palazzo Te.60 Yet, as Andrew Martindale has noted, Giulio’s imperial procession makes no direct reference to Mantegna’s Triumphs.61 Mantegna’s canvases are much larger, the figures therefore more carefully delineated, and the details more exacting. In contrast, the soldiers of the Camera degli Stucchi are rather generalized, their features less distinct, and the details of costume and accessories less archaeologically precise. While Mantegna’s Triumphs would have propelled inhabitants through the Sala Grande toward Francesco II Gonzaga’s quarters, the smaller scale of the Camera degli Stucchi only requires the beholder to turn around in order to participate in the procession. Giulio was, I suggest, self-consciously creating an absence that would signify. Like the triumphal façade of the Palazzo Te, the stuccoes also signify something that is missing. They are modeled after the Column of Trajan, one of the greatest standing monuments of ancient Rome, however Giulio’s stuccoes are neither ancient nor Roman. They are permanent constructions, immovable from the wall to which they are fixed, yet they are based upon designs for ephemeral decorations. The stucco procession calls to mind a similarly triumphal parade just across the river, but studiously refrains from direct visual reference to Mantegna’s celebrated paintings.

58 An even closer citation of the Uffizi drawing can be seen in a copy after a giulesque original, or perhaps the frescoes themselves. The drawing is preserved at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, inv. 15790. Cf. Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.339-342. 59 There is no conclusive documentary or pictorial evidence, but most scholars agree on the patronage of Francesco II. Bourne, Francesco II Gonzaga, 194-197. For an argument attributing the Triumphs to the patronage of Federico I, see David S. Chambers, “Andrea Mantegna, impronta del genio,” 507-520. 60 The original location of the Triumphs is still a matter of some debate, but by 1512 they had been moved to the Palazzo San Sebastiano where they hung in the Sala Grande. Andrew Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar, 92-95. 61 Ibid., 99.

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Fig. 26: Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar 6: The Corselet-Bearers, c. 1484-92. Tempera on canvas, 270.8 x 280.4 x 4.0 cm, inv. 403963. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018.

Both compositions are unmoored in time, though Giulio’s stuccoes could more aptly be described as triply temporally confusing.62 The archaeological specificity of Mantegna’s Triumphs suggests that they depict specific events, or illustrate a particular time, but they have eluded scholarly attempts to fix them in time or text.63 Giulio’s soldiers have similarly evaded efforts at temporal stasis, but they also self-consciously avoid citing their Mantuan forebears while proposing to supplant them as the definitive representation of Classical triumph. As Giulio was well aware, Mantegna’s Triumphs were one of the main attractions of Renaissance Mantua: visitors were taken to see them as one of the sites of the city, and they spawned a host of painted and printed copies.64 Federico II would have certainly 62 I hesitate to use Nagel and Wood’s term ‘anachronic’ to refer to the Camera degli Stucchi, if only because the images re-present not one temporal reality, but three: the Column of Trajan, Mantegna’s Triumphs, and the processions staged in honor of Charles V. Cf. Anachronic Renaissance. 63 As numerous studies have shown, the Triumphs combine multiple literary and visual sources. See especially, Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar, 56-74; Anthony Halliday, “Literary Sources,” 187-197; Stephen J. Campbell, “Mantegna’s Triumphs,” 91-105. 64 Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar, 97-102.

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taken Charles V to see the paintings, co-opting Mantegna’s classicizing work into broader imperial narratives the new Duke was creating in Mantua. Visitors to the Palazzo Te would have been prepared to compare the two processions, thereby demonstrating their knowledge of art and antiquities. Giulio withholds this courtly pleasure from his beholders, insisting on a difference between his stuccoes and Mantegna’s paintings, and between someone who visited Rome and someone who lived there. If the Camera degli Stucchi denied courtiers the kind of comparative interpretation that they might have expected, the play between the wall and its stuccoes aided in the construction of a performative façade. Stucco figures rest on the wall, recalling an imperial and Classical presence that exists only through depicted surfaces. The Camera degli Stucchi also underscores the fantasy of courtly artifice, wherein seemingly impenetrable façades signify what they lack. The Palazzo Te enjoins courtiers and ladies to construct and maintain such gendered veneers by building up a corporeal presence on the surface. In contrast to the celebration of surface in the Camera degli Stucchi, the Camera degli Imperatori juxtaposes the flatness of painting with the three-dimensionality of stucco. The central image, Caesar Burning Pompey’s Letters, is the only ceiling fresco in the palace proper which is rendered as a quadro riportato (Fig. 27).65 Alexander Placing the Works of Homer in a Coffer and the Continence of Scipio appear in the painted roundels, and heroic all’antica portraits are likewise parallel to the picture plane. As in the Camera degli Stucchi, Giulio has foregone the trompe l’oeil effects that characterized his earlier pictorial approach. Instead, he creates a sense of rigid order through the rhythmic spacing of the frescoes and the interlocking stucco pattern on the ceiling. Emotional intensity is communicated through the dramatic gestures and robust bodies of the figures, yet the sense of distance between the beholder and the frescoes is heightened by the quadro riportato technique. Only the stucco imprese physically assert themselves. The four devices most closely associated with Federico are gathered together and held aloft by winged victories and spiritelli in the corners: the boschetto, the salamander, the zodiac, and the Mons Olympus.66 All of these devices refer to the virtue of constancy, whether in love or in political affairs.67 The Camera degli Imperatori is the only room from the latter building phase of the Palazzo Te that bears the physical marks of Federico II in the form of his imprese, suggesting a close association between the Mantuan Duke and the Classical heroes depicted above. The frescoes depict virtues and the leaders who 65 The vault frescoes in the Loggia di Davide are largely parallel to the picture plane, but in David Spying on Bathsheba the perspective is somewhat slanted so that three sides of the octagonal frame of the fresco complete Bathsheba’s hexagonal bath. The frescoes in the Camera di Atilio Regolo in the Apartment of the Secret Garden are a combination of quadri riportati and foreshortened scenes. 66 The current frieze of playful putti was added in the early nineteenth century. Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.439-441. 67 Frederick Hartt, “Gonzaga Symbols in the Palazzo del Te,” 151-188; Ugo Bazzotti, “Imprese gonzaghesche,” 155-167.

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Fig. 27: Camera degli Imperatori, ceiling vault with Caesar Burning Pompey’s Letters (center), Continence of Scipio (center top), Alexander Placing the Works of Homer in a Casket (center bottom), and (starting at top right and moving clockwise), Warrior, Augustus (?), Warrior, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Philip of Macedon. Boschetto and Mons Olympus devices in the left and right corners, respectively, 1530-32. Fresco and stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

best exemplify them, while the imprese suggest that virtue ultimately resides in the person of Federico II. Ancient emperors and military leaders provide models for behavior, but they are less physically insistent than the Loggia di Davide or the garden façade. Instead, through his imprese, Federico is presented as someone who has followed in the footsteps of his Roman forebears and whom Renaissance beholders should attempt to emulate. Portraits of Roman emperors and Gonzaga family members that both exemplify and compel virtue also appear in the Camera Picta, a chamber in the Palazzo Ducale decorated by Andrea Mantegna at the behest of Ludovico Gonzaga (Fig. 30). The vaulted ceiling of the Camera Picta is most noteworthy for its fictive oculus, which will be discussed below, but it also contains portraits of the first eight Roman emperors. In the spandrels Mantegna included the virtuous and artistic exemplars Arion, Hercules, and Orpheus.68 The frescoes are generally interpreted as representations 68 The iconography of the Camera Picta is exhaustively discussed in Signorini, Opus Hoc Tenue. See also, R.W. Lightbown, Mangtegna, 112; Daniel Arasse, “Il programma politico,” 56-58. For an approach that focuses less on iconography, see Starn and Partridge, Arts of Power, 81-148.

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of princely virtues, namely fortitude, wisdom, and magnanimity, although Stephen Campbell has recently proposed that Mantegna selected figures and narratives that would signify and elicit human pathos.69 Mantegna paired these narrative scenes with portraits of ancient Roman emperors who function as guides to virtuous behavior as well as overseers of that behavior. Like the ceiling vault of the Camera Picta, Giulio Romano’s Camera degli Imperatori combines narrative and portraiture in order to provide examples of masculine virtues for the visitor’s contemplation and edification. Mantegna connected the virtues represented in the Camera Picta to Ludovico and his family by depicting them in portraits on the walls below. Giulio similarly represented the masculine virtues of the Camera degli Imperatori as the attributes of Federico II by including his imprese in the room. The Camera degli Imperatori and the Camera Picta create a feedback loop, for the pictured Gonzaga family members are at once represented as possessors of Classical virtues and enjoined to cultivate them through further action. The images create a dynamic relationship between beholders and image in which the beholder both acts and is acted upon.70 Through image and structure the Palazzo Te reconstructs the Classical past as a source of virtue and victory, and collapses it with the Mantuan present. Roman emperors, ancient heroes, and classicizing architecture recalled the virtuous past, asking beholders to perform that which they lacked. The palace is always pointing to bodies, virtues, and places that are missing. Through signifying absences the Palazzo Te became a site wherein inhabitants constructed and negotiated gender roles. The garden façade moves and ripples, alive with victorious figures and their prisoners; stuccoes soldiers march, at once part of the wall and walking freely across it; frescoes call forth a supposedly timeless performance of virtue that was only ever ephemeral.

Virtuous Bodies The power of exemplum lies in the beholder’s identification with, and assimilation of, the representational persona in front of her, thereby merging the self with the model. Giulio seems to have understood the ways in which exempla muddy temporal boundaries and break down the opposition between beholder and beheld, allowing for a merging of subject and object in order to construct the beholder’s actions and identity. The Palazzo Te does not simply depict virtuous exemplars; it also implicates the beholder’s body in the experience and reception of its surfaces and structures. In taking up exemplary positions, the palace’s inhabitants did more than interpret and 69 Campbell, “Mantegna’s Camera Picta,” 323-324. 70 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 109-121.

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learn from the images. They physically engaged with the palace in ways that re-presented gender roles. As inhabitants experienced the palace in and over time, they created performative layers that could reproduce or disrupt established gender roles. The frescoes of the Loggia di Davide are a case in point, for they pair David’s heroic defeat of Goliath with his less laudable pursuit of Bathsheba, depicting not only his desire for a married woman, but his murder of her husband (Fig. 28). David is at once a slayer of foes and a murderer of rivals, and thus functions as both an exemplum virtutis and a warning. On one level, the loggia asked Charles, Federico, and their courtiers to re-present the past by modeling their actions after those of the biblical king. Yet, like the depictions of mythological lovers in the Camera di Psiche and the enigmatic images of the zodiac in the Camera dei Venti, the frescoes in the Loggia di Davide are best understood as multivalent representations that allow beholders to negotiate different and divergent positions and identities. As I will argue, beholders could construct alternative interpretations in which David’s possession of Bathsheba is licensed and even empowering, and wherein Bathsheba also represents a kind of female agency. Early Modern art and literature cast Bathsheba as a dangerous seductress whose power was so great that she caused the downfall of the pious King David.71 Giulio Romano’s depiction of her does little to dispel such associations. In fact, by including the nude Bathsheba twice in both the Toilette of Bathsheba and David Spying on Bathsheba, Giulio heightens the erotic elements of the story. The representation of Bathsheba grooming herself for her encounter with the King as a scene separate from David’s act of gazing upon her in the bath is unusual, and perhaps unique, in sixteenth-century art.72 Giulio also visually likens Bathsheba to Venus through the inclusion of a mirror, held by an attendant, before which Bathsheba preens.73 Bathsheba’s self-reflexive act signifies her vanity and suggests that she actively sought to tempt David. She is partially clothed in the Toilette, but in the central scene of the Loggia, the Old Testament king, his servant, and the beholder all see her nude body. The execution is somewhat awkward, but Bathsheba is depicted in a serpentine pose that offers simultaneous views of her bared breasts, long legs, and flowing blond hair. The final scene represents the effects of Bathsheba’s wanton sexuality: a drunken Uriah is taken away to die on the battlefield so that he will not discover his wife’s affair with David.

71 Eric Jan Sluijter, “Rembrandt’s Bathsheba,” 83. 72 Elisabeth Kunoth-Leifels, Uber die Darstellungen der “Bathseba im Bade”, 34-49. Bathsheba is often depicted bathing, but David is generally present, as in the central fresco at the Palazzo Te. The depiction of Bathsheba’s toilette sans David did not become widespread until the seventeenth century, and even then was primarily depicted in Northern European painting. 73 Santore, “The tools of Venus,” 179.

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Fig. 28: Loggia di Davide, ceiling vault with (left to right), Toilette of Bathsheba, David Spying on Bathsheba, and Drunkenness of Uriah, 1530-32. Fresco with stucco roundels. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

In the biblical narrative David admits to wrong-doing and repents, but the pictorial narrative implicates Bathsheba whose vanity and licentiousness are highlighted in the Toilette. Pairing an alluring Bathsheba with an image of her unfortunate husband allowed beholders to appreciate the tension between voyeuristic pleasure at the sight of a nude body and the knowledge that such pleasure could have dire consequences.74 The loggia implicates beholders in an act of looking that it condemns. As they step into the loggia and look up, both male and female beholders partake in David’s illicit gaze and become the king; but they cannot know what the results of their actions will be before taking them. The assumed biblical persona is not a self-conscious production through mimicry or imitation. Rather, the loggia imposes upon beholders, causing their metamorphosis through its own agency. As in Jupiter and Olympia in the Camera di Psiche, the scenes in the Loggia di Davide elicit the voyeuristic gaze only to demonstrate its deadly consequences (Pl. 1 and Fig. 28). In looking upon the nudity of Bathsheba male courtiers followed the example of David, but they are open to charges of lasciviousness, adultery, and perhaps even murder. It is worth noting that Federico had, in fact, put his lover’s husband to death in 1528.75 While it seems bizarre that Federico would allude to such a 74 Sluijter, “Rembrandt’s Bathsheba,” 76. 75 Isabella Boschetti’s husband, Francesco Cauzzi Calvisano, reportedly attempted to poison her and fled to Este territory after his failure. Federico II wrote to Alfonso I d’Este, who captured and executed the criminal in Modena. Davari, “Federico Gonzaga,” 448-453. Federico’s strongly-worded to letter Alfonso can be found at ASMn, AG, b. 2194, f. 179r-v.

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scandal via fresco, doing so could reinforce his authority as one who, like David, is not subject to the same laws as other men. While Federico and Charles V could exercise the power of life and death over their subjects, the Loggia di Davide implies that the misuse of such power could be disastrous. David is presented as a hero who comes from behind to defeat his enemies, and even conquers bestial nature by wrestling a bear and a lion. He is also disastrously subject to the same base desires that characterize giants and beasts, yet he ultimately flourishes. As sly biographical reference, commentary on the nature of vision, or exemplum the frescoes offer no easy outlet for the male beholder, who is at once exhorted to follow David and then rhetorically punished for doing so. The significances for a female beholder are similarly complex. Like the image of Pasiphae in the Camera di Psiche, the Bathsheba frescoes appear to direct the female inhabitant through negative example. In contrast to the vain and unfaithful Bathsheba, the court lady should ‘be thought no less chaste, prudent, and gentle than she is agreeable, witty and discreet’.76 Like her male counterparts, the female courtier must constantly please and delight her audience. She must practice sprezzata purità, or careless purity, wherein she mediates between speaking of and arousing sexual desire while maintaining her chastity.77 Bathsheba’s failure lies not in arousing David’s desire, but only in giving in to it. Both the sexual culture of the Renaissance and the visual composition of the images complicate such a straightforward reading. Women such as Isabella Boschetti, Cecilia Gallerani, and Laura Eustochia, respectively the mistresses of Federico II Gonzaga, Ludovico Sforza, and Alfonso I d’Este, were rarely punished for their illicit liaisons and were often the recipients of both social and economic benefits.78 In contrast to Uriah, the male family members of Renaissance mistresses often encouraged and even solicited the sexual attention of their princes, and the relationships reinforced social bonds between the prince and his courtiers.79 Bathsheba appears to be offered as a negative exemplar, but her availability and her sexual relationship with David were exactly the kinds of behaviors for which Renaissance mistresses were rewarded. The form and composition of the frescoes may also have carried special valence for women. In both the Toilette and David Spying, Bathsheba is centrally located and emphasized by the gazes and gestures of the other figures, thus endowing her with visual preeminence. Uriah is far from a sympathetic figure: he has fallen drunkenly to the ground, knocking over his wine glass in the process. His helpless sprawl 76 Castiglione, Courtier, 151 (III.5). 77 For sprezzata purità and its relationship to feminine gender performance, see Chapter 1. 78 Boschetti’s case is extremely unusual; I know of no other court mistress whose husband attempted to kill her. Although historians have generally assumed that Francesco Calvisano was motivated by jealousy, his timing suggests otherwise. By 1528, the year in which Francesco tried to poison his wife, the affair between Boschetti and Federico had been going on for at least a decade and she had born Federico two children. 79 Helen S. Ettlinger, “Visibilis et Invisibilis,” 770-793; Timothy McCall, “Traffic in mistresses,” 125-136.

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emphasizes his emasculating lack of temperance and judgment. Uriah’s long and unruly beard and hair, his rugged features, and the even position of his body mirror that of the decapitated head of Goliath in the nearby fresco of David Playing a Lyre (Pl. 6). Moreover, the octagonal form of the frescoes is reminiscent of deschi da parto, painted and decorated trays presented to Renaissance women after the birth of a child.80 Deschi were designed to be handled and passed around, and thus, as Adrian Randolph has argued, were experienced from varying angles and perspectives.81 The Bathsheba frescoes also replicate the viewing experience of the deschi, for there is no common ground line or orientation between the three scenes. Bathsheba at Her Toilette faces to the north, David Spying upon Bathsheba faces east, and The Drunkenness of Uriah must be viewed from the south (Fig. 28). There is no one place in which the beholder can stand in order to take in all three frescoes at once. Instead, she must move throughout the loggia, twisting and turning as she gazes up at the images. I do not mean to argue that Giulio Romano purposefully set out the replicate the form and experience of deschi. He is not known to have produced any birth salvers, though he must have been familiar with them. However, female visitors who had frequent and intimate encounters with the deschi may have experienced the Bathsheba frescoes in a similar manner. Like many of the deschi, the frescoes present the dangers of transgressive femininity while also offering moments of female agency and power. And, like the deschi, even when the frescoes use linear perspective, the sense of geometrically precise space is fractured by mobile viewing practices that challenge the totality of the perspectival system.82 Using Bathsheba as a negative exemplar, the frescoes encourage women to construct a gender identity based upon chastity and modesty. They also challenge that identity by reminding women of the potential rewards of illicit sexual liaisons and presenting an experience linked to moments of female agency and visibility. One of the ways that the Loggia di Davide may have made women visible was tied to the experience of the triumphal garden façade. In Mantua the garden façade would have pointed not only to Roman and Mantuan monuments, but also to ephemeral structures erected in the city to welcome foreign dignitaries and new brides. Giulio’s ephemeral arches also used Classical mythology and Roman heroes to guide beholders, who activated the apparati and the personas they depicted through movement. Passing from the Loggia di Davide into the gardens the visitor enacts her own triumph. The garden façade becomes a triumphal archway only when the inhabitant walks through it. In the same way, apparati are simple wood and stucco structures until transformed by the processions that passed through them. As inhabitants moved through the triumphal archways they embodied victorious ancient emperors. 80 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth. 81 Touching Objects, 173-175. 82 Ibid., 176-179. For a more detailed analysis of gender and linear perspective, see Chapter 4.

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Rather than picturing examples for courtiers to follow, in the garden façade beholders become the exemplum. As he continued his circuit of the palace, Charles V entered the Camera degli Imperatori where he could envision himself as the descendant of ancient emperors and heroes. Much like the triumphal decorations that included his portrait alongside those of other Habsburg emperors, the room and its frescoes cast Charles V as the descendant and inheritor of past glories. Similar to the portraits of his predecessors that adorned ephemeral arches throughout the city, the imperial portraits at the Palazzo Te both pictured and modeled his virtues.83 Portraits and virtuous actions portrayed in the Camera degli Imperatori show men long dead and actions never witnessed by the artists, yet thanks to Giulio’s robust style these figures seem to physically occupy the niches in which they appear. They make a claim to authenticity, both for painting, which is manifestly flat and lifeless, and for Mantua’s imperial status. Like the Loggia di Davide, the Camera degli Imperatori collapses time. Charles V, Federico II, and their courtiers were in the presence of rulers and events from the Classical past. The inclusion of Federico II’s imprese amongst the imperial imagery made the transition between past and present more immediate, as the visitor had only to shift his eyes to move from ancient Rome to Renaissance Mantua. In the Camera degli Imperatori the inclusion of multiple temporal arcs allowed beholders to see how ancient virtues are refigured in the person of Federico II, and, by extension, to visualize how they might achieve the same goal. At the same time, the classicizing frescoes and courtly devices reveal the ways in which princely identity was constructed. Façades of Classical virtue, courtly love, and masculine authority had to be constantly re-produced and maintained through pictorial representation and corporeal fabrications. If the imprese physically assert Federico’s presence in the room, they also recall his mistress, Isabella Boschetti. The device in the southeast corner depicts Amor standing between two trees, one alive and one dead (Fig. 29). In a letter explaining the significance of the device, its inventor Paride Ceresara writes that it ‘alludes to name of the person for whom it was made’ because Amor stands in a picola boschaya, or small forest.84 The device is therefore a witty play on Boschetti’s surname. The imprese of the salamander and the zodiac signify Federico’s constant and consuming love, therefore also pointing to Boschetti.85 Although she was never installed at the Palazzo Te and appears in no records of courtly entertainments on the island, Boschetti’s 83 The 1530 chronicle of Charles V’s entry into Mantua records that the triumphal arch in front of San Giacomo was decorated with ‘large statues made to seem like marble that depicted all the past Emperors of the house of His Imperial Majesty (statue grandi fatte et finte in foggia di marmore di figure di tutte li Imperatori passati dilla Casa dilla p[redet]ta M.tà Ces.a)’. Romano, Cronaca, 241-242. 84 ‘In questa impresa donque alludendo alla nome della persona per chi è fatta vostra signoria vederà una picola boschaya’. Transcribed by Peter Porçal, “Sulle imprese di casa Gonzaga,” 233. 85 Bazzotti, “Imprese gonzaghesche,” 155-167; Maurer, “A love that burns,” 385-386. The salamander, a creature believed to be impervious to fire, is accompanied by the motto, Quod huic deest me torquet, or ‘What it lacks torments me’, suggesting that Federico is wracked by the pain of a fiery love. The zodiac impresa

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Fig. 29: Camera degli Imperatori, Boschetto device, c. 1532. Stucco with gilding and pigment. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

implied presence pervades the palace through amorous devices that appear in fresco and stucco on both the exterior and interior of the building.86 depicts the planet Venus intersecting the constellation of Taurus, Federico’s sign, and is paired with the motto, in eodem semper, or ‘Always in the same place’, signifying that his love is constant. 86 The Stivini inventory, conducted 1540-1542, lists a number of people as guests at the Palazzo Te, including Francesco Gonzaga, the Mantuan ambassador to Rome, Nicola Maffei, the podestà of Viadana, and a number of donzelle, perhaps ladies-in-waiting. In addition, a certain Baptista is recorded as living at the palace, as are several groups of ragaccii, who are staying in the servants’ quarters on the second floor. Isabella Boschetti is not mentioned. Ferrari, Le collezioni Gonzaga, 66-69.

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For Federico and his guests, the witty visual byplay of the imprese might have facilitated homosocial bonding, as they utilized the themes of courtly and sexual love, the figurative presence of Boschetti, and the frescoes of triumphant military men to construct social relationships of dominance and submission.87 Women in general, and Boschetti in particular, become objects to be gazed at and acted upon, carriers of meaning rather than makers of it. At the same time, in the Petrarchan tradition of courtly love, the female beloved is also invested with the power to wound, captivate, and consume the male lover.88 Like exempla, courtly imprese rely upon contradictions and multiple visual and literary sources, making them unstable signifiers. In the Camera degli Imperatori Federico’s devices rest on and interrupt the cornice that divides the ceiling vault from the walls, forming the outermost layer of illusion. Moreover, the winged victories and spiritelli that support them appear hold back a curtain in order to reveal the imprese. They interrupt the geometric patterning of the ceiling vault in order to thrust Federico’s corporeal devices forward. The presence of a curtain or veil suggests that there is more to the imprese that the beholder can immediately see, at once spurring interpretation and suggesting that the true meaning lies elsewhere, in an interior space beyond the reach of mere surface representation.89 While many of the spiritelli gaze out and down at the beholder, the frescoed heroes above studiously avoid eye contact and instead look toward the narrative scenes or at one another. Like the stony spiritelli who support the portraits of Roman emperors in Mantegna’s Camera Picta, Giulio’s figures activate the space of the room, looking back at the beholder and collapsing the subject-object opposition.90 By positing vision as an active, corporeal process in which the beholder both emits sight-seeking rays and is also the recipient of rays released by the work of art, the spiritelli and the devices they bear become active agents in the making of meaning.91 Women, cast as passive and receptive in the medical tradition, are here, in the realm of Petrarchan and courtly love, able to gaze back, to loose arrows, to set ablaze. I am, of course, not suggesting that the women who visited the Palazzo Te interpreted its frescoes as a call to action. However, I think it is a mistake to regard the amorous images and spaces of the palace as implicitly masculine. The Camera degli Imperatori celebrates masculine virtue and agency, but it also suggests that the beloved looks

87 Sedgwick, Between Men. 88 Gordon Braden, Petrarchan Love, 61-128. Paride da Ceresa, a poet and humanist at the Gonzaga court, was well-steeped in the Petrarchan tradition. See, Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 187-190. 89 For veiling as an impetus to interpretation, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 112-113. 90 Campbell, “Mantegna’s Camera Picta,” 324-330. 91 For the ways in which Medieval and Renaissance spectators and theorists understood and sometimes confused intromissive and extromissive models of sight, and the ways in which images could act upon the consciousness of the beholder, see Dana E. Stewart, Optics, Gender, and Subjectivity; Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 119-20; Campbell, “Mantegna’s Camera Picta,” 327-328.

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back, making men the object of a monitory gaze. In this way, the Camera presages the troubling role reversal of the Sala dei Giganti.

Under Construction During his visit to the Sala dei Giganti in 1532 Charles saw a room that was under way, but not yet finished. The imposing perspectival vault depicting the Olympian gods was complete (Pl. 7), but the chaos and destruction depicted on the walls below had likely not even begun to take form.92 The room therefore commemorates the dual absence and presence of the imperial persona in Mantua. More than any other room at the Palazzo Te, the Sala dei Giganti recalls the awe and spectacle associated with the Holy Roman Emperor. He is the thundering god Jupiter, who rains fire down upon his enemies. Yet, the pictorial association between Jupiter and Charles was never fully realized. The giants were not pictured, at once heightening the imperial threat as inhabitants became the only objects of Jupiter-cum-Charles’ wrath, while also omitting the scenes of devastation that ultimately demonstrate the god’s power. Jupiter is pictured, but his vengeance is blunted; Charles was present, but the room remained incomplete. Like other spaces discussed in this chapter, the Sala dei Giganti carries imperial overtones. Jupiter and his eagle are prominently featured in the vault above, seemingly hanging just above the beholder. The eagle was not only a long-standing Habsburg heraldic device; it was also an emblem of Imperial Rome. Frederick Hartt, followed by most scholars studying the Sala dei Giganti, argued that the terrible figure of Jupiter was Charles V personified, crushing and rending his enemies, whether they be religious heretics, Turks, or rogue princes.93 In the sixteenth century the gigantomachia was associated with Charles V: it appears in a fresco by Perino del Vaga at the Villa Doria, in apparati created for the Emperor’s triumphal entries into Bologna and Naples, and in a portrait medal struck for the Emperor by Leone Leoni.94 Charles V clearly found the threatening myth useful in the construction of his imperial persona. Yet, the Sala dei Giganti was not a room that existed only for the Emperor. As Marie Tanner has argued, local lords such as Federico II and Andrea Doria used representations of imperial authority and ancestry to reinforce their own legitimacy.95 92 A document dated 11 October 1532 requests payment to Fermo da Caravaggio for the ceiling vault of the Sala dei Giganti. Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.517. It is unclear whether or not work had begun on the walls at this point. 93 Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.157. Hartt also suggested, somewhat less plausibly, that the Sala dei Giganti was a kind of apology or justification for the Sack of Rome in 1527. 94 For the political implications of the gigantomachia in Italian art, see Elena Parma Armani, “Il palazzo del principe,” 12-63. Leoni’s medal celebrated Charles’s victory over revolting Protestants at the battle of Mühlberg in 1547; see J. Graham Pollard, Eleonora Luciano, and Maria Pollard, Renaissance Medals, 493-494. 95 Last Descendant of Aeneas, 115.

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Fig. 30: Andrea Mantegna, ceiling vault of the Camera Picta, 1464-75. Fresco. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. Scala/­ Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY.

The gigantomachia represented the political and cultural power of both Charles V and Federico II, allowing the new Duke of Mantua to enact his role as an important imperial ally and vassal. The Sala dei Giganti therefore oscillated between the mythological past, the imperial present, and the absent future, providing a shifting stage on which inhabitants enacted their political, social, and gendered relationships. In addition to powerfully asserting imperial presence and recalling its absence, the Sala dei Giganti represents Giulio Romano’s most profound engagement with Mantuan art. The comprehensive nature of the room’s frescoes and the heightened relationship between beholder and image are indebted to Mantegna’s Camera Picta, as is the organization of the fresco in a series of concentric circles (compare Fig. 30 and Pl. 7).96 The frescoes in the Camera Picta create a fictive architectural framework of columns and vaults that lead the eye inexorably upward to the painted oculus above. Scenes of court life and trompe l’oeil tapestries decorate the walls, while the oculus above dominates the room. The oculus opens to the sky above and women of 96 The composition of the ceiling vault in the Sala dei Giganti is also indebted to Correggio’s Assumption at the Duomo in Parma. See, Chapter 4.

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the court and spiritelli lean over its painted balustrade to look down upon visitors. Unlike the figures on the walls, those in Mantegna’s oculus engage directly with the beholder, smiling and gesturing as if waiting for a response. The oculus dramatizes the act of looking, for the frescoed figures watch courtiers from above, making the inhabitant the object of a gaze they once thought to control.97 Stephen Campbell has also argued that the oculus ‘proposes a dynamic mergence of that which sees with that which is seen’, allowing the work of art to animate the space of the room and ultimately impinge upon the consciousness of its inhabitants.98 Subject and object collapse, allowing courtiers to become both gods and giants, both beholder and beheld. Like Mantegna’s frescoes, the decoration of the Sala dei Giganti enfolds beholders in a painted fantasy in which they are the subjects of a controlling gaze, and dramatizes the idea of the body as permeable and open to the work of art. However, Giulio took Mantegna’s concept of reversing the roles between beholder and beheld one step further. When it was completed in 1535 the decorative scheme of the Sala dei Giganti covered every surface in the room; the decoration even continued in the roughened paving stones of the floor. Frescoes in the Camera Picta portray Gonzaga family members and courtiers in various settings and engaged in diverse activities, but the Sala dei Giganti is seamless in its narrative and pictorial approach. In both rooms the visitor is subject to actions from above, whether they are the playful glances of Mantegna’s spiritelli or the thundering bolts of lightning from Giulio’s Jupiter. Both the Camera Picta and the Sala dei Giganti engage with concepts of courtly performance and surveillance found in Baldassarre Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. The women who look down upon courtiers in the Camera Picta highlight the fundamental importance of being seen at court.99 The courtier’s performance of sprezzatura is only meaningful if it is witnessed by others, and that performance should be carefully attuned to the place, time, and company in which the courtier finds himself.100 Courtiers must carefully gauge the gazes of those around them, for theirs is a perpetual performance that is carefully calculated to the time, place, and company of the court. Mantegna’s oculus is a large, lidless eye filled with the additional eyes of the women and spiritelli who look downward at visitors and judge their performances. Similarly, the ceiling vault of the Sala dei Giganti contains many pairs of eyes that gaze upon its beholders. However, the eyes at the Palazzo Te are not those of court ladies, but belong to the Olympian gods who look down with expressions of surprise and horror as Jupiter’s thunderbolts wreak havoc on the giants. Even in its unfinished state, the composition of the room created a space in which Charles V and other visitors found themselves embodying not the victorious god Jupiter, but the defeated 97 Starn and Partridge, Arts of Power, 119-123. 98 “Mantegna’s Camera Picta,” 329. 99 Arts of Power, 120. See also, Webb, “All is not fun and games,” 417-440. 100 Castiglione, Courtier, 72 (II.7).

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giants. Jupiter seems to hover just above inhabitants’ heads, flinging his thunderbolts down upon them. In becoming giants, courtly beholders can experience, if only briefly, the cost of a truly failed performance. Upon its completion the Sala di Giganti would be one of the few rooms in the Palazzo Te that represented a single narrative within a single space. Unlike the the Camera di Psiche, the Loggia di Davide, or the Camera degli Imperatori, the Sala is not divided into narrative vignettes by framing devices, and it does not offer a plethora of visual and textual sources in order to test the beholder’s knowledge and wit. Instead, the Sala dei Giganti surrounds the inhabitant in a comprehensive visual and architectonic environment. Yet, it would be a mistake to characterize the Sala dei Giganti as stilling time or as presenting time and space as a unified, comprehensible whole. Like the other rooms examined in this chapter, the Sala moves between the mythological past and the corporeal present, asking beholders to take up and inhabit conflicting positions and identities. As I will discuss at greater length in the next chapter, beholders could find pleasure in the destruction of the self, and the monstrous corporeality of the giants could be alluring. However, in 1532 the fragmentary frescoes could not perform the metamorphosis necessary to turn human in giant and back again. During the imperial visit, the Sala dei Giganti therefore embodied the temporal disjunctures of the palace by pointing not only to future performances and personas, but by physically hesitating between a multitude of pasts, presents, and futures. When finished, the Sala dei Giganti would consume visitors, luring them into a space in which walls disappeared and they were incorporated into the disasters unfolding around them. During Charles’ visit, however, the giants and their terrible fate were not yet pictured and the coercive force of the Sala dei Giganti was not fully active.

Bibliography Archives ASMn, AG. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga.

Primary Sources Baerle, Caspar van, and Moeyaert Claes Cornelisz. Marie de Medicis entrant dans Amsterdam, ou, Histoire de la reception faicte à la reyne mere du roy tres-chrestien, par les bovrgmaistres & bourgeoisie de la ville d’Amsterdam: traduicte du Latin. Amsterdam: Blaev, 1638. Camesasca, Ettore, ed. Lettere sull’arte, Pietro Aretino. Milan: Milione, 1957. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. Giarda, Christophoro. Bibliothecae Alexandrinae Icones Symbolicae. Milan: Io. Bidellium, 1626. Romano, Giacinto, ed. Cronaca del soggiorno di Carlo V in Italia (dal 26 luglio 1529 al 25 aprile 1530).

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Documento di storia italiana estratto da un codice della Regia Biblioteca universitaria di Pavia. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1892. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550. Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston du C. De Vere. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Secondary Sources Adorni, Bruno. “Apparati effimeri urbani e allestimenti teatrali.” In Giulio Romano edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 498–501. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Arasse, Daniel. “Il programma politico della Camera degli Sposi, ovvero il segreto dell’immortalità.” Quaderni di Palazzo Te 6 (1987): 45–64. Bazzotti, Ugo. “Imprese gonzaghesche a Palazzo Te.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Orianna Baracchi Giovanardi, 155–67. Mantua: Accademia nazionale virgiliana, 1991. Becker, Jochen. “The Princess of Orange’s Welcome into Amsterdam in 1660.” In Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, edited by J. R. Mulryne, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Margaret Shewring, 575–83. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Belluzzi, Amedeo. “Carlo V a Mantova e Milano.” In La città effimera e l’universo artificiale del giardino, edited by M. Fagiolo, 47–62. Rome, 1980. Belluzzi, Amedeo. Il Palazzo Te a Mantova. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1998. Belting, Hans. “The New Role of Narrative in Public Painting of the Trecento: Historia and Allegory.” In Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Herbert L. Kessler and Marianna Shreve Simpson. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1985. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Translated by N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Matière et mémoire. Bober, Phyllis Pray, Rubinstein Ruth, with contributions by Susan Woodford. Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Bourne, Molly. Francesco II Gonzaga: The Soldier-Prince as Patron. Biblioteca del Cinquecento, 138. Rome: Bulzoni, 2008. Braden, Gordon. Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Busch, Renate von. “Studien zu deutschen Antikensammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts.” Eberhard-KarlsUniversität, 1973. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Campbell, Stephen J. The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Campbell, Stephen J. “Mantegna’s Triumph: The Cultural Politics of Imitation “all’antica” at the Court of Mantua, 1490-1530.” In Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300-1550, edited by Stephen J. Campbell, 91–105. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2005. Campbell, Stephen J. “Mantegna’s Camera Picta: Visuality and Pathos.” Art History 37, no. 2 (2014): 314–33. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Chambers, David S. “Il marchese Federico I Gonzaga e il Trionfo di Cesare di Andrea Mantegna.” In Andrea Mantegna, impronta del genio. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi: Padua, Verona, Mantua, 8-10 November 2006, edited by Roberto Signorini, Viviana Rebonato and Sara Tammaccaro, 507–20. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010. Colantuono, Anthony. Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Davari, Stefano. “Federico Gonzaga e la famiglia Paleologa di Monferrato.” Giornale ligustico 17 (1890): 421–69. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A thousand plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

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Dunlop, Anne. Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Ettlinger, Helen S. “Visibilis et Invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society.” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1994): 770–92. Ferrari, Daniela, ed. Giulio Romano: repertorio di fonti documentarie. 2 vols. Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1992. Ferrari, Daniela. Le collezioni Gonzaga: l’inventario dei beni del 1540-1542. Milan: Silvana, 2003. Forster, Kurt W., and Richard J. Tuttle. “The Palazzo Te.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 30, no. 4 (1971): 267–93. Franklin, Margaret. “Boccaccio’s Amazons and Their Legacy in Renaissance Art: Confronting the Threat of Powerful Women.” Woman’s Art Journal 31 (2010): 13–20. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. I. Der Palazzo del Te”. Jarbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 8 (1934): 79–104. Gombrich, Ernst H.. “Icones Symbolicae: The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948): 163–92. Gregory, Sharon. “The unsympathetic exemplar in Vasari’s “Life of Pontormo”.” Renaissance Studies 23 (2009): 1–32. Halliday, Anthony. “The Literary Sources of Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar.” In La corte di Mantova nell’età di Andrea Mantegna: 1450-1550, edited by Cesare Mozzarelli, Robert Oresko and Leandro Ventura, 187–97. Rome: Bulzoni, 1997. Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Hartt, Frederick. “Gonzaga Symbols in the Palazzo del Te.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, no. 3/4 (1950): 151–88. Hartt, Frederick. Giulio Romano. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Johnson, Eugene J. S. Andrea in Mantua: The Building History. University Park: The Pennsylvania State Unniversity Press, 1975. Kunoth-Leifels, Elisabeth. Uber die Darstellungen der “Bathseba im Bade”: Studien zur Geschichte des Bildthemas 4. bis 17. Jahrhundert. Essen: R. Bacht, 1962. Lightbown, R.W. Mangtegna. With a Complete Catalog of the Paintings, Drawings, and Prints. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Lyons, John D. Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Martindale, Andrew. The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court. London: Harvey Miller, 1979. Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005. Maurer, Maria F. “A love that burns: Eroticism, torment and identity at the Palazzo Te.” Renaissance Studies 30, no. 3 (2016): 370–88. McCall, Timothy. “Traffic in mistresses: sexualized bodies and the systems of exchange in the early modern court.” In Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, edited by Allison Levy, 125–36. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. Mitchell, Bonner. “The Triumphal Entry as Theatrical Genre in the Cinquecento.” Forum Italicum 14, no. 3 (1980): 409–25. Mitchell, Bonner. The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy (1494-1600). Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1986. Mulryne, J. R., and Elizabeth Goldring, eds. Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Mulryne, J. R., Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, and Margaret Shewring, eds. Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe. 2 vols. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

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Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone Books, 2010. Oberhuber, Konrad. “Palazzo Te: L’apparato decorativo.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 336– 79. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Parma Armani, Elena. “Il palazzo del principe Andrea Doria a Fassolo in Genova.” L’Arte 10 (1970): 12–63. Periti, Giancarla. In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Pigman, G.W., III. “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance.” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32. Pollard, J. Graham, Eleonora Luciano, and Maria Pollard. Renaissance Medals. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; Distributed by Oxford University Press, 2007. Porçal, Peter. “Due lettere sulle imprese di casa Gonzaga. Contributo alla prassi pre-accademica delle prime imprese italiane.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 40, no. 1/2 (1996): 232–35. Randolph, Adrian W.B. “Renaissance Genderscapes.” In Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Joan E. Hartman and Adele Seeff, 21–49. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007. Randolph, Adrian W.B. Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Sanger, Alice E. Art, Gender and Religious Devotion in Grand Ducal Tuscany. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Santore, Cathy “The tools of Venus.” Renaissance Studies 11, no. 3 (1997): 179–207. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Signorini, Rodolfo. Opus Hoc Tenue: La “archetipata” Camera Dipinta detta “degli Sposi” di Andrea Mantegna: lettura storica iconografica iconologica della “più bella camera del mondo”. 2nd ed. Mantua: MP Marketing Pubblicità, 2007. Sluijter, Eric Jan. “Rembrandt’s Bathsheba and the Conventions of a Seductive Theme.” In Rembrandt’s Bathsheba Reading King David’s Letter, edited by Ann Jensen Adams, 48–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Springer, Carolyn. Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Starn, Randolph, and Loren W. Partridge. Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Stewart, Dana E. Optics, Gender, and Subjectivity in Medieval Love Poetry. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003. Strong, Roy C. Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Tafuri, Manfredo. “La porta del Te.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 380–3. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Tanner, Marie. The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Traub, Valerie. Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2016. Turner, James Grantham. Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Verheyen, Egon. “Jacopo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings of 1567-68.” The Art Bulletin 49, no. 1 (1967): 62–70. Verheyen, Egon. “The Palazzo del Te: In Defense of Jacopo Strada.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31 (1972): 133–37. Verheyen, Egon. The Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Images of Love and Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. “Early Modern European Festivals – Politics and Performance, Event and Record.” In Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance, edited by J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring, 15–25. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.

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Webb, Jennifer D. “All is not fun and games: conversation, play, and surveillance at the Montefeltro court in Urbino.” Renaissance Studies 26, no. 3 (2011): 417–40. Zaho, Margaret Ann. Imago Triumphalis: The Function and Significance of Triumphal Imagery for Italian Renaissance Rulers. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.

4.

The Unbounded Palace

Abstract: Chapter four explores the ways in which the spaces of the Palazzo Te traveled beyond the physical structures of the building. Via prints, drawings, and the movements of artists and visitors the spaces and experiences of the Palazzo Te opened outward into other courts in Italy and abroad. Artists and patrons were particularly delighted by Giulio’s architectural license and gigantic compositions. Through an appeal to monstrous corporeality, the early modern built environment could elicit the performance of identities that were similarly open, troubling, and licentious. This chapter contends that individuals negotiated socially prescribed gender roles within and through space, meaning that both the built environment and the identities it provoked were unstable, malleable, and, at times, transgressive. Keywords: Artifice, Giants, License, Monsters, Linear Perspective

In 1536 the Palazzo Te left Mantua. It reappeared in Bavaria, where Ludwig X erected a copy in Landshut. It left again in 1537, surfacing in Sebastiano Serlio’s Tutte le opere d’architettura, and again in 1543 when it re-emerged in Fontainebleau at the court of Francis I. The Palazzo Te kept leaving throughout the sixteenth century as its spaces were taken up and put into play at other Italian and European courts through copies, appropriations, and imitations. Visiting dignitaries and courtiers sent letters and drawings as they moved between Mantua and other court centers, and prints of the palace and its frescoes circulated even more widely. The Palazzo Te is a fixed building located in Mantua, but the relationships created between spaces and people as they moved in and amongst physical locations meant that the palace was also geographically unbounded. The Palazzo Te and the gendered identities performed within it were always in the process of being reimagined, remembered, and rebuilt. The Renaissance conception of the building as a body has led to the treatment of architecture as closed, bounded by façades that, like the skin of the human body, produce a circumscribed and whole subject.1 Instead, I aim to treat the Palazzo Te as 1 For the façade as a skin that erases materiality and produces an eye that is detached from the body, see Wigley, “Untitled,” 359–362. Similarly, Charles Burroughs describes the façade as a skin that encloses the building in Palace Facade, 16–19, 49. For a critique of the association between architecture, bodies, and a unified subject, see Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion, 125–140. Maurer, Maria F., Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462985537/ch04

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a monstrous space: it is boundless, fragmented, polysemous, disruptive, terrifying, and fascinating. The palace opens onto and into other spaces through artistic and architectural appropriation, the movement of bodies, and the practices of inhabitants. The spaces of the Palazzo Te therefore impinged upon other buildings creating a vast, gigantic network that spread outward in geography and in time. While I cannot hope to analyze all of its monstrous progeny, I want to suggest some of the ways in which the Palazzo Te reverberated beyond the confines of Renaissance Mantua.2 Early Modern patrons, artists, and writers were particularly captivated by the monstrous and hybrid qualities seen in the rustication of the façades and defeated giants at the Palazzo Te. Contemporary with Giulio’s Sala dei Giganti, Sebastiano Serlio was writing his Tutte l’opere d’architettura (1537), which heralded the Palazzo Te’s ability to combine architectural forms, and Perino del Vaga was at work on another gigantomachia at the Villa Doria in Genoa (1530–32). At the Italienischer Bau of Ludwig X’s Stadtresidenz at Landshut (begun 1536) enormous rusticated keystones slip dangerously below the edges of their arches, while inside grottesche proliferate within carefully controlled boarders and bizarre masks laugh from corners. Primaticcio’s grotto in the Jardin des Pins at Fontainebleau (1540) is even more heavily rusticated than either the Palazzo Te or the Italiescher Bau, and its trapped forms recall the defeated creatures in Giulio’s Sala dei Giganti. Giants and monsters can also be found at Vicino Orsini’s Sacro Bosco (begun c. 1552) and Giambologna’s Appennino at the Medici villa at Pratolino (1579–1580). The twin emotions of fear and delight run throughout these spaces, making them at times eerily evocative of one another. While few visitors to any one place would have been familiar with all of the sites I analyze in this chapter, the artists and patrons involved often had concrete links to the Palazzo Te. Moreover, in their monstrosity these spaces revealed tensions between art and Nature, prompting inhabitants to perform identities that were hybrid, mutative, and troubling.

2 This chapter does not propose to survey all of the architectural and artistic appropriations of the Palazzo Te. Giulio has been posited as the architect of buildings such as the Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza and Charles V’s palace in Granada. See Howard Burns, “Una casa,” 37–102; Manfredo Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance, 181–217. Rusticated masonry had previously been used by Raphael and his circle in Rome, and was later taken up by architects throughout Europe, including, most famously, Andrea Palladio. James S. Ackerman, “Tuscan/Rustic Order,” 15–34. For recent analyses of Giulio’s influence outside of Mantua, see the essays in Ugo Bazzotti, Giulio Romano e l’arte del Cinquecento. Copies of and variations upon the Chariot of the Sun and the Moon fresco can be found throughout Italy and France by artists such as Primaticcio and Vasari. Avraham Ronen, “Chariot of the Sun,” 100–106. Drawings of the Palazzo Te commissioned by Jacopo Strada in 1567 were likely intended for an architectural project of Albrecht V of Bavaria. Giorgio Ghisi and Diana and Adamo Scultori all executed prints based upon images from the Palazzo Te. Suzanne Boorsch, Michal Lewis, and R.E. Lewis, Giorgio Ghisi; Paolo Bellini, L’opera incisa. Finally, Sabine Frommel has argued that Giulio’s architectural style was particularly influential in France, “Giulio Romano in Francia,” 209–226.

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Fig. 31: Plan of the Palazzo Te, from the Roman Sketchbook, II, fol. 23v. Pen and brown ink on paper, 19.5 x 14.6 cm, Inv. 79 D 2 a, fol. 23 verso. © bpk Bildagentur / Staatliche Museen / Volker-H. Schneider / Art Resource, NY.

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The ceremonial life of the Palazzo Te appears to have dwindled during the years 1540 to 1574, but its artistic and architectural lives proliferated as artists and motifs from Mantua traveled abroad and artistic and architectural treatises praised Giulio’s skill.3 This chapter therefore addresses the ways in which the palace opened outward to other buildings and spaces, thereby showing itself to be porous, unbounded, and, at times, unruly. There was a monster at the heart of the palace, as indicated by the labyrinth that appears on a ground plan depicted in the so-called van Heemskerck Sketchbooks (Fig. 31).4 The Palazzo Te was a monstrous building, and its architectural and artistic progeny were monstrously birthed creatures connected to their Mantuan forebears not only through visual motifs, but also through an interest in hybridity, ruination, voraciousness, and troubling sensuality. As architectural and visual motifs traveled outside of Mantua they took on additional roles, mixing with local architectural traditions to form new and wondrous beasts.

Monstrous Constructions Renaissance monsters were both Nature’s creation and its antithesis.5 Mythical creatures such as giants, strangely birthed and deformed humans or animals, and the monstrous races, so-called for their exotic origins and non-Christian religions, defined the outer limits of what it meant to be incorporated and whole, whether that meant being part of the human race or part of the body of Christ.6 In their role as boundary markers, monsters appear on the margins at the edges of maps or as inhabitants of some distant or unknown realm.7 Monstrosity could therefore be used to police the borders of gender. In his La civil conversazione, Stefano Guazzo denounces a girl who has the gestures, speech, and manner of a man as ‘a monstrous thing’.8 The monster is therefore the ultimate Other that seeks to establish clear categories of identity, gender, and place even as it defies them.9 Guazzo’s cosa mostruosa is neither 3 This ceremonial (and archival) lacuna is partly due to the fact that the Mantuan court lacked an adult duke for almost twenty years during this period. Federico II’s death in 1540 left the duchy in the hands of his wife, Margherita Paleologa, and his brothers, Cardinal Ercole and Ferrante, who ruled as regents, first for Francesco III from 1540 until his untimely death in 1550 at the age of seventeen, and then for Guglielmo, who attained majority in 1556. In practice, Ercole handled the day-to-day running of the state. The Cardinal moved quickly to reduce bloated expenditures, the consequence of which was a much smaller and less magnificent Gonzaga court during the mid-sixteenth century. Mazzoldi and Bendiscioli, Mantova: la storia, 310–311. 4 The courtyard never contained a labyrinth, although a hedge maze appears on the Isola del Te in Gabriele Bertazzolo’s 1628 map of Mantua (Fig. 1). For an overview of the sketchbooks and their complicated history, see Ilja M. Veldman, “The ‘Roman sketchbooks’,” 11–23. 5 Luke Morgan, Monster in the Garden. 6 I follow Jeffrey Jerome Cohen in viewing giants as a kind of monster, or at least as figures that exhibit monstrous qualities. Of Giants. For the opposite view, see Georges Cangiulhem, “Monstrosity,” 187–194. 7 Sarah Alison Miller, Medieval Monstrosity, 1–7. 8 ‘[C]osa mostruosa’. Guazzo, La civil conversazione, 239. See also, Chapter 1. 9 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 7–12. See also, Walter Stephens, Giants in Those Days 52.

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Fig. 32: Camerino delle Grottesche, ceiling vault, 1535. Fresco and stucco with pigment and gilding. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

feminine nor masculine. No longer even a person, but a thing, the gender-bending monster cannot be classified by sex or gender. The monster refuses binary distinctions and stable categories: it is both inside and outside, neither masculine nor feminine, and thus it challenges the idea of a coherent subject.10 Monsters also trouble temporal categories, especially in the Early Modern period during which the dual authorities of Classical authors and that of observable phenomena were held in tension. Giants and centaurs seemed to belong to a time long ago, before the appearance of human civilization, while contemporary Europeans avidly sought fantastical creatures, new races, and teratological signs at home and abroad.11 The grottesche that adorned Renaissance palaces and loggias, such as those in Mantua and Landshut, mimicked the bizarre images found in the Domus Aurea and other imperial Roman frescoes (Fig. 32). As they overstepped their Classical 10 Butler, Gender Trouble, 175–183; Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 6–7. 11 European collecting and documentation of marvelous creatures and objects is a large and growing field of Early Modern scholarship. See, for example, Joy Kenseth, Age of the Marvelous; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature; Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature; Zakiya Hanafi, Monster in the Machine.

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borders to overtake walls and ceiling vaults, the grottesche also became thoroughly modern.12 Heavily rusticated and apparently decaying architectural forms, such as slipped triglyphs or keystones, likewise hinted at a distant past for buildings that had been recently constructed, while also seeming to have been freshly brought from the quarry. Monstrous and decaying forms engendered a sense of entropy, not only in the sense of a slow unraveling, but also a general lack of order that questioned classifications such as natural and artificial, feminine and masculine, and past and present. In the previous chapter, I posited that the Palazzo Te collapsed time and space; here, I contend that artistic uses of the monstrous could also c­ onfound such categories. Monsters, and especially giants, devoured everything around them. Rabelais’s aptly named Pantagruel was not only always thirsty, but always hungry.13 Indeed, Mikhail Bakhtin characterizes the gaping mouth as one of the fundamental features of grotesque realism and as the ‘most vivid expression of the body not as impenetrable but open’.14 The giant’s maw was an abyss capable of consuming not only food and drink, but also beholders who could not pull their gazes away and who willingly subjected themselves to destruction.15 Medieval and Early Modern authors described giants as both the creators and destroyers of the landscape, and thus their insatiable hunger was also connected to fears about the overwhelming potential of Nature.16 Their voracious appetites and punishing jaws also linked giants to the Hell Mouth, a visual trope originating in Anglo-Saxon Britain in which sinners are thrust into a gaping, fiery cavity, thus linking damnation and ingestion.17 Similarly, the Sala dei Giganti at the Palazzo Te envelops its beholders, the Grotte des Pins devours the giant forms that struggle within it, while Giambologna’s Appenino is a giant that devours and the Mouth of Hell at the Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo is a cavernous maw that swallows its victims. These were spaces of horror that threatened their beholders with destruction. Yet, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen reminds us that ‘fear of the monster is really a kind of desire’.18 The terror inspired by the Palazzo Te and its monstrous progeny was accompanied by frissons of pleasure. Monsters were creatures of the body, and their bodies mattered.19 The fear and pleasure inspired by the giant’s ability to swallow the beholder whole was a threat 12 Philippe Morel, Les Grottes maniéristes. 13 Stephens, Giants in Those Days, 195–197. 14 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 339. 15 Cohen, Of Giants, 68. 16 Susan Stewart, On Longing, 70–78; Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 128–130. Associations between giants and nature continue in the 21st century. Lorenzo Quinn’s Support, installed at the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel during the 2017 Biennale was composed of two colossal hands reaching up from the canal to support the building, as if to save it from the forces of climate change that threaten to engulf Venice. 17 Gary D. Schmidt, Mouth of Hell. 18 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 16. 19 Cf., Butler, Bodies That Matter.

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to and an awakening of the beholder’s body, for it recalled both the body’s mortality and its material corporeality.20 The monster’s grotesque body was open and unfinished as well as transgressive and unbounded; it was a body always caught up in the act of becoming.21 The monster’s flesh points to its problematic, unstable body, a body that is often depicted as male, but which is feminine in its sensuous corporeality, its porousness, and its Otherness. It thereby multiplies our understanding ‘what it means to be male and/or female, masculine and/or feminine, or, indeed, something else entirely’.22 In the spaces under consideration here the monster’s volatile body and troubled gender allowed artists, architects, patrons, and inhabitants to lay open the construction and performance of gender, and thereby to view gender as an artificial process rather than a natural state. Eugenio Battisti argued that Giambologna’s Appennino is formless, or a work that is always in the process of becoming.23 This observation should, I propose, be widened to include other monstrous spaces such as the Sale dei Giganti in Mantua and Genoa, the Grotte des Pins, and the Mouth of Hell. These spaces do not envision the built environment as a complete and perfect whole formed by the architect; instead, they reveal it as a process of making and unmaking. Through their haunting corporeality, these spaces demonstrate that it is not only buildings that are caught up in their own becoming; beholders are also constantly under construction. The body and its subjectivity are not closed or unified forms, and gender is similarly neither pre-determined nor stable. Rather, gendered and corporeal subjectivity are created in conjunction with the spaces they inhabit, such that the negotiation of self and place is constantly in process. Like the monsters they embody, the Palazzo Te and its grotesque, entropic descendants are also liminal, polysemous sites: the gardens at Fontainebleau, Bomarzo, and Pratolino are both part of the estate and outside the palace proper; the Palazzo Te was located on an island at the boundaries of Renaissance Mantua; both the Villa Doria in Genoa and the Stadtresidenz in Landshut mediated between rural and urban architectural modes, and the Stadtresidenz further oscillated between German and Italian styles. Yet the colossal masonry at Landshut, Giulio’s gigantic figures in both the Camera di Psiche and the aptly named Sala dei Giganti, and monstrous fireplaces and portals in Verona, Valipolicella, and Rome also demonstrate that the teratological could be brought inside the city or the household, further blurring distinctions between nature and artifice and between the monster and its victims. 20 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 17. 21 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 26–27; 315–322; Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. See also Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 33–36, 54–70. 22 Dana Oswald, Monsters, Gender, and Sexuality, 10. For the monstrosity of women, see Miller, Medieval Monstrosity. 23 Eugenio Battisti, L’antirinscimento, 169–184.

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The spaces analyzed in this chapter are places where identity was constructed even as it was ripped asunder; they revealed the subject to be fragmentary, and lacking in clear boundaries and definitions. These spaces asked beholders to identify with the monstrous and the disorderly, to become the Other. They were also places of play, wherein normative performances of masculinity and femininity were called forth only to be toyed with, reassembled, and subverted. Because space and subjects are mutually defining, the practices of inhabitants also left traces on buildings, destabilizing walls as boundaries and buildings as finished forms. As princes, artists, and courtiers moved in and between these spaces the limits that defined their identities were pushed and pulled, torn at, and refashioned.

Monstrous Perspective Unlike every other room in the Palazzo Te, the decoration of the Sala dei Giganti covers every surface. The wall, so emphatically present in the nearby Camera degli Stucchi, is absent in the Sala dei Giganti. Panoramic scenes stretch into seeming infinity, while figures above are foreshortened using Giulio’s signature di sotto in sù technique (Pl. 7). The frescoes are seamless: corners are not visually indicated and the transition from the square base of the room to the sail vault above is difficult to locate (Fig. 33). Vasari also tells us that the doors and window shutters were painted and that the floor of the room was composed of river stones that continued the painted illusion of the walls.24 While Giulio threatened the picture plane in the Camera delle Aquile and subtly broke in the Camera di Psiche, he eradicated it in the Sala dei Giganti. The Sala therefore participates in a long tradition of delighting inhabitants by treating the wall as a capricious boundary. A late fourteenth-century room at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua confronts beholders with what appears to be an exterior courtyard, complete with a merlion-topped brick wall, small balconies, and windows. In the fourteenth-century Chamber of Love at the Castle of Sabbionare d’Avio the walls disappear behind fictive hangings from which lovers emerge as if to enter into the space of the beholder.25 Fictive tapestries similarly veil some walls in Andrea Mantegna’s Camera Picta, while on others the hangings are pulled back to allow beholders a privileged view of Ludovico Gonzaga and his court. In Rome, Raphael, Giulio, and other members of the workshop similarly masked the ceiling of the Loggia of Psyche with painted tapestries set amidst a garden bower populated by mythical figures, some of whom gesture to and interact with visitors 24 Vasari, Lives, 2.132. The current Venetian terrazzo floor in the form of a labyrinth was added by Paolo Pozzo in the 18th century. Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.237–238. 25 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 53–66; 123–128.

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Fig. 33: Sala dei Giganti, southwest corner, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

below (Fig. 34). At the Palazzo Te the walls are not merely painted away, veiled, or masked; as they fall down, the painted walls rupture the illusory boundary between beholder and beheld. In contrast to earlier, more playful transgressions, in the Sala dei Giganti Giulio violates one of the basic precepts of linear perspective by implicating the beholder in the space of the painting. In On Painting, Leon Battista Alberti advised artists to conceive of the painting ‘as an open window through which the subject to be painted it seen’.26 The first thing the artist does is to draw the rectangle which represents the window, thereby establishing the boundary between the beholder and the painting. The artist 26 Alberti, On Painting, 1:19.

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Fig. 34: Raphael and assistants (including Giulio Romano), Loggia of Psyche, 1517–18. Fresco. Villa Farnesina, Rome. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

then determines the height of the human figures, and uses those measurements to construct a geometrically precise world by drawing a horizon line, designating the vanishing point, and sketching the orthogonals and transversals that make up the perspectival system. While Alberti’s window implies that the space of the artwork is continuous with that of the spectator, it also separates the beholder from the painting.27 From Alberti to Panofsky, perspective has been envisioned as a method for creating a rational and comprehensible space. Linear perspective posited an approach to 27 Panofsky hints at this paradoxical quality of linear perspective: Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 67–72.

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art that did not reflect objects and spaces so much as it reproduced and represented them. It was an abstraction that offered the viewer distance from sensory experience.28 In many ways, linear perspective brought the Viewer into being by positioning him as a disembodied eye with scopic and intellectual control over the image. Even Hubert Damisch, who denied the idea that perspective placed the viewer in a position of domination vis-à-vis the image, shared with Panofsky the concept that perspective was an intellectual enterprise unconcerned with corporeal experience.29 Michael Baxandall and John Shearman, both of whom were concerned with the experience of art, still cast perspective as an affair of the mind and the eye.30 While Marvin Trachtenberg recognizes the ability of the perspectival system to move the body, he likens it to ‘a visual cage’ that orders the spectator and his experience.31 Despite the fact that Alberti constructed his perspectival system around the human body, post-Cartesian scholarship has tended to prioritize the mind.32 In addition to positing the viewer as disembodied, scholarship on linear perspective has also figured the viewer as male. Modern feminist critics have also largely accepted the masculinity of perspective, and have examined the ways in which linear perspective re-inscribes patriarchal modes of vision and embodiment.33 While feminist scholars have illuminated the roles of Early Modern women as patrons and beholders of art, the masculinity of linear perspective remains relatively unquestioned.34 It seems to me that part of the methodological problem lies in accepting Panofsky’s formulation of linear perspective as something that aims to divorce the viewer from her corporeal experience. As creatures closely allied with nature and therefore more subject to bodily urges, Early Modern women could not be expected to cast off their physical forms, nor easily enter into the abstract realm of the mind.35

28 Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as a Symbolic Form, 37–45. 29 Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, 446–447. Margaret Iversen has skillfully analyzed the relationship between Panofsky and Damisch in “Discourse of Perspective,” 193–202. 30 Baxandall, Painting and Experience; Shearman, Only Connect. 31 Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, 254. 32 For an insightful analysis of the problems with Cartesian thought and geometry, as well as the ways in which Early Modern perspective was more corporeal and less rational than his hitherto been acknowledged, see Lyle Massey, Picturing Space. 33 Laura Mulvey’s discussion of the male gaze as atomizing, flattening, and objectifying the female body recalls Alberti’s veil or Dürer’s screen, which similarly fragmented and fetishized the female body. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6–18. See also, Robert D. Romanyshyn, Technology as Symptom; Rebecca Schneider, Explicit Body, 66–87; Garrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, 41–49. 34 The exceptions are Hills, Invisible City, 1–4; Randolph, Touching Objects, 169–203. Randolph engages with the question of perspective and female viewership by analyzing the ways in which women interacted with and experienced birth trays. His focus on the ways in which these objects eschew or break up perspectival systems tends to reinforce the idea that linear perspective was (and remains) masculine. 35 Mary Garrard has demonstrated that during the Renaissance women and the feminine were closely aligned with nature and opposed to masculine art and intellect. Garrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, especially pp. 33–88. Indeed, feminist scholarship of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has critiqued the

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Though linear perspective’s grounding in geometry and rhetoric appeals to the intellect, the system also has the power to position the body. The all-encompassing spaces of the Sala dei Giganti trouble many of the assumptions about perspectival painting because they call upon not a viewing eye, but a beholding body. Scholarship on linear perspective tends to focus on easel painting with its rectangular, window-like format and relatively fixed viewing position. Linear perspective creates not only an ideal world within the painting, but also an ideal viewpoint outside of it. Best observed from dead center and at a distance that allows the gaze to take in the entire picture at once, the perspectival painting positions the beholder’s body.36 Such a corporeal impetus is easily recognizable in a painting such as Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), wherein beholders are forced to move to the extreme right of the painting in order for the spectral skull to properly resolve. Beholders therefore oscillate between one perspectival position and another. In the dome of Parma’s cathedral, Correggio accounted for the physical movement of the beholder by locating the vanishing point of his Assumption of the Virgin slightly off center and using steep foreshortening (Fig. 35).37 As visitors walk forward through the nave of the Cathedral, the scene slowly unfolds: first saints and apostles appear, then the Virgin herself, and finally Christ, leaping through space to meet his mother. Moving toward the altar, visitors become witnesses to, and participants in, the Virgin’s ecstatic ascent. As Correggio’s dome demonstrates, frescoes accommodate and often require mobile viewing positions. Early Modern visitors did not see frescoes from fixed or stationary points; rather, viewing occurred within the context of physical movement.38 Similar to the deschi da parto analyzed by Adrian Randolph in his critique of perspective, frescoes deny the fixity of linear perspective and challenge the idea of a coherent viewing subject by allowing beholders to take up varying physical and visual positions.39 Frescoes could be presented as framed pictures, as Giulio himself did in the Camera di Psiche (Pl. 4), but in the Sala dei Giganti they cover every surface with no beginning or end. The ceiling vault uses linear perspective, but the Cartesian juxtaposition of masculine/mind and feminine/body, while also attempting to reclaim embodied experience as fundamental to the construction of the subject. See especially, Donna Harraway, “Cyborg Manifesto;" Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight; Butler, Bodies That Matter; Grosz, Volatile Bodies; Young, Female Body Experience. 36 Alberti advises artists to ‘determine the distance I want between the eye of the spectator and the painting’ in order to establish the distance between transversals. Alberti, On Painting, I.20. Alberti’s description of the beholder as an eye has, I believe, obscured the corporeality of the beholder. 37 Carolyn Smyth, Correggio’s Frescoes. See also Shearman, Only Connect, 149–191. Sherman argues that domes are phenomenological, but suggests that they accommodate a fixed viewpoint, rather than a mobile one. 38 Giancarla Periti has similarly argued that Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo also accommodates a mobile beholder and ‘proposes a spatial and synaesthetic experience’ by engaging the senses. Periti, Courts of Religious Ladies, 183. 39 Randolph, Touching Objects, 176–178.

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Fig. 35: Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin, 1526–30. Fresco. Duoma, Parma. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

walls open up and fall down. The south and west walls present Albertian window-like apertures, but they are framed by the irregular shapes of falling stones and gigantic bodies (Figs. 36 and 50). The spaces beyond these openings are not created using geometric grids. Instead, pictorial space is formed through stacked zones, wherein the objects farthest away are located higher on the wall in a manner similar to Roman relief sculpture. The division between perspectival and non-perspectival spaces in the Sala dei Giganti is, at least in part, a narrative device. The victorious, idealized gods inhabit a geometrically coherent temple, while the irrational giants are consigned to the chaos of undifferentiated space. There is also a gendered implication, for giants, like women, are subject to and controlled by their bodies.40 While Jupiter’s many liaisons attest that he, too, is often conquered by his physical desires, he and his fellow deities are nevertheless the rational and intellectual foils of the giants. On one level, the spatial system of the Sala dei Giganti could be said to reinforce gender norms by depicting the masculinized gods using the costruzione legittima of linear perspective, while rendering the feminized giants in a less coherent spatial manner. Yet, the all-encompassing nature of the Sala dei Giganti and the visitor’s corporeal experience of it do not construct strict gender binaries. Rather, the room encourages inhabitants to 40 Stewart, On Longing, 70–78; Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 115–118.

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Fig. 36: Sala dei Giganti, south wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

identify with its monsters, thereby unsettling easy juxtapositions of reasoned, perspectival masculinity and uncontrollable femininity. In the Sala dei Giganti the boundary between the physical space of the room and the fictive spaces of the frescoes disappears; beholders become an integral part of the space, and subject and object coalesce. The inhabitant is no longer simply a disinterested viewer, but is an object to be gazed at and acted upon. The room’s ability to transform the beholder into the beheld decenters the unified subject and reveals the constructed nature of identity.41 Visitors experience their own imminent destruction, for, as Giorgio Vasari wrote: Whoever enters that room and sees the windows, doors, and other suchlike things all awry, and as it were, on the point of falling, and the mountains and buildings hurtling down, cannot help by fear that everything will fall down upon him.42

In the sixteenth century the disquieting effect of the frescoes would have been completed by the rounded stones of the floor. The stones were a continuation of the rocky 41 Carabell, “Breaking the Frame,” 96. 42 Lives, 2.132.

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environment of the frescoes and, like a cobblestone street, they would also have been physically unsettling, creating an uneven surface on which inhabitants could never find equilibrium. In addition to the visual and physical sensations produced by the Sala dei Giganti, Giulio Romano also designed it as an echo chamber.43 Visitors can hold covert discussions by whispering in opposite corners of the room, an auditory trick which caused sixteenth-century commentators to marvel that they could converse ‘by means of echoes’.44 When musicians played, the vault doubled the harmonies of the instruments, to the delight of listeners.45 In addition to this playful aspect of the room’s auditory impact, the Sala dei Giganti can also sonically assail the visitor. Whenever visitors speak above a whisper the Sala rings with sound. The effect is disquieting and confusing, for individual voices cannot be separated from the din. The Sala dei Giganti denies viewers the ability to enter an abstract world that they can rationalize and control. With the doors and windows closed and a fire blazing in the fireplace, beholders would have been immersed in a corporeal experience. Surrounded by images of death and destruction, physically unbalanced, smelling the whiff of ashes and brimstone, and assailed by thunderous sound, the beholder becomes one of the giants.46 The Sala dei Giganti presents the bodies of the giants and their beholders as ‘violently gendered’, that is, forever caught up in the process of being made and unmade.47 The giant’s flesh points to its problematic, unstable body. In asking beholders to identify with the gigantic bodies that engulfed them, the Sala dei Giganti revealed that gender was similarly open and flexible. The openness, instability, and sensuality of giants made them ideal for artistic appropriation. Even before its completion, the Palazzo Te was in monstrous dialogue with other buildings in Italy, most notably Andrea Doria’s villa in Genoa. Like the Palazzo Te, the construction and decoration of Villa Doria was likely overseen by a single artist, Perino del Vaga, who had studied alongside Giulio Romano at Raphael’s workshop in Rome.48 The two buildings were under construction at roughly the same time, and the iconographical and political connections between them have long been recognized: both palaces include a Sala dei Giganti based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both were begun after the arrival of Charles V in Italy in 1529, and both could be 43 Niall Atkinson has recently demonstrated that sound was instrumental in the creation and experience of Renaissance space and the construction of identity. Noisy Renaissance. 44 ‘[P]er via dell’eco’. Stefano Vinando Pigghe, recounting the visit of Charles Frederick of Jülich and Cleves to the Palazzo Te in 1575. Transcribed by Giancarlo Schizzerotto, Mantova 2000, 107. 45 ‘[L]i concerti di Musica ch’ivi si fanno, rendano duplicante armonia, e soave’. Federico Zuccaro, La dimora di Parma. Zuccaro visited Mantua in 1605. 46 For a contrary argument, in which beholders immediately identify with Jupiter, see Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te, 43. 47 Cohen, Of Giants, xii. 48 For Perino as architect of the Villa Doria see, George L. Gorse, “Villa of Andrea Doria,” 25. For Perino’s artistic training see, Elena Parma Armani, Perin del Vaga.

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interpreted as paying political homage to the Emperor by casting him as the triumphant Jupiter who slays his foes.49 In addition to their political and dynastic implications, the palaces in Mantua and Genoa also constructed spaces that enveloped the visitor, trapping her with the giant’s gaze and subjecting him to the monster’s fate. Like the Palazzo Te, the Villa Doria is a place wherein architecture, painting, stucco, and wall hangings worked together to create dynamic spaces in which building and beholder acted upon one another. In contrast to Giulio’s all-encompassing frescoed illusion, Perino del Vaga’s Fall of the Giants occupies only the central ceiling vault, and is set amidst a complex program of allegorical and mythological stuccoes and frescoed grottesche (Pl. 8). Perino extended the decorative scheme throughout the room by designing a series of tapestries known as the Furti di Giove that covered the walls. The tapestries themselves have been lost, but based on surviving prints, drawings, and descriptions Bernice Davidson has demonstrated that they depicted six of Jupiter’s amorous escapades set in architectural frames.50 In a surviving drawing of Jupiter and Juno, we seem to see the two lovers through a window flanked by Corinthian columns (Fig. 37). The curtains hanging in the background and the architectural framing highlight Perino’s use of linear perspective, which contrasts with the quadra riportata technique of the ceiling frescoes. Perino’s Sala dei Giganti reverses the spatial composition of Giulio’s gigantic room in Mantua, similarly denying beholders a fully rational and abstracted perspectival scheme. Like Giulio, Perino also asks visitors to adopt the perspective of the giants, but he does so by setting their defeat within an eroticized experience. Not only were the walls covered with the Furti di Giove tapestries, but on the ceiling Jupiter is assisted in his battle against the giants by spiritelli, and several of the giants raise their arms over their heads in a posture of languorous repose that is evocative of the Sleeping Ariadne.51 During the sixteenth century artists used the pose of the ­Sleeping Ariadne to evoke abandon and voyeuristic sensuality.52 Perino’s use of the type is e­ specially evident in the figure located in the right foreground who reclines with an arm raised over his head to better expose his body to the gaze of the spectator. In the left ­foreground one pair of giants appear to be locked in a homoerotic embrace, and immediately behind them another giant’s raised arm draws the head of his companion close. The sensual and amorous undertones of the frescoes are a comment on the 49 Hartt, Giulio Romano, 1.157–58; William Eisler, “Impact of the Emperor,” 93–110; Parma Armani, Perin del Vaga, 123–28; Morten Steen Hansen, Michelangelo’s Mirror, 34–39. 50 Bernice F. Davidson, “Furti di Giove,” 424–450. 51 Steen Hansen, Michelangelo’s Mirror, 34–38. Steen Hansen astutely argued that Perino’s repetition of the gesture of the raised arm was taken from Raphael’s Resurrection in the Vatican loggia; he does not note the similarity to the Sleeping Ariadne. 52 Elisabeth B. MacDougall, “Sleeping Nymph,” 357–365. The pose was often used to depict sleeping nymphs in the Renaissance, but it also appears in Classical representations of Bacchus and Endymion.

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Fig. 37: Perino del Vaga, Jupiter and Juno: Study for the ‘Furti di Giove’ Tapestries, c. 1532–35. Pen and dark brown ink with brown and grey wash, highlighted with white gouache, 43.2 x 40 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 2011.36. Image in public domain.

decadence and licentiousness of the giants. When combined with the tapestries they formed an ensemble that engulfed the beholder in eroticized images of power and defeat. Whether they be mortal women or monstrous giants, Jupiter’s conquests are rendered as sexualized objects. Perino’s frescoes of sensualized subjugation were activated by the presence of Andrea Doria, a successful naval commander who had helped defeat the Turks, and by the 1533 arrival of Charles V in Genoa. The Emperor’s appearances in Genoa and his relationship to the Villa Doria mirror his sojourns in Mantua and at the Palazzo Te, though with a few significance differences. When he came to Italy in 1529 to be crowned as Holy Roman Emperor, Charles disembarked at Genoa in order to cement his new relationship with Andrea Doria, who had previously been loyal to the French. At that time, Andrea was in the process of transforming his suburban house into a place capable of

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representing his new status as Genoa’s first citizen.53 When the Emperor returned in 1533, much if not all of the decoration of the Villa Doria appears to have been complete. In 1529 Charles entered from the harbor via a sumptuously decorated bridge, then processed through the Medieval city, encountering classicizing triumphal arches at the Piazza dei Giustiniani and outside his official lodgings at the Palazzo Comunale.54 In 1533, Andrea Doria established a new processional itinerary that bypassed many of the older government structures in the city center in order to feature his own household and accomplishments. The parade route began at the city’s famed lighthouse, and continued along the port to the churches of San Lazzaro and San Benedetto, ending at the Villa Doria, where the Emperor would reside during his visit.55 Like Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga designed the triumphal arches and decorations for the Emperor’s procession. And like the Palazzo Te, the visual and thematic associations between the Villa Doria and the Emperor’s triumphal parade made the building an active part of the ceremony. The triumphal arch at San Lazzaro depicted Charles V crowned by Victory, while the crowned Habsburg eagle, scenes of the Emperor’s triumphs in battle, and a personification of Rome decorated the arch at San Benedetto.56 At the Villa Doria, the themes of victory, peace and glorious restoration continued in the entrance portal with its figures of Abundance and Peace, the representations of Doria heroes in the Loggia degli Eroi, and in the Fall of the Giants.57 During his stay at the Villa Doria, Charles V likely used the Sala dei Giganti as an audience chamber, as did his son and heir, Philip II, during his visit in 1548.58 Within the eroticized power dynamics displayed on the ceiling and in the tapestries, the room’s function as an audience chamber takes on additional dimensions. Whether male or female, all visitors to the chamber were the Emperor’s subjects, and the spatial scheme of the room would have encouraged them to identify with Jupiter’s sexualized conquests. The political power of Charles V, Philip II, and, in their absence, Andrea Doria himself, was represented as sexualized dominion over the bodies of those who entered the room. The Sala dei Giganti in Genoa incited courtiers to perform their subordinate status, a concept that is also at the heart of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, where the courtier’s sprezzatura aims both to produce grace and to please those around him, especially his prince.59 In a culture where a 53 Gorse, “Villa of Andrea Doria,” 21–25. Doria purchased a modest farm villa in 1521 and begun transforming it into a recreational villa shortly thereafter. After 1529 he acquired additional property and expanded the villa. 54 Ezia Gavazza, “Gli apparati per le entrate di Carlo V a Genova,” no pagination; William Eisler, “Perino del Vaga.” 55 George L. Gorse, “Entrate e trionfi,” 12 and Fig. 7. 56 Ibid., 12–13. 57 Gorse, “Villa of Andrea Doria,” 25; Parma Armani, Perin del Vaga, 99–110. 58 For the use of the room during the visits of Charles V, see Perin del Vaga, 123–128. For the visit of Philip II, see Alfonso de Ullòa, Vita dell’invitissimo, e sacratissimo imperator Carlo V, 248. 59 The courtier’s subjugation to princely domination has often been characterized as effeminizing by modern scholars, especially Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?,” 150; Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 42; Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, 77–78. However, Gerry Milligan has argued

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work of art, especially an erotically charged work of art, could be touching, the Sala dei Giganti also threatens to take hold of its inhabitants and release them only once they have been torn asunder.60 While no evidence suggests that the Emperor used Giulio’s Sala dei Giganti as an audience chamber, the dynamics of the Mantuan room similarly allowed the Emperor and his Duke to figure themselves as triumphant gods who ruled over a subjugated Other. Thus, both rooms encouraged courtiers to open themselves up to the monstrous in the forms of giants and women. Yet, I think it would be an oversimplification to posit that male and female courtiers were incapable of taking on the roles of the gods, or that the Emperor and his representatives never experienced a shift into the position of a giant. The spaces in Mantua and Genoa do not dictate the identities of their beholders, but rather present a series of constantly shifting performative possibilities that beholders inhabit. To experience the echoes of the Palazzo Te, inhabitants must move to the corners of the room, where the perspectival system of the ceiling vault falls apart and the figures on the walls appear at once more familiar and more threatening. At the center of the room, the perspectival order of the ceiling is reinstated, but Jupiter hovers above, menacing the beholder with his thunderbolts. Inhabitants therefore move constantly between corner and center, and between giant and god. The quadra riportata technique of Perino’s fresco likewise turns beholders into the subjects of Jupiter’s action, but in the tapestries below elite beholders might identify with both Jupiter and his amorous conquests. Because they encouraged visitors to collapse subject and object, and thus to identify with the monstrous and its unbounded, mutative qualities, the Sale dei Giganti laid open the process of gender formation. The transgressive qualities of monsters also destabilized social constructions of gender, asking visitors to become conquered giants or women, and thereby forming an unlikely, if ephemeral, correspondence between male and female courtiers. Rather than positing gender as an essential quality, the spaces of the Palazzo Te and the Villa Doria demonstrate that gender was constructive, iterative, and performative. These monstrous spaces provided their beholders with license to contravene socially agreed upon behaviors and identities, and to envision bodies and identities as malleable.

Monstrous Hybridity The Palazzo Te and its descendants also played upon the monster’s licentious hybridity in order to elicit performances that troubled binary categories. Early Modern that charges of effeminacy in Castiglione should be understood as a way or normalizing and mobilizing masculinity, rather than as an overall description of the courtier’s relationship to the prince. Gerry Milligan, “Politics of Effeminancy,” 345–366. 60 Turner, Eros Visible. See also Chapter 2 of this book.

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writers, artists, and beholders regarded the monster’s hybridity as a product of Nature, but also a transgression of natural law.61 Creatures such as harpies or dog-headed Cynocephali were the result of bestiality, and thus regarded with particular abhorrence.62 While such monstrous mixtures unsettled Early Modern observers, they also provided useful creative discourses. In describing their practice as monstrous, artists could freely assemble Classical and modern elements, while also claiming to both mirror and surpass Nature. Through the experience of monstrous spaces, beholders could enact identities in which the monster’s excess and its freedom from social norms became signs of authority.63 In the sixteenth century architects and theoreticians increasingly turned to the trope of the monstrous hybrid in order to describe the roles of appropriation and licenzia, that is license or invention, in their practice.64 Classical writers such as Horace and Lucretius had formulated monsters as the products of unsuccessful mixtures. Sixteenth-century artists, architects, and writers often referenced a passage from Horace’s Ars Poetica (1–15): If a painter chooses to join a human head to the neck of a horse, and to spread feathers of many a hue over limbs picked up now here now there, so that what at the top is a lovely woman ends below in a black and ugly fish, could you, my friends, if favored with a private view, refrain from laughing? […] ‘Painters and poets,’ you say, ‘have always had an equal right in hazarding anything.’ We know it; it is license we poets claim and in our turn we grant the like; but not so far that savage should meet with tame, or serpents couple with birds, lambs with tigers.65

Horace’s feelings regarding such hybrid figures in ancient Roman wall paintings were echoed by Vitruvius, who likewise had no regard for them.66 Vitruvius, however, differentiates between monstrous mixtures, such as grottesche, and Doric and Ionic features on the same entablature, and successful mixtures, such as the Corinthian order, which was itself based upon both vegetal and man-made forms and which combined Doric and Ionic elements.67 Renaissance theorists such as Sebastiano Serlio, Giacomo da Vignola, Gherardo Spini, and Lodovico Dolce praised the license that allowed artists to select, mix, and 61 Michel Foucault, Abnormal, 63. 62 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 56–59. A number of Early Modern treatises discuss the monstrous hybrid, among them Jakob Rüff’s De conceptu et generatione hominis (1554), Ambroise Paré’s Des monstres et prodiges (1573), and Fortunio Liceti’s De monstrorum natura (1634, 2nd ed.). See also Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 82–83. 63 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1. 64 Alina A. Payne, “Mescolare,” 273–294. 65 Horace, Ars Poetica, 451. 66 Vitruvius, Architecture, 91 (VII.5.3). 67 John Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 36–39; Payne, “Mescolare,” 285–286.

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Fig. 38: Western courtyard façade, detail of central portal, 1525–27. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

re-combine various elements in order to produce a new artistic caprice. Thus, in contradiction to Vitruvius, sixteenth-century writers and builders praised architectural mixtures such as the Composite Order, or the combination of rustic and finished masonry that was so favored by Serlio.68 In a passage from the fourth book of his Tutte l’opere d’architettura that reads as a description of the Palazzo Te and its nearby portal, Serlio wrote in favor of architectural mixtures, stating that they represented [P]artly the work of Nature, and partly the work of artifice (artefice). The columns banded by Rustic stones, and also the architrave and frieze interrupted by the voissoirs, represents the work of Nature, but the capitals, part of the columns and the cornice with the pediment represent the work of the human hand. This mixture is, in my opinion, very pleasing to the eye and represents in itself great strength […] This particular mixture was enjoyed more by Giulio Romano than by anyone else; Rome in many places bears witness to this, as also does Mantua in the most beautiful palace called Il Te […] a true exemplar of architecture and painting for our times.69 68 Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 271–286; Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, “Decorum,” 140–157; Alina A. Payne, Architectural Treatise, 152–157. 69 Sebastiano Serlio, Architecture, 1.270. Hart and Hicks translate artefice as ‘human skill’. I have used the word ‘artifice’ because I believe it better demonstrates Serlio’s thinking on the relationship between art and nature.

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Serlio celebrated the Palazzo Te because it represented an ideal mixture of nature and art.70 The ‘work of nature’ is not only stonework in which the architect does not appear to have altered the blocks, but also that in which the uncontrollable force of Nature is celebrated. Thus, Serlio praises not only rustication, but those architectural features which represent the instability or decay of the building, such as keystones that burst through pediments (Fig. 38). In contrast, the ‘work of artifice’ are those parts of the building that bear the traces of the architect’s hand, such as the smooth columns and pediments. Giulio was not the first architect to employ rusticated masonry, which can be found in ancient Roman monuments. Nor was he the first to combine rusticated and ashlar masonry in the same building, a technique that was well-known to Florentine architects such as Michelozzo who employed it on the Palazzo Medici (begun 1444).71 Instead of separating roughened blocks from finely dressed stones in separate stories, at the Palazzo Te Giulio combined them in the same course of stonework (Fig. 9). In his project for the Porta del Te, a gateway into Mantua from the Isola del Te, Giulio likewise combined rusticated and ashlar surface treatments, and added a series of columns and colonettes trapped by bands of rough-hewn stonework (Fig. 23). In both projects large, rusticated keystones rupture the pediments they purportedly support, and roughened masonry bristles outward from the structure. Giulio had mingled the two façade treatments in previous Roman buildings, but in the sixteenth century, as today, critics regarded the Palazzo Te as the quintessential Giulesque building.72 The palace’s renown spread thanks to the publication of Book IV of Serlio’s Tutte le opera d’architettura.73 It is no accident that those architectural features praised by Serlio were the elements most commonly appropriated by architects and patrons working in the 1530s and 1540s, while elements such as the unfinished columns in the western loggia, which have garnered much attention from modern scholars, but which were not mentioned by Serlio, were less commonly re-created. Sebastiano Serlio was inspired by the monster’s categorical and temporal confusion, for like Giulio, Serlio appropriated from Classical Antiquity and from other artists, while also claiming to create something marvelous and inventive.74 In his Extraordinario libro di architettura (first published in 1551) Serlio included thirty rusticated portals, which he admits are strange combinations of architectural elements, 70 For a contrary assessment, in which the façade of the Palazzo Te is described as ‘dramatizing the combat of art and nature’, see Garrard, Brunelleschi’s Egg, 299 and following. 71 Ackerman, “Tuscan/Rustic Order,” 29–31. 72 Giulio first pursued the marriage of rustic and ashlar masonry in Roman buildings such as the Palazzo Stati-Maccarani (ca. 1520–1524) and his own Roman house (1523–1524), now known only from a drawing by Giovanantonio Dosio. Hartt, Giulio Romano, 64–65; Ackerman, “Tuscan/Rustic Order,” 25–26. 73 Gombrich, “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. II,” 121–150. 74 Stephen Campbell has similarly argued that mythological hybrids were indicative of individual artistic invention as well as an appeal to an authoritative classical source. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros, 156–168.

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Fig. 39: Sebastiano Serlio, Extraordinario libro di architettura, portal XXIX, 1584. Printed book with woodcut illustration. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 24.45.3. Image in the public domain.

but which he justifies as examples of artistic license based on ‘the authority of some Roman antiquities’.75 In one, Serlio presents an assemblage of antique fragments: a Corinthian door, two Doric columns propped up on benches, and two Doric modillions, with rustic pieces used to fill in the gaps. Another is a Doric gateway onto which rusticated bands and voussoirs encroach, ‘destroying its beauty’.76 On a third (Fig. 39), Serlio mixed the Doric, the Corinthian, the Rustic, and the Bestial; the latter refers to two heavily rusticated stones in the spandrels that have taken on monstrous visages. 75 Serlio, Architecture, 2.461. 76 Ibid., 2.490.

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Serlio defends the inclusion of these spandrels by explaining that ‘since there are some rocks made by Nature which have the form of beasts, Bestial work exists’.77 John Onians and Alina Payne have rightly argued that Serlio saw these and the other rustic portals as extreme examples of architectural license.78 Yet, these are his most monstrous doorways, the first mixing not just the Orders, but also past and present, the second an attempt to ‘break and damage the beautiful form’ of the portal, and the third including actual bestial forms.79 They also complicate the relationship between Nature and artifice. The rustic portals are examples of architectural artifice upon which Nature has left its mark, as well as works of Nature to which the architect has added his own invenzione. For Serlio and his contemporaries the idea of a monstrous or bestial approach to architecture gave them the license to combine, pull apart, and transform visual and architectural elements. Serlio’s conception of the Composite order, a term he coined, demonstrates how the term licenzia could be used to justify strange and hybrid architectural creations. In Book IV of his treatise Serlio argues that the Composite order was devised by the ancient Romans as a sign of victory over other peoples, for, ‘since they had triumphed over all those countries from which these works originated, they were quite as at liberty as their masters to combine them’.80 The idea of forms being combined at one’s pleasure allowed Serlio to conceptualize the Composite as less tightly constrained than the other orders and, in his own words, ‘more licentious’.81 He then makes use of liberties afforded by such licentiousness to propose several monstrous compositions of his own, such as a fireplace with bound herms and sphinxes or column capitals with winged horses. Working at roughly the same time that Serlio was writing his treatise, Giulio seems to have understood that the Composite order was the ideal way to architecturally signify monstrosity. He used the Doric Order for the façades of the Palazzo Te, but in the Sala dei Giganti the giants’ own buildings, those which Jupiter is in the midst of destroying, use the Composite order (Pl. 9). Recalling Serlio’s discussion of the Composite as a sign of the Romans’ victory over their foes, Giulio’s use of it in the Sala dei Giganti communicates how close the giants came to triumphing in their battle against the Olympian gods. As the order of licenzia, the Composite also signals the ability of these monsters to defy conventions and categories, and to indulge in a freedom from the rules governing human societies. 77 Ibid., 2.491. 78 Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 280–282; Payne, Architectural Treatise, 116–122. For a contrary view, in which Serlio’s portals exhibit not license, but constraint, see Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 157–158. 79 Serlio, Architecture, 2.490. 80 Ibid., 1.364. 81 Ibid., 1.368. See also Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 274–275. Onians argues that Serlio clearly delineates the rules governing the use of the Doric Order, yet provides almost none for the Composite, making Doric the order of decorum and Composite the order of license.

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Fig. 40: Italienischer Bau, western façade, begun 1536. Stadtresidenz, Landshut. Photo by author.

Ludwig X’s Stadtresidenz in Landshut is the kind of monstrous building praised by Serlio and his fellow theorists, for it employs architectural and pictorial motifs that uncannily recall those of the Palazzo Te. The Stadtresidenz is composed of two buildings both begun in 1536: The Italienischer Bau and the Deutscher Bau, so-called because they were built in the Italian and German styles. On the western façade of the Italienischer Bau, large roughened keystones slip precariously downward (Fig. 40), while on the eastern façade the keystones seem about to split the pediment above. The courtyard loggia at Landshut strongly recalls the Loggia delle Muse and the Camera del Sole e della Luna at the Palazzo Te, both of which employ rigidly segmented vaults that contain a strong rhythmic quality due to the interlocking geometric forms (Fig. 41). On the interior, stucco and fresco decoration recalls the busy, yet compartmentalized visual fields of the Camera di Psiche or the Camera delle Aquile. The close architectonic relationship between the two buildings stems from Ludwig’s admiration of the Palazzo Te, which he visited in April of 1536. Like Charles V, Ludwig was taken for a day of hunting at Marmirolo, and shown the ducal city; the visit concluded with a meal and other entertainments at the ­Palazzo Te. No record remains of what Ludwig, Federico, and their courtiers did at the palace, but Ludwig was impressed by the ‘delightful rooms, apartments and

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paintings’.82 Already in 1532 Ludwig had requested drawings of the ‘buildings, gardens, horses, and other similar pleasant things’.83 And in 1534 he had sent a court artist, likely Herman Posthumus, to Mantua to study ‘the Italian way of painting’ from Giulio Romano.84 Given the Bavarian Duke’s appreciation of Mantuan art and architecture, it is not surprising that when he decided to construct an addition to his palace in Landshut he modeled it after the Palazzo Te.85 Ludwig’s Italienischer Bau goes one step further in its monstrous combination of visual elements: the pilasters are Doric, but the aedicule and entablature are Ionic.86 Such a mixing of orders had been deplored by Vitruvius, but in his Extraordinario libro di architettura Serlio argued that it was a manifestation of license. Serlio’s portals, the rusticated façades of the Palazzo Te, and the mixing of orders at the Stadtresidenz could all be described as monsters, for they trouble categories and combine forms that the Classical tradition dictates ought to be held separate. Yet, as Serlio, Giulio, and Ludwig must have recognized, they are beautiful monsters; their outlandish combination of forms is both pleasing to the eye and a mark of license. Additionally, such monstrous forms allowed beholders to similarly play with the rules governing courtly behavior, and to construct identities that were as captivating as they were inventive. Ludwig’s palace combines Italian architectural and courtly ideals with a local dialect. The interior decoration of Italian Residence was also modeled after the Palazzo Te, with mythological scenes, grottesche and stuccoes dominating the vaulted ceilings. In contrast, the Deutscher Bau was architecturally and pictorially indebted to the northern tradition. The Deutscher Bau was heavily remodeled in the late eighteenth century, but the remaining rooms and an inventory completed in 1560 show that it had lower, groin vaulted ceilings and intarsia paneling.87 Based on the plan and heating systems of the two buildings, Johannes Erichsen has argued that Ludwig and 82 ‘[K]östlichen gemachen und gepei, auch gemäll’. Transcribed by Otto Hartig, “Ludwig X.” 83 ‘[E]dificia, hortas, equos et alia huiusmodi dilectationis genera’. Transcribed by Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 2.489–490. 84 ‘[E]l modo del depenzere italiano’. Transcribed by ibid., 635–636. It seems likely that Posthumus then made his way to Rome in 1536. For Posthumus’s career and movements, see Nicole Dacos, “Hermannus Posthumus,” 433–438. Dacos does not appear to know that Ludwig sent an artist to Mantua in 1534, and, incorrectly I believe, assumes that Posthumus traveled to Mantua in 1536 from whence he entered Ludwig’s service. 85 Despite striking architectural and pictorial similarities between the Palazzo Te and the Italienischer Bau, attempting to trace the authorship of the palace in Landshut does not seem constructive. Kurt Forster first attributed the Bavarian building’s design to Giulio in “Landshut.” Forster’s thesis has been hotly contested. Johannes Erichsen provides an overview of the attribution debate in “Der Bau,” 94–97. It is worth noting that the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trent, where Ludwig also stayed, was clearly also a visual source for the design of the Stadtresidenz. Wolfger A. Bulst, “Der Italienische Saal,” 182–192. 86 Christoph Luitpold Frommel, “Zur Struktur des Italienischen Baus der Residenz,” 78–79. Frommel argues that the mescolanza of the orders at Landshut is indebted to the Nymphaeum at Genazzano, the Villa Madama in Rome, and the Palazzo Te. 87 Ulrich Hartmann, “Die Eingagnshalle,” 22–30; Wartena and Erichsen, “Der Bau,” 86–89.

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Fig. 41: Italienischer Bau, loggia, begun 1536. Fresco and stucco. Stadtresidenz, Landshut. Photo by author.

his relatives lived in the Deutscher Bau, while the Italienischer Bau functioned similarly to Italian villas such as the Palazzo Te and the Este delizie which were largely reserved for court festivities and the housing of visitors.88 From the beginning, Ludwig planned that the two buildings should adjoin and function together as his court. Moving between the buildings required Ludwig, his family, and his courtiers to shift between German and Italian modes. Thus, like its Mantuan predecessor, the Stadtresidenz at Landshut recalls the courtier’s own protean qualities and asks 88 Johannes Erichsen, “Nuove indagini,” 101–103. For the ceremonial use of the Este delizie, see Andrea Marchesi, Delizie d’archivio.

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visitors to enact seemingly natural and effortless performances, which are in fact highly calculated and artificial. In walking from the more somber and stately rooms of the Deutscher Bau to the brighter and often more whimsical rooms in the Italian Residence, courtiers had to move from the details of running the government and daily life, to the ceremonial activities that represented their magnificence to local and foreign visitors, and thus had to enact the very changeability that Castiglione requires. Spatial practice is not a switch that can be thrown, but the movement of behaviors, experiences, and expectations between places. While the plan of the Deutscher Bau rigidly follows the German Stube-Kammer formulation, the plan of the Italienischer Bau is closer to a villa, with its interconnected rooms that allow for less restricted access than the more formal urban palace does.89 The Stadtresidenz mediates between city and country as well as Bavaria and Mantua, while at the same time bringing spatial and ceremonial practices from Italy into Germany. The building directed its inhabitants and visitors to walk between lower, covered hallways to high-vaulted loggias, and to discuss politics and court business in both the Saal of the Deutscher Bau and the lavishly decorated Italienischer Saal where gods and goddesses hover above. The Stadtresidenz also had two façades, the rusticated façade oriented toward the river, and a more refined Italianate façade that faced the city. The urban façade was decorated with copies of Classical sculptures of Hercules, Laocoon, and the Horse Tamers from the Quirinal Hill, often thought to be the Dioscuri. Visitors therefore experienced multiple temporal possibilities as they passed through one façade that re-assembled ancient fragments and one that represented the slow decomposition of the Classical past. The Stadtresidenz is a mixture of forms that required a knowledgeable beholder to activate it and to bind its two selves into a monstrous assemblage. The monster can never be whole; instead, it holds opposing concepts in tension. Ludwig’s palace combines Italian and German styles, an urban location with a countryside plan, rustic and refined architecture, and Doric and Ionic orders, and it therefore asks courtiers to be first one, then another, then both. While we know little about daily or ceremonial life at the Stadtresidenz, its ability to combine opposing categories suggests that it created a space for similarly complex gender performances. Ludwig remained unmarried, and his sister Sabina, who had left her marriage to Ulrich of Württemberg, likely occupied a floor in the Deutscher Bau.90 Ludwig’s court perhaps mirrored the categorical confusion of his palace: he was a prince without issue, while his sister was a wife without a husband; his was a state without a duchess, and Sabine was a duchess without a state. The hybrid, monstrous form of the Stadtresidenz embodied and accommodated such differences, creating a space where Ludwig, his sister, 89 Wartena and Erichsen, “Der Bau,” 83–93; Hans Lange, “Gasse, Gang und Galerie,” 153–154. 90 Erichsen, “Nuove indagini,” 100–101.

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Fig. 42: Primaticcio, Grotte des Pins, 1543. Chateau de Fontainebleau, Fontainebleu. Photo by author.

and their courtiers performed identities in and through their spatial experiences. The self was crafted as layers of spatial practices, behaviors and interactions built up over time.91 Ultimately, the palace facilitated the creation of a composite identity that, within its spatial context, became not monstrous, but a sign of elite license and courtly adaptability. The grotto in the Jardin des Pins at Fontainebleau likewise exploits the implications of monstrously licentious architecture in order to accommodate complex identities (Fig. 42). Begun in 1543 under the patronage of Francis I, the authorship of the grotto has been a matter of debate, though scholarly consensus seems to have coalesced around Primaticcio, with Sebastiano Serlio serving as an adviser.92 Primaticcio apprenticed with Giulio Romano in Mantua, where the Bolognese artist worked on the Palazzo Te.93 Like the Palazzo Te and the Italienischer Bau, the façade of the grotto is composed of heavily rusticated blocks with keystones that slip slightly below their arches. Unlike its predecessors, the voussoirs of the Grotte des Pins are irregularly shaped and misaligned, and gigantic figures twist and turn in an effort to free themselves from the heavily rusticated structure in which they have been trapped. Somewhat altered in later centuries, the grotto originally encompassed two herms at either end (Fig. 43). 91 Cf., Butler, Gender Trouble, 190–191; Massey, For Space, 138–142. The gendered implications of durational, and sedimentary layers of spatial practice are discussed at greater length in Chapter 1. 92 Flaminia Bardati, “Grotte des Pins,” 39–47; Dominique Cordellier, “Les peintures de la voûte,” 215–221; Sabine Frommel, “Primaticcio architetto,” 77–85. For attributions to Serlio, see Marco Rosci, Sebastiano Serlio, 76; Lucile Golson, “Architectural Grotto,” 97. 93 Amedeo Belluzzi, “Primaticcio alla corte,” 66–73.

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The grotto plays with ideas of artistic license by appropriating forms from several sources and recombining them to create a new architectural caprice. Primaticcio’s struggling figures draw upon Vitruvius’ textual descriptions of caryatids as architectural references to female captives made to pay the penalty for their city’s defeat by the Greeks.94 At Fontainebleau the captives are not beautiful women, but monstrous men. They also reference Michelangelo’s Slaves, who likewise twist and turn as they attempt to emerge from their stony origins. Primaticcio’s figures are not the idealized ephebes favored by Michelangelo, but roughened colossi whose pain and terror is evident in their postures and facial expressions. In this they are indebted to the Sala dei Giganti where giants similarly struggle to support the stones that threaten to flatten them (Fig. 50). Perhaps even more closely related is the figure of a river god in the Camera di Psiche, who is imprisoned in the rocky outcropping from which his spring issues (Fig. 13, upper left lunette).95 Primaticcio also seems to have been inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for the figures of the grotto are caught between stone and flesh, forever ensnared in their own transformation. In addition, several of them sport the elongated ears of satyrs, though they lack goats’ legs, again depicting a figure in the process of transformation and hybridization.96 The grotto explicitly ties the monstrous body to license by combining the gigantic sculptures and the building into a new form. It is also a clever comment on the Vitruvian concept of the building as a body: here the building is made up of bodies that it slowly devours. If this building is a body, the Grotte is not an idealized whole, but a monstrous ruin. Serlio’s approach to the Classical orders, especially the bestial portal wherein the spandrel stones are depicted with monstrously deformed visages, shows a similar interest in thinking through and re-constructing the Classical topos of the anthropomorphized building. As Alina Payne has argued, Serlio’s theory of architecture is closely associated with the bodies, professions, and status of the client. Façades, portals, chimney pieces, and their attendant ornamentation can be assembled in a dizzying array of combinations in order to precisely communicate the position and aspirations of the patron.97 Thus, a rustic façade in the Doric order is appropriate for a man of arms, while when appended to the Ionic order the rustication is softened, and therefore signifies that a scholar or merchant with a ‘vita robusta’ lives within.98 Primaticcio’s grotesque caryatids and herms could then be described as precisely calculated to their environment. Their roughness and satiric character are appropriate 94 Vitruvius, Architecture, 22 (I.1.5). 95 A drawing by Primaticcio, which is probably a study for the apartment directly beneath the Galerie François Ier at Fontainebleau, is also based upon Giulio’s River God. Primaticcio similarly depicts the river god trapped by the rocks from which the water issues forth, but in contrast to Giulio’s figure of pop-eyed surprise, Primaticcio’s god is weary, and his brows are drawn together in anxiety or pain. For the drawing, see Dominique Cordellier and Bernadette Py, Primatice, cat. 72. 96 Frommel, “Primaticcio architetto,” 79–81. 97 Payne, Architectural Treatise, 122–130. 98 Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere, IV.164r. See also Payne, Architectural Treatise, 128.

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Fig. 43: Léon Davent, Cryptoportico of the grotto in the jardin des Pins, late sixteenth century. Etching, 24.5 x 53.7 cm, inv. NB-B-171367. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

to a simulated cave set within a larger garden complex, and their freedom from architectural rules also signifies that the King’s royal status elevates him above the social and political constraints placed on others. In the context of Serlio’s assertion that the combination of rustic and ashlar motifs communicated an ideal mixture of nature and artifice, the extreme roughness of the blocks and figures at the Grotto des Pins could also be said to give form to Nature’s triumphs. Instead of representing ‘partly the work of nature, and partly the work of artifice’, Primaticcio seems to be representing wholly the work of nature.99 Yet, as with the Palazzo Te, its nearby gateway, and even La Rustica at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (1538–1539) and the Italienischer Bau in Landshut, Primaticcio’s rustic façade is a consummate artifice that nevertheless invokes Nature.100 As such, the grotto and its monstrous brethren are supreme examples of artistic license. In their categorical confusion the bodies writhing amidst the tumbling buildings are not only examples of artistic privilege but also an instigator of license on the part of inhabitants. The monstrous mixture might be horrifying, but it also captivated and delighted. Whether they were architectural or imagined, structures such as the Palazzo Te, Serlio’s doors, the Stadtresidenz at Landshut, and Primaticcio’s Grotte des Pins invited beholders to examine and delight in incongruity. Through their inconsistencies these monstrous hybrids exposed the tension between artifice and nature in art, architecture, and courtly life. In describing the manifold ways in which the courtier’s practiced abilities must appear natural, Castiglione, della Casa, and Guazzo also 99 Frommel, “Primaticcio architetto,” 77. 100 Zorach’s insightful analysis of Renaissance art in France does not mention the Grotte des Pins, but she does argue that at the French court herms (also known as terms) were seen as hybrids that could ‘straddle the boundary between art and nature’. Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 129–134.

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revealed the artifice behind the seemingly effortless façade. While courtly writers appealed to and promoted normalized gendered and sexualized behaviors, through their invocation of artistic license, sixteenth-century artists and architects created spaces in which transgression and subversion were welcomed and even celebrated. These spaces granted beholders the ability to cast off binary modes of being and to embrace the hybrid’s polyvalence. Francis I as Minerva, Mars, Diana, Amor and Mercury, a small painting executed by a member of Primaticcio’s workshop, demonstrates that the monster’s licentious hybridity elicited the construction of a similarly non-binary identity (Fig. 44).101 In this image, the French King is armed with the weapons and attributes of the male and female gods of war, knowledge, chastity, love, and eloquence. His helmeted head is bearded and his gaze direct, but his torso, stomach and hips are rendered as curvaceous and sinuous. In the context of the monstrous spaces examined in this chapter, the enigmatic portrait of the French king becomes not bisexual, but monstrously licentious.102 The painting is not only an ironic joke made by a witty ruler, but also an image that embraces grotesque hybridity as a creative and constructive force, and depicts the King as someone who is above the conventions that govern gendered representation. Francis I’s depicted body is problematic, unstable, open and changeable. Neither male nor female, both masculine and feminine, the King’s body is caught in the act of becoming.

Monstrous Consumption Part of the appeal of monstrous spaces lay in their ability to trouble categories. They clouded distinctions between nature and artifice, past and present, or between license and tradition, and revealed the constructed nature of Early Modern identity. They also complicated the relationship between beholder and beheld by implicating visitors in the action of the space. Monstrous environments devoured their beholders. The Sala dei Giganti at the Palazzo Te envelops visitors in an all-consuming pictorial framework and the Grotte des Pins is in the midst of engulfing the monstrous figures on its façade. The Mouth of Hell at Bomarzo and Giambologna’s Appennino at Pratolino similarly invite visitors to physically enter the monster’s body. As they are consumed, inhabitants are ultimately asked to identify with the terrifying Other. 101 The painting is generally attributed to Niccolò Bellin da Modena. Raymond B. Waddington, “Bisexual Portrait,” n. 1. 102 In conjunction with Rosso’s Mars and Venus, Waddington reads the portrait as emasculating because it calls attention to Francis’ domination by his mother, his mistress, and then Charles V. He argues that the two works also allowed Francis to demonstrate his wit by laughing at himself. Ibid., 122–126. For the historiographic implications of Waddington’s analysis, see Cristelle Baskins, “Gender Trouble in Italian Renaissance Art History,” 16–24.

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Fig. 44: Niccolò Bellin da Modena, Francis I as Minerva, Mars, Diana, Amor and Mercury, c. 1545. Tempera on vellum, laid down on oak panel, 27.2 x 18.9 cm. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art Resource, NY.

Such monstrous sympathy, I argue, elicited not only amusement and laughter, but also asked beholders to re-examine the role of the body in the construction of Renaissance gendered experience.

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The Sala dei Giganti is a monstrous space that lures its inhabitants in and consumes them. From the neighboring Camera degli Imperatori beholders can make out pieces of the colossal forms that beckon them forward, and once inside the insistent linear perspective of the sail vault pulls the beholder in from the doorway to the center of the room (Pl. 7). The room is relatively dark, and light from the fireplace would have flickered in changing patterns across its surface, illuminating some aspects of the beasts within while obscuring others.103 With the doors and windows closed, a fire blazing in the fireplace, and cacophonous voices rebounding off the walls, the beholder would have been completely immersed in Giulio’s horrific fantasy realm. From Polyphemus to Gargantua, giants were notoriously voracious, yet in the Sala dei Giganti we have not images of devouring monsters, but a room that devours. The Sala dei Giganti invited its visitors to enter the maw of the giant and to willingly become its victims. The visitor is ‘bodily enclosed’ in the room, not only surrounded by the terrifying events on the walls, but an emotional and physical participant in them.104 The all-encompassing program of the Sala dei Giganti constructs the visitor as the focus of the room’s action, and sets up an uneasy relationship between the beholder and the frescoed figures. Jupiter heaves thunderbolts not at the giants on the walls, but at the beholder-cum-giant. The tumult depicted in the frescoes is re-enacted by beholders, who are also physically unbalanced by the stone floor and assailed from all sides by the thunderous sounds of their compatriots. The Grotte des Pins likewise sets up a multifaceted association between giants and their beholders. The grotto is in the midst of consuming its giant caryatids. Their arms are pulled behind them, encased in thick bands of masonry, and several of their legs have already been subsumed into the grotto’s structure. As they turn to stone, the giants’ torsos become rusticated blocks in the thick piers. Moreover, the grotto’s slanted, encroaching keystones obscure the interior, making the portals seem like wide cavities ready to swallow beholders. The building devours unwary visitors just as it does the tortured beings whose forms slowly disappear into its body. Like the Sala dei Giganti, the Grotte des Pins physically engages inhabitants, who identify with the giants not by looking, but by walking through the toothy archways in order to be similarly devoured. Even as the building threatens its visitors with destruction, it affords them the ability to emerge unscathed from the monster’s bowels.105 At 103 The fireplace was originally located on the eastern wall of the Sala dei Giganti. A print by Pietro Santi Bartoli dated c. 1680 and a drawing in a sixteenth-century album show that the fireplace also participated in the room’s illusionism, for it appears to be made out of large, rough slabs of rock. Both are located in the British Museum, V,8.32 and L,1.2.1–10, respectively. The fireplace was removed in the eighteenth century. Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.451–152. 104 Otto Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration, 13. 105 The interior of a building is a fairly typical grotto with sponges, stucco, and other forms used to create a cave-like setting. Shell and stone mosaics, mostly representing birds, dot the ceiling. Three apertures seem

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Fig. 45: Mouth of Hell, begun 1552. Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo. Photo by author.

Fontainebleau Primaticcio created a structure that embodied the monstrous potentialities of Renaissance architecture: a ruin that devours even as it collapses, and a figure that delights even as it terrifies. The Mouth of Hell at the Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo and Giambologna’s Appennino at the Villa Medici at Pratolino similarly invite beholders to enact their own annihilation. A cross between sculpture and architecture, the rock carved hell mouth at Bomarzo is part of a much larger garden complex begun by Vicino Orsini around 1552.106 The façade of the structure is a large mask, its mouth and eyes opened wide to lead to the sky above; in the center several spiritelli are bearing aloft a sickle moon; on either side Minerva and Juno sit in di sotto in sù domed spaces. There is, therefore, nothing overtly threatening or destructive once beholders enter the structure. 106 Much about the Sacro Bosco remains a mystery. The identities of its architects, landscape designers, and sculptors are debated. Bartolommeo Ammanati, Pirro Ligorio, Simone Mosca Moschino, Jacopo Vignola, and even a group of Turkish prisoners taken at the Battle of Lepanto have all been proposed, though the overall design of the garden is generally ascribed to Vicino Orsini himself. Likewise, scholars have not reached consensus concerning the interpretation of the garden, with various camps arguing that the Sacro Bosco is autobiographical in character; indebted to textual sources such as Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso; or that it lacks any coherent narrative or meaning. Battisti, L’antirinscimento, 123–137; Jacqueline Theurillat, Les mystères de Bomarzo; Margaretta J. Darnall and Mark S. Weil, “Sacro Bosco,” 1–94; Horst Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini; Lazzaro, Renaissance Garden, 121–130; Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 93–94; 135–136.

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and its nostrils flaring (Fig. 45). The architectural sculpture can be entered by way of its mouth, and visitors are thereby consumed even as the toothy benches and tongue-shaped table inside invite them to eat and drink. Giambologna’s Appennino is similarly one colossal element of what was once a much larger park constructed at the behest of Francesco I de’ Medici from around 1570 to 1580.107 The Appennino is a truly colossal personification of the Apennine mountain range that visitors could enter through a grotto and explore, traversing from its bowels to its head, which contained a chamber for music-making and entertainment (Fig. 46). As in the Palazzo Te, visitors are enveloped in a performative space wherein their actions allowed them to identify with the monster and to experience pleasure at their own imminent destruction. Both structures have clear links to the Palazzo Te, yet the Mouth of Hell and the Appennino also problematize traditional models of artist influence and transmission. Vicino Orsini does not appear to have visited Mantua, but he was familiar with Giulio’s Sala dei Giganti: several letters between Orsini and Annibale Caro discuss a gigantomachy that would be depicted in a loggia of Orsini’s palace. In a long letter sent in December of 1564, Caro outlines the figures and actions that will be depicted, and favorably compares his program to that of the Palazzo Te.108 Moreover, Barbara Sanseverino, countess of Sala and mistress of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, visited the Sacro Bosco on at least one occasion.109 Similarly, Francesco I de’ Medici must certainly have been aware of the famed Gonzaga palace on the Isola del Te, and, as I will discuss in the following chapter, his daughter Eleonora married Vincenzo I Gonzaga in 1584. Like Barbara Sanseverino, who likely visited the Sacro Bosco before she experienced the Palazzo Te, Eleonora de’ Medici carried spatial practices from the park at Pratolino to the Mantuan palace. Some years later, in 1590, Vincenzo sought engineers and architects from Pratolino and the Palazzo Pitti to oversee the addition of a grotto and fountains to the Palazzo Te.110 The mouth of Vincenzo’s grotto interrupts the rear wall of the secret garden (Fig. 47). The stones, shells and sponges that form the entrance seem to have grown out of the grotto’s interior, slowly encroaching upon the ordered architecture of the 107 For the construction, restauration and significance of the Appennino see, Charles Avery, Giambologna, 221–23; Amelia Sbandati, Risveglio; Alessandro Vezzosi and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, L’Appennino; Michael W. Cole, Ambitious Form, 110–120; Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 115–134, 164–171. 108 Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini, 2:79–82. Calvesi suggests that Vicino’s interest in giants may have sprung from his friendship with Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, who owned at least one painting by Giulio Romano, the Allegory of Immortality. Maurizio Calvesi, Gli incantesimi, 146. Unfortunately, Orsini’s gigantic frescoes no longer exist. 109 Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini, 2.31. Barbara’s documented visit to Bomarzo occurred in 1574; she entered in an amorous relationship with Vincenzo I around 1580. 110 Payment records for work at the palace date primarily from 1593 when Vincenzo ordered the construction of a cistern, but a document from 1595 records payment for the ‘fontana dela grotto dal The’. ASMn, AG, b. 3125, f. 578r. In addition to other documents, the presence of Vincenzo’s imprese in the grotto has led Belluzzi to conclude that the building was constructed by Vincenzo rather than by Federico II. Palazzo Te, 1.57–60.

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Fig. 46: Giambologna, Appennino, 1579–80. Villa Medici (currently part of Villa Demidoff ), Pratolino. Photo by author.

garden. From the exterior, the grotto is shrouded in darkness, and therefore evokes the monstrous orifices of the Grotte des Pins and the Mouth of Hell. Inside, the organic forms are more insistent, growing up walls and threatening to overwhelm pictorial decoration in niches and on the ceiling.111 When he visited in 1590, the Florentine ambassador Rodrigo Alidosi compared the grotto of the Palazzo Te to those of the 111 The secret garden, and especially the grotto, fell into disrepair during the 19th and 20th centuries. From 2011–2014 fairly extensive restoration work was completed; some of the mosaics and frescoes are much more legible, but in certain areas the damage is simply insurmountable.

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Fig. 47: Secret Garden, rear wall interrupted by entrance to Grotto, 1593–95. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

Appennino, which were located in the giant’s stomach and intestines.112 The grotto at the Palazzo Te is not as extensive as the interconnected network at Pratolino, but the gaping maw, playful water jets known as giochi di acqua, and dark, enclosed space at Mantua would have similarly delighted inhabitants even as it enveloped them. Like the Palazzo Te, Primaticcio’s Grotte des Pins, and the Stadtresidenz, the Sacro Bosco and the Appennino also create spaces in which time is unstable and manifold.113 The Mouth of Hell is set within a larger wood strewn with pseudo-ruins such as the Casa Pendente and the Etruscan Tomb. The Appennino’s stucco exterior seems to slide slowly downward, disintegrating before our eyes, while the plants and mosses that sprout from its body paradoxically suggest its advanced age and prolonged immobility. The sculptural forms at Bomarzo and Pratolino may seem a long way from the palace in Mantua, but the Mouth of Hell and the Appennino are also spaces that use monstrous, decaying forms to incite visitors to engage in the construction of an identity that is fragmented, open, and performative. The Mouth of Hell sits relatively deep within the wood at Bomarzo, meaning that visitors would already have wandered past enigmatic and frightening sculptures of 112 ASF MdP 6377. Medici Archive Project (hereafter cited as MAP), doc. ID 23636. 113 Cf. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance.

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Fig. 48: Giovanni Guerra, Mouth of Hell, 1604. Engraving, Inv. 37232. Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna.

giants, monsters, and ruins before approaching the architectural sculpture.114 Climbing a gentle incline, inhabitants were confronted by wide eyes, flared nostrils, and a screaming mouth circled by an Italian inscription that read, ‘Abandon every thought/ care (pensiero), you who enter here’.115 The inscription purposefully misquotes Dante’s Inferno, wherein those who enter Hell are advised to abandon ogni speranza (‘all 114 Scholars cannot agree on the sixteenth-century entry point or route through the park. Compare Luisa Quartermaine, “Vicino Orsini’s Garden of Conceits,” 74; Darnall and Weil, “Sacro Bosco,” 11–74. They locate the entrance at opposite ends of the park, near the Casa Pendente and Fighting Giants, respectively. However, Morgan suggested that the search for a definitive entrance assumes the presence of a linear narrative at the Sacro Bosco, while the physical constraints of the site suggest that no coherent narrative exists, Monster in the Garden, 136–139. 115 ‘Lasciate ogni pensiero o voi ch’intrate’. The current inscription is somewhat altered, but a 1604 print by Giovanni Guerra preserves the original (Fig. 48).

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hope’). The inscription at Bomarzo is at once a warning, indicating that the interior of the structure contains something like the Hell experienced by Dante, a reference to the meditative nature of the wood, which might provoke thoughts of the soul’s journey in the afterlife, and an evocation of the earthly pleasures, such as dining and play, that could be indulged upon in the countryside.116 The inscription is also an invitation to enter. Inside the dark, cavernous space of the monster’s mouth sixteenth-century beholders found tooth-like benches and a table in the form of a tongue. In order to eat, drink, and laugh visitors must step into the monster’s mouth in order to be similarly devoured, a humorous conceit that would have played well with Vicino Orsini’s courtly audience.117 The location of a dining chamber in the garden, especially in a grotto, was well-established by the late sixteenth century. Pirro Ligorio, who may have had a hand in designing the Sacro Bosco, described an underground banquet hosted by Emperor Domitian.118 In a treatise roughly contemporary with the creation of the Mouth of Hell, Giovanni Saminiati wrote that a grotto should be ‘made so that one could sit inside, and even be equipped with a dining table’.119 Giovanni Guerra’s 1604 rendering of the Mouth of Hell not only preserves the original inscription, it also shows a figure seated at the table, while another in the corner plays music (Fig. 48). Similarly, the head of Giambologna’s colossus at Pratolino contained an orchestra chamber, and could also have served as a dining chamber.120 The Grotte de Pins at Fontainebleau and the secret garden at the Palazzo Te likely also hosted informal meals where diners could have similarly considered the relationship between devouring buildings and their own ravenous appetites. In addition, Luke Morgan has shown that anthrophagy was a common theme in the Renaissance garden. From Antonio Novelli’s Polyphemus at the Orti Oricellari to the monstrous masks at Bomarzo, Frascati, and Verona to Primaticcio’s Grotte des Pins, the idea of a garden that devours even as it proliferates with life ran throughout the sixteenth century.121 Gardens were places of relaxation and play, but they were also places inhabited by strange beings: automata that moved without any obvious source, giochi d’acqua that attacked unwary visitors, and monsters that threatened to consume those around them. The experience of the Sala dei Giganti and its descendants allowed visitors to identify with the monster. Once inside the Mouth of Hell, it becomes apparent that, like 116 For previous interpretations of the inscription, see, Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini, 100–101; Darnall and Weil, “Sacro Bosco,” 47–53; Lazzaro, Renaissance Garden, 142. 117 Bredekamp, Vicino Orsini, 82–85; Burroughs, Palace Facade, 40–42. 118 Nicole Dacos, La découverte, 130–131. 119 Lazzaro, Renaissance Garden, 142. 120 Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 12, n. 51. 121 Ibid., 118. Morgan does not include the Grotte des Pins in his otherwise thorough discussion of monstrous garden sculpture.

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the Sala dei Giganti, it is also a kind of echo chamber. The smaller size of the room at Bomarzo as well as its much lower vault makes conversation between the occupants somewhat easier, and the interior sound rarely reaches the fever pitch possible in the Sala dei Giganti. However, the vault of the Mouth of Hell amplifies sound as it pushes it out of the structure’s mouth. From the exterior, conversation, music, laughter, and screams are startling clear. As Margaretta Darnall and Mark Weil first noted, sounds pour forth from the monster’s mouth and ring across the park.122 It appears to have gone unremarked that the Appennino must have worked in a similar way, with the music and conversation of its inhabitants issuing forth from the giant’s mouth and echoing out over the park. In 1525 Michelangelo had similarly proposed a campanile in the form of a giant whose voice would be the ringing of bells.123 Michelangelo’s unrealized monster would have closely associated bodies, buildings, and subjectivity.124 At Mantua, Bomarzo, and Pratolino the voices of inhabitants become the voice of monster, and beholders thereby take on the role of the monster, screaming in terror and laughing at the panic of others. Courtiers who visited the Gonzaga palace, the Grotte des Pins, the Orsini wood, or the Medici villa were enfolded within a monstrous space wherein they were expected to act for one another, and to enjoy the performance whilst they likewise marveled at the artistic ingenuity around them. Part of the enticement of these places was surely that they encouraged visitors to indulge in the pleasures of the body, but there must also have been an escapist joy in letting go of the self, in being dominated, destroyed, and completely enveloped in an artistic caprice.125 Artists and patrons clearly intended to unsettle their audiences and provoke shudders of fear, but like any good courtier they also wanted to entertain and delight. The fear inspired by the Palazzo Te and its monstrous progeny is therefore meant to be pleasurable. Pietro Santi Bartoli rendered the effects of the Sala dei Giganti in two prints completed c. 1680. In one, a figure cowers in the northern doorway with his arms raised as if to ward off the vision of the room crumbling around him. In the second, two figures stand in the western doorway and appear to be in conversation with one another (Fig. 49). In contrast to their trembling compatriot, these figures gesture to the frescoes and to one another; one of the interlocutors’ hands even transgresses the doorway, almost touching the outstretched arm of a doomed giant. Bartoli’s prints depict the Sala dei Giganti as a space that inspired terror as well as curiosity and wonder, sentiments that were echoed by Federico Zuccaro, who called the room a ‘marvelous and amusing thing’.126 122 “Sacro Bosco,” 49. 123 Giovanni Poggi, Paola Barocchi, and Renzo Ristori, Il carteggio di Michelangelo, 3.190. 124 Burroughs, Palace Facade, 130. While he does not discuss Michelangelo’s giant campanile, Atkinson has illuminated the role of bells in constructing space and social life. Noisy Renaissance, 121–151. 125 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 16–20. 126 ‘[C]osa di maraviglia, e di spasso’. Zuccaro, La dimora di Parma, 29.

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Fig. 49: Pietro Santi Bartoli, Giants Struggling Against Impending Boulders from the series Giove che fulmina li giganti, c. 1680, after Giulio Romano. Etching, 20 x 28.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 2012.136.134. Image in the public domain.

In addition to fear, the Sala dei Giganti, the Grotte des Pins, the Mouth of Hell, and the Appennino also incited laughter. In literary works such as Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532) and Rabelais’ Pantagruel (1532) the monstrous and the terrible provoked as much amusement as they did terror.127 The broad, cavernous maws of the Grotte des Pins and the Mouth of Hell that devour passersby and then invite their victims to participate in similar gustatory acts is unarguably Rabelaisian. The Appennino, whose bowels, stomach, throat, and head can be explored is reminiscent of Alcogrybas, who plumbed the depths of Pantagruel’s digestive tract.128 Particularly relevant to the Gonzaga court is Teofilo Folengo’s Baldus (1517), a mockery of epic poetry written in macaronic Latin, a language that was itself a monstrous hybrid.129 Not only was Folengo a native of Mantua, but he had dedicated his Orlandino (1525) to Federico II Gonzaga, and the young marquis had also participated in the 127 Paul Barolsky, Infinite Jest, 138. 128 Morgan, Monster in the Garden, 12; 59–61. Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili also tells of a metal colossus that the hero enters and explores, though Colonna records only Poliphilo’s curiosity and terror, not his delight. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. 129 For Folengo as a poet interested in the contaminating effects of monsters, see Massimo Scalabrini, “The Peasant and the Monster,” 179–191.

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publication of the second edition of Baldus in 1521.130 During one of his outlandish adventures the unlikely hero Baldo befriends Fracasso, a giant so large that ‘no horse on earth could carry him: each one he mounted flattened like an omelet’.131 In the Sala dei Giganti it is the giants who are flattened, but Giulio’s frescoes and Folengo’s poetry share a delight in transforming the terrifying into something ridiculous. In his discussion of wit and laughter in the Book of the Courtier, Castiglione likewise notes that ‘the source of the laughable consists in a certain deformity, for we laugh only at those things that have incongruity in them and that seem to be amiss and yet are not’.132 The figures of the Grottes des Pins are deformed, neither human nor rock, both gigantic and satyr-like. The Mouth of Hell is a gaping orifice that may consume visitors, but that lacks the throat and stomach necessary to swallow and digest them. Its distended table visually links eating and copulation, a conflation familiar to Renaissance beholders, who would have appreciated the incongruous humor of a phallic tongue.133 On the southern wall of the Sala dei Giganti, a giant who covers his eyes with his hands is contrasted with his companion’s bug-eyed expression, and on the western wall, a giant with a giraffe-like neck falls into the water (Figs. 36 and 50). The eye of a cyclops in the southeastern corner seems to truly protrude outward into the room and visitors can almost imagine the sound it will make as it snaps out of his head. The exaggerated musculature and contorted figures appear bizarre and even absurd, inciting laughter at their ridiculousness. The colossal appetites of these spaces elicit sympathy with the monster that troubles clear distinctions between art and nature, and between normative and transgressive gender identities. In the Sala dei Giganti, visitors can only whisper to one another from the corners, where they align themselves with the giants whom Jupiter seeks to destroy. At the Grottes des Pins those who walk through the mouth-like archways are devoured by the building just like the giants on its façade. Similarly, visitors to the Orsini wood and the Appennino can enter the monster’s body to consume and be consumed, but in so doing they become the monster’s voice rather than its victims. In asking inhabitants to identify with the monstrous, these spaces invite them to experience the monster’s openness, its licentiously sensual appetites, and its unstable body and troubled gender. These spaces demonstrate that the gendered subject is constructed, negotiated, and, at times, transformed in and through the built environment. The places analyzed in this chapter are grotesquely embodied spaces. Whether in gardens or in palaces, the monster’s body is an unruly body, and thus a body of multiple potentialities. Frescoed rooms and garden edifices are physical presences that act upon visitors, luring them in, consuming them, and subjecting them to punishment 130 Ann E. Mullaney, Introduction to Baldo by Teofilo Folengo, vii–xxii. 131 Teofilo Folengo, Baldo, 1.109. 132 Castiglione, Courtier, 106 (II.46). 133 For the relationships between food and sexuality see Chapter 2.

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Fig. 50: Sala dei Giganti, west wall, 1532–35. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

and destruction. At the same time, these spaces remind visitors of the joys of corporeal existence even as they are threatened with dissolution.134 The Palazzo Te, V ­ illa Doria, Italienischer Bau, Grotte des Pins, Mouth of Hell, and Appennino share an interest in destabilizing the subject and exploring alternative identities and Other ways of being. Like the monsters they embody, the palaces and gardens explored in this chapter are open and unbounded. They are linked not only through their monstrous iconography, but also through the spatial practices of the men and women who experienced them. The enveloping and de-centering spaces of the Sale dei Giganti at the Palazzo Te and the Villa Doria asked visitors to adopt shifting gendered perspectives, which suited their use as spaces of political and visual power. Similarly, the Palazzo Te, the Grotte des Pins, the Sacro Bosco and the Appennino engulfed visitors, threatening them with destruction while also transforming them into the monster’s transgressive voice. The licentious architecture at the Palazzo Te, the Grotte des Pins, the Italienischer Bau, and Serlio’s doors unleashed the monster’s troubling potential, calling upon artists, patrons, and visitors to transgress social and gendered norms. At the same time, the uncanny similarities between these places demonstrate that the spatial practices of inhabitants 134 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 278–302.

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also molded, constructed, and contorted space. The mutative abilities of such spaces allowed beholders to explore identity as a performative act carried out through the surfaces and structures of the built environment and the bodies that inhabited it.

Bibliography Archives ASF, MdP. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Medici del Principato. ASMn, AG. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga.

Primary Sources Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Translated by Cecil Grayson. London: Phaidon, 1972. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Venice: Aldus Manutius Romanus, 1499. Ferrari, Daniela, ed. Giulio Romano: repertorio di fonti documentarie. 2 vols. Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1992. Folengo, Teofilo. Baldo. Translated by Ann E. Mullaney. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Guazzo, Stefano. La civil conversazione. Ed. Amedeo Quondam. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1993. Horace. Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica. Translated by H.R. Fairclough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Marchesi, Andrea, ed. Delizie d’archivio. Regesti e documenti per la storia delle residenze estensi nella Ferrara del Cinquecento. Vol 1. Ferrara: Le Immagini Edizioni, 2011. Poggi, Giovanni, Paola Barocchi, and Renzo Ristori, eds. Il carteggio di Michelangelo. Florence: Sansoni, 1973. Rosci, Marco, ed. Il trattato di architettura di Sebastiano Serlio. 2 vols. Milan: ITEC Editrice, 1966. Schizzerotto, Giancarlo, ed. Mantova 2000: anni di ritratti. Mantua: Cassa rurale ed artigiana di Castel Goffredo, 1981. Serlio, Sebastiano. Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospetiva Venice: Giacomo de’ Franceschi, 1619. Serlio, Sebastiano. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Translated by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Ullòa, Alfonso de. Vita dell’invitissimo, e sacratissimo imperator Carlo V. Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisio, 1566. Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston du C. De Vere. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Ingrid D. Rowland. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Zuccaro, Federico. Il passaggio per Italia, con la dimora di Parma. Bologna: Bartolomeo Cocchi, 1607.

Secondary Sources Ackerman, James S. “The Tuscan/Rustic Order: A Study in the Metaphorical Language of Architecture.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42, no. 1 (1983): 15–34. Atkinson, Niall. The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. Avery, Charles. Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1987.

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Dacos, Nicole. La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute, 1969. Dacos, Nicole. “Hermannus Posthumus. Rome, Mantua, Landshut.” The Burlington Magazine 127, no. 988 (1985): 433–38. Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. Translated by John Goodman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994. Darnall, Margaretta J., and Mark S. Weil. “Il Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo: Its 16th-Century Literary and Antiquarian Context.” Journal of Garden History 4, no. 1 (1984): 1–94. Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Davidson, Bernice F. “The Furti di Giove Tapestries Designed by Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria.” Art Bulletin 70, no. 3 (1988): 424–50. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A thousand plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Demus, Otto. Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1948. Dunlop, Anne. Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Eisler, William. “Perino del Vaga: Triumphal Arches for the Entrance of Charles V into Genoa, 1529.” In Il politico di Sant’Erasmo di Perin del Vaga, no pagination. Genoa: Stringa, 1982. Eisler, William. “The Impact of the Emperor Chalres V upon the Italian Visual Culture 1529–1533.” Arte Lombarda 65, no. 2 (1983): 93–110. Erichsen, Johannes. “Nuove indagini nella Stadtresidenz di Landshut.” In Giulio Romano e l’arte del Cinquecento, edited by Ugo Bazzotti, 99–115. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2014. Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Forster, Kurt W. “Il palazzo di Landshut.” In Giulio Romano, edited by Manfredo Tafuri, 512–15. Milan: Electa, 1989. Exhibition catalogue. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. 4 vols. New York: Random House, 1978. Reprint 1990. Foucault, Michel. Abnormal: lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2004. Frommel, Christoph Luitpold. “Zur Struktur des Italienischen Baus der Residenz in Landshut: Funktion, Typus, Stil.” In Die Landshuter Stadtresidenz. Architektur und Ausstattung, edited by Iris Lauterbach, Klaus Endemann and Christoph Luitpold Frommel, 77–84. Munich: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, 1998. Frommel, Sabine. “Primaticcio architetto in Francia.” In Francesco Primaticcio architetto, edited by Sabine Frommel, 74–193. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2005. Exhibition catalogue. Frommel, Sabine. “Giulio Romano in Francia: il suo ruolo per la genesi di un primo classicismo architettonico.” In Giulio Romano e l’arte del Cinquecento, edited by Ugo Bazzotti, 209–26. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2014. Garrard, Mary. Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Gavazza, Ezia. “Gli apparati per le entrate di Carlo V a Genova.” In Il politico di Sant’Erasmo di Perin del Vaga, no pagination. Genoa: Stringa, 1982. Golson, Lucile. “Serlio, Primaticcio and the Architectural Grotto.” Gazette des beaux-arts 77, no. 1225 (1971): 95–108. Gombrich, Ernst H. “Zum Werke Giulio Romanos. II. Versuch einer Deutung.” Jarbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 9 (1935): 121–50. Gorse, George L. “The Villa of Andrea Doria in Genoa: Architecture, Gardens, and Suburban Setting.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 44, no. 1 (1985): 18–36.

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Gorse, George L. “Entrate e trionfi: Cerimonie e decorazioni alla Villa di Andrea Doria a Genova.” In Disegni genovesi dal Cinquecento al Settecento: giornate di studio (9–10 maggio 1989), 9–35. Florence: Edizioni Medicea, 1992. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Hanafi, Zakiya. The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Harraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late TwentiethCentury.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature 149–81. New York: Routledge, 1991. Hart, Vaughan, and Peter Hicks. “On Sebastiano Serlio: Decorum and the Art of Architectural Invention.” In Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise, edited by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, 140–57. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Hartig, Otto. “Ludwig X, der Erbauer der Landshuter Residenz.” In Oberdeutsche Kunst der Spätgotik und Reformationszeit, edited by Ernst Buchner and Karl Feuchtmayr, 263–66. Augsburg: B. Filser, 1924. Hartmann, Ulrich. “Die Eingagnshalle im Deutschen Bau.” In Der italienische Bau: Materialien und Untersuchungen zur Stadtresidenz Landshut, edited by Gerhard Hojer, 22–30. Landshut Arcos Verlag, 1994. Hartt, Frederick. Giulio Romano. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Hills, Helen. Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Iversen, Margaret. “The Discourse of Perspective in the Twentieth Century: Panofsky, Damisch, Lacan.” Oxford Art Journal 28, no. 2 (2005): 193–202. Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, 137–67. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Kenseth, Joy, ed. The Age of the Marvelous. Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Darthmouth College Press, 1991. Lange, Hans. “Gasse, Gang und Galerie – Wegenetz und Inszenierung des Piano nobile in der Stadtresidenz.” In Die Landshuter Stadtresidenz. Architektur und Ausstattung, edited by Iris Lauterbach, Klaus Endemann and Christoph Luitpold Frommel, 151–62. Munich: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, 1998. Lazzaro, Claudia. The Italian Renaissance Garden: From Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. MacDougall, Elisabeth B. “The Sleeping Nymph: Origins of a Humanist Fountain Type.” Art Bulletin 57, no. 3 (1975): 357–65. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE, 2005. Massey, Lyle. Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Mazzoldi, Leonardo, and Mario Bendiscioli, eds. Mantova: la storia. Vol. 2, Da Lodovico secondo marchese a Francesco secondo duca. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1961. Miller, Sarah Alison. Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body. New York: Routledge, 2010. Milligan, Gerry. “The Politics of Effeminancy in Il cortegiano.” Italica 83, no. 3/4 (2006): 345–66. Morel, Philippe. Les Grottes maniéristes en Italie au XVIe siècle. Théâtre et alchimie de la nature. Paris: Macula, 1998. Morgan, Luke. The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone Books, 2010. Onians, John. Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

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Oswald, Dana. Monsters, Gender, and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2010. Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as a Symbolic Form. Translated by Christopher S. Wood. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. Parma Armani, Elena. Perin del Vaga: l’anello mancante. Genoa: Sagep, 1986. Payne, Alina A. “Mescolare, Composti and Monsters in Italian Architectural Theory of the Renaissance.” In Disarmonia bruttezza e bizzarria nel Rinacsimento, edited by Luisa Secchi Tarugi, 273–94. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 1998. Payne, Alina A. The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Periti, Giancarla. In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Quartermaine, Luisa. “Vicino Orsini’s Garden of Conceits.” Italian Studies 32 (1977): 68–85. Randolph, Adrian W.B. Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Rebhorn, Wayne A. Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978. Romanyshyn, Robert D. Technology as Sympton and Dream. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1989. Ronen, Avraham. “The Chariot of the Sun: Variations on a Theme by Giulio Romano.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 21, no. 1 (1977): 100–06. Sbandati, Amelia, ed. Risveglio di un colosso: il restauro dell’Appennino del Giambologna. Florence: Alinari, 1988. Scalabrini, Massimo. “The Peasant and the Monster in the Macaronic Works of Teofilo Folengo.” MLN 123, no. 1 (2008): 179–91. Schmidt, Gary D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1995. Schneider, Rebecca. The Explicit Body in Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Shearman, John. Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Smyth, Carolyn. Correggio’s frescoes in Parma Cathedral. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Springer, Carolyn. Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Steen Hansen, Morten. In Michelangelo’s Mirror: Perino del Vaga, Daniele da Volterra, Pelegrino Tibaldi. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Stephens, Walter. Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and Nationalism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Tafuri, Manfredo. Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects. Translated by Daniel Sherer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Theurillat, Jacqueline. Les mystères de Bomarzo et des jardins symboliques de la Renaissance. Genève: Les Trois anneaux, 1973. Trachtenberg, Marvin. Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Turner, James Grantham. Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Veldman, Ilja M. “The ‘Roman sketchbooks’ in Berlin and Maarten van Heemskerck’s travel sketchbook.” In Rom zeichnen: Maarten van Heemskerck1532–1536/37, edited by Tatjana Bartsch and Peter Seiler, 11–23, 2012. Verheyen, Egon. The Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Images of Love and Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

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5. The Troubled Palace Abstract: This chapter examines the use and reception of the Palazzo Te during Gonzaga wedding ceremonies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Gonzaga altered the use of the palace in an effort to impress foreign brides and their families, and hoped that the building’s sexually suggestive imagery would incite conventional marital relations. Yet, beholders brought their own expectations and experiences to bear on the palace. When Eleonora de’ Medici entered the Palazzo Te in 1584 her bridal performance was colored by Vincenzo’s disastrous first marriage and rumors surrounding his potency. The horse portraits and passionate encounters between gods and mortals that she saw around her pointed to the virility and fidelity that her husband lacked. Keywords: Bridal Procession, Impotency, Clandestine Marriage, Erotic Art

On 30 April 1581 Margherita Farnese arrived in Mantua as the bride of Vincenzo I Gonzaga. In contrast to generations of Gonzaga brides before her, Margherita’s ceremonial entry into the city began at the Palazzo Te, where she was formally received by her new husband and father-in-law. After visiting the Palazzo Te, Margherita entered Mantua and processed through the city to the Gonzaga dynasty’s primary residence, the Palazzo Ducale. Artillery salvos boomed from the city walls, fireworks lit the sky, hundreds of richly dressed soldiers and courtiers accompanied the bride, and a crowd of thousands thronged to welcome the young princess.1 In staging Margherita’s entry at the Palazzo Te, the Gonzaga intended to harness the palace’s magnificence, opulence, and wit in order to impress the Farnese family. In addition, the building’s associations with virility and its fecund garden setting created a space in which Margherita and Vincenzo could enact their newly acquired status as husband and wife. Margherita’s marriage to Vincenzo ended just two years later in disgrace. Despite the brevity of their union, Margherita’s entry set the stage for almost forty years of bridal performances at the Palazzo Te. Following Margherita’s entry in 1581, the Palazzo Te served as the official entry point for three additional Gonzaga brides: Vincenzo’s 1 For a description of Margherita’s entry see ASF, MdP, b. 2958. Transcribed by Nicoletta Lepri, “Nuovi documenti,” 185, doc. II. Maurer, Maria F., Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court: Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te, Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462985537/ch05

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second spouse, Eleonora de’ Medici, who arrived in 1584; Margherita of Savoy, who married Francesco IV in 1608; and Caterina de’ Medici, who came to Mantua as the bride of Ferdinando Gonzaga in 1617. More than simply a starting point, the palace was the locus of the bride’s official welcome to Mantua by the Gonzaga family and the space wherein the foreign princess became a Gonzaga wife. The nuptial performances of each couple were affected by socially prescribed gender and sexual roles, yet, as close examination of the circumstances will show, the Palazzo Te also provided a dynamically interactive stage on which the couples constructed and acted out their identities. Rumors of Vincenzo’s impotency and the specter of Ferdinando’s clandestine marriage to a lady-in-waiting tinged their performances as bridegrooms with anxiety. Their failure to perform a robust, confident masculinity meant that the Palazzo Te took on meanings that could not have been anticipated by Giulio Romano or Federico II fifty years before. The problematic performances by Vincenzo I and Ferdinando troubled the images and spaces of the palace, creating opportunities for the performance of similarly unstable gender identities.

Bridal Bodies The Gonzaga wedding processions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries allow us to examine the ways in which the Palazzo Te was interpreted and experienced after its reception had slipped out of the control of its builders.2 The brides discussed in this chapter were all elite women who had been surrounded by art their entire lives. They were educated beholders, capable of understanding the witty allusions and textual sources represented within the palace. They were also no strangers to nudity and erotica in art, for the houses in which they grew up brimmed with paintings by Bronzino, Titian, and Parmigianino, to say nothing of the maiolica, small-scale statuary, and prints they would have been able to access.3 The brides would also have been familiar with wedding cassoni, spalliere, and other works of art that depicted the social and sexual goals of marriage. They would thus have been intellectually and visually prepared to experience the Palazzo Te within the context of other matrimonial imagery. 2 Federico II Gonzaga died on 28 June 1540. Giulio continued to work for the Gonzaga family until his death on 1 November 1546. 3 The Farnese were prominent patrons of Parmigianino and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520–1589) owned Titian’s Naples Danae, which may have been in Parma in the early 1580s. For their collection, see Lucia Fornari Schianchi and Nicola Spinosa, I Farnese. Margherita also spent two years at the court of her aunt, Margherita d’Austria, in Flanders. Bert W. Meijer, Parma e Bruxelles. Bronzino painted almost exclusively for the Medici and their allies. See below for the role his work may have played into Eleonora de’ Medici’s experience of the Palazzo Te. The collections of the House of Savoy appear to have focused less on mythological painting, but did include antiquities and classicizing objets d’art. Giovanni Romano and Anna Maria Bava, Le collezioni; Costanza Roggero Bardelli, “Luoghi di loisir.”

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During the years in which the Gonzaga dynasty integrated the Palazzo Te into its nuptial rituals, the institution of marriage was in the midst of transformation. In 1563 the Council of Trent issued a decree meant to reaffirm the sacramental nature of marriage, but which also granted ecclesiastical and civic authorities greater control over nuptial rituals. Faced with the Protestant establishment of divorce, the Catholic Church asserted the indissoluble nature of matrimony and outlined steps that couples now had to undertake in order to procure a legitimate and binding union. Marriage was no longer a private, spiritual affair that could be transacted simply, and secretly, by mutual consent of the couple.4 Instead, couples had to publicly declare their intention to marry, and the ceremony itself had to be conducted by a parish priest in the presence of witnesses. The public announcement was meant to allow couples to discover impediments to the marriage, such as close kinship or the previous engagement of one of the parties, and was also designed to put an end to clandestine marriages, in which the couple married without the knowledge or consent of their families.5 Failure to observe the required steps invalidated the marriage, and left the couple open to civil charges such as fornication or rape.6 Prior to the Council of Trent, marriage was constituted through a series of rituals: promises to marry, exchanges of gifts, the signing of documents, and finally, the procession of the bride to her new home and the consummation of the marriage.7 In a society in which marriage required no legal contract or religious ceremony, public ritual ensured that parties could not later deny that the nuptials had taken place, and was thus the primary way in which the union was legitimized. The ceremonies, processions, and gift-giving that accompanied marriage were also a way for families to jockey for political, social, and economic standing in the competitive milieu of the Early Modern court. Ideally, post-Tridentine matrimony required no such elaborate rituals because the publicity of the marriage was ensured by the reading of the banns and the stipulation that the ceremony be conducted before witnesses. Despite the Church’s attempts to regulate matrimony, the Gonzaga and other noble families continued to engage in the traditional rituals that had legitimized marriages for centuries. For example, the wedding festivities of Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine de Lorraine in 1589 lasted for a month and included processions through Livorno, Pisa, and Poggio a Caiano before the bride’s triumphal entry into Florence and the succeeding banquets and festivities there.8 The entertainments staged for the wedding of Francesco IV Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy 4 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 235–240, 335–336, 361–364. 5 Ibid., 563–565. For ways in which couples, their families, and even parish priests negotiated and, at times, ignored the strictures of post-Tridentine marriage reform, see Silvia Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, Matrimonio in dubbio. 6 Nicholas Davidson, “Theology, Nature, and the Law,” 96–97. 7 Klapisch-Zuber, “The Rites of Marriage in Tuscany,” 183–187. 8 James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589.

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in 1608 included several successive evenings of elaborate banquets and theatrical productions in Turin.9 Not to be outdone, the Gonzaga staged several balls as well as theatrical performances including Monteverdi’s Arianna and a mock naval battle on the Mincio, and ordered the court engineer Gabriele Bertazzolo to organize fireworks on multiple evenings.10 After the Council of Trent nuptial festivities for elite couples became more elaborate, spanning several days or even weeks, and including tournaments, theatrical events, and banquets that families often staged in competition with one another. As the starting point for the bride’s triumphal entry, the Palazzo del Te was incorporated into the centuries-old ritual of the traductio, the procession that delivers the bride from her natal to her marital family.11 The wedding procession not only publicly proclaimed that a wedding had taken place, it also displayed the wealth and nobility of the families involved.12 In an elite marriage, the procession also legitimized the role of the incoming bride as future duchess and re-made the virginal body of a bride into the sexualized body of a wife and potential mother. As she entered the city, the bride was greeted by the people with cries of acclamation that affirmed her status as consort and co-ruler.13 Her marital family also welcomed her with gifts of jewelry and clothing. Bestowed after the wedding night, these items constituted the mancia, the gift given to the bride after consummation of the wedding.14 Destined to adorn the bride’s person, dresses, necklaces, and earrings drew attention and sexualized her body. As the mancia they also served as a reminder of her sexual duties as wife, thereby constructing her body as a receptacle for the male seed which would engender children.15 Instead of performing the sprezzata purità, or effortless purity, that mediated between freedom of speech and restriction of body, at the Palazzo Te, the bride was enjoined to enact sexual availability and fecundity. Together the procession and the groom’s gifts produced the bride’s body as a site of dynastic continuity and courtly magnificence, and constructed spaces in which she was at once constrained by patriarchal discourses and afforded a visibility that superseded them.16 For the Gonzaga brides, the bestowal of gifts and corporeal inscription occurred at the Palazzo Te. In the processions examined in this chapter the bride was presented with jewels and dresses upon her arrival at the palace; she then changed into 9 Franca Varallo, “Le feste per il matrimonio,” 475–490. 10 Federico Follino, Compendio; Paola Besutti, “Il matrimonio dell’infanta Margherita,” 491–506. Ottavio Rinuccini’s libretto for Arianna remains, but Monteverdi’s score is lost, except for the well-known lament, “Lascatemi morire.” Cf. Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage, 124–127. 11 Nicole Belmont, “Symbolic Function;” Brucia Witthoft, “Marriage Rituals.” 12 Witthoft, “Marriage Rituals,” 46–49. 13 Watanabe-O’Kelly, “Early Modern European Festivals,” 16. 14 Klapisch-Zuber, “Griselda Complex,” 218–224; Adrian W.B. Randolph, “Performing the Bridal Body,” 193. 15 “Performing the Bridal Body,” 182–200. 16 For the body as a site of social inscription, see Grosz, Volatile Bodies. For the application of Grosz’s method to Early Modern processions, see Sanger, Art, Gender and Relgious Devotion, 1–11.

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her new apparel before making her triumphal entry into the city. By dressing herself in the groom’s gifts, the foreign princess divested herself of her natal identity and transformed herself into a Gonzaga consort. The Palazzo Te was the space in which the foreign bride became part of the Gonzaga family, as well as the locus in which she performed her new status as wife, mother, and future ducal consort. While gifts for the groom’s body appear to have been less common, during the nuptial festivities he was also transformed from bachelor to husband and father. The Palazzo Te was chosen as the starting point of the bride’s procession because its erotic, fecund, and virile imagery provided a visual impetus and mirror to the couple’s own experiences. However, at times, the Gonzaga grooms proved incapable of acting their part, and their marital missteps allow us to examine the active role of the Palazzo Te in constructing and destabilizing gender norms.

Nuptus interruptus The wedding of Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese was meant to create a strategic alliance between the neighboring courts of Mantua and Parma and end nearly forty years of hostility between the families.17 Vincenzo’s father, Guglielmo I, poured funds into the wedding in an attempt to impress the upstart Farnese with the magnificence and grandeur of the venerable Gonzaga dynasty. Guglielmo spent over 12,000 scudi on carriages alone, and the scandalized Gonzaga even provided Margherita with ladies in waiting to accompany her on the journey from Parma when it became clear that the Farnese had no intention of bearing the expense.18 Although the marriage was annulled just two years later, Margherita Farnese was the first bride to begin her wedding procession at the Palazzo Te. Moreover, the festivities arranged for Margherita and Vincenzo in 1581 were consciously reproduced and enlarged during Vincenzo’s second wedding in 1584. Margherita Farnese’s wedding procession differed markedly from those of previous Gonzaga brides. Beginning with the 1531 wedding of Margherita Paleologa to Federico II Gonzaga, and continuing with Caterina von Habsburg’s marriage to Francesco III and Eleonora von Habsburg’s arrival to wed Guglielmo in 1561, brides had approached Mantua from the north and arrived first at the Palazzo di Porto.19 Porto 17 Mazzoldi and Bendiscioli, Mantova: la storia, 317–323. In 1547 Ferrante Gonzaga occupied the Farnese city of Piacenza under orders from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Ferrante likewise assumed command of the Emperor’s troops when they attacked Parma in 1551. 18 For the carriages, ASMn, AG, b. 201, f. 54r-57v; for the ladies in waiting, Ibid., b. 2952, lib. 381, f.7r-8v. 19 For arrangements for Margherita Paleologa’s entry see ASMn, AG, b. 2516, f. 66r-67v, transcribed by Ferrari, Giulio Romano, 1.423–424. For an account of Caterina von Habsburg’s arrival see ASMn, AG, b. 199, f. 85. Documents for the entry of Eleonora von Habsburg do not mention the Palazzo di Porto, but they do specify that, like Caterina before her, Eleonora approached the city from the direction of Villafranca, indicating that Eleonora also likely began her procession at Porto. See ASMn, AG, b. 2948, lib. 360, f. 86r-88.

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was razed in the eighteenth century, but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was known as the Palazzo di Madama because it was traditionally used as a suburban retreat by the Gonzaga duchesses.20 As the Duchess’s palace, Porto served as the place in which the new bride ceremonially encountered her mother-in-law and other members of the Gonzaga household. The bride would then enter the palace to eat, rest, and prepare herself for her official entry into the city. Once the bridal procession entered Mantua proper it would travel to the basilica of Sant’Andrea, where her groom waited and the marriage was then formally blessed by the bishop. The bride and groom then proceeded together to the Piazza di San Pietro, which was usually decorated with a triumphal arch, and entered the Palazzo Ducale (Fig. 1). In contrast, Margherita Farnese followed a recently established processional route that had first been used during a visit by Henry III Valois in 1574.21 She disembarked from a boat at Migliaretto, where a carriage transported the bride and her entourage to the Palazzo Te. After resting and changing there, the procession must have continued up a broad avenue past the basilica of Sant’Andrea to the castle, where Margherita dismounted in the courtyard of the church of Santa Barbara.22 Unlike her predecessors, Margherita did not encounter her mother-in-law before she entered the city; rather, she was accompanied to the Palazzo Te by her father, brother, and new husband.23 The female encounter at the Palazzo di Porto was transformed into a masculine affair at the Palazzo Te. Instead of a welcome by the Gonzaga women at the Duchess’ palace, Margherita was escorted to the Duke’s suburban villa and greeted by images of dynastic magnificence and sexual virility. The shift from the Palazzo di Porto to the Palazzo Te was at least partially due to the fact that Henry III’s triumphal entry seven years earlier had instituted a new parade route in Mantua. Henry’s itinerary was designed to pass the principal artistic and architectural cites of the city, which allowed the Gonzaga to impress the French King and his court with their magnificent and erudite patronage.24 In addition to the 20 Its status as the retreat of the reigning female member of the Gonzaga dynasty was first established by Isabella d’Este around 1493, and she likewise began the tradition of willing the palace to her female successors. On Gabriele Bertazzolo’s 1628 map of Mantua (Fig. 1), Porto is described as the palace ‘where the duchesses of Mantua reside during the summer (dove sogliono habitare le Duchese di Mantova l’estate)’. Clifford M. Brown and Anna Maria Lorenzoni, “‘Al Suo Amenissimo Palazzo di Porto’,” 34–35. 21 For Henry’s procession, see Entrata del christianissimo re Henrico III; Vigenère, La somptveuse et magnifique entrée. See also, Marina Romani, Una città in forma di palazzo, 101–120. Romani mistakenly credits the 1530 entry of Charles V as the moment in which the new processional route was formed. However, the chronicle of Charles V’s arrival clearly states that the emperor arrived via the Porta della Predella, not the Porta della Pusterla (which later came to known as the Porta del Te). See, Romano, Cronaca, 241. 22 ASF, MdP 2958, transcribed by Lepri, “Nuovi documenti,” 185, doc II. Earlier plans had called for her to disembark at Pietole, but heavy rains seem to have diverted them to Migliaretto, which was far closer to the Palazzo Te. ASMn, AG, b. 389, f. 352v-353r and Ibid., b. 2615, 30 April 1581. 23 ASF, MdP 2958, transcribed by Lepri, “Nuovi Documenti,” 185, doc. II. 24 For an analysis of Henry’s engagement with the Palazzo Te, see Maria F. Maurer, “Spaces of Masculinity,” 134–153.

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processional possibilities of the new route, the Palazzo Te offered a more impressive setting for the bride’s entry than the Palazzo di Porto. Few accounts of Porto’s appearance survive, but it seems to have consisted of three buildings and a large loggia. Its interior decoration consisted primarily of imprese and coats of arms. Correspondence from Isabella d’Este as well as Bertazzolo’s 1628 description of Porto describe the beauty of its gardens.25 In contrast, the frescoes at the Palazzo Te give form to the noble lineage, courtly wit, and sexual prowess of the Gonzaga dynasty. The ceiling frescoes of the Camera di Psiche depict the marriage between Psyche, a mere mortal, and the god Cupid, perhaps a particularly fitting analogy for the Gonzaga’s feelings regarding a Farnese bride. The decision to incorporate the Palazzo Te into wedding processions was not simply based upon the existence of a previously established processional route; the Gonzaga also made meaning out of the images and spaces of the palace. Vincenzo I and his father drew on the dynamic relationship between the building and its inhabitants in order to stage corporeal performances that would inscribe sexual and gendered roles onto the bodies of the bride and groom. Margherita’s experience of the Palazzo Te was especially tinged with expectation. At the time of her arrival in Mantua the union had yet to be consummated, despite the fact that the couple had been married for almost two months. On 12 March 1581, ten days after the wedding, the Mantuan diplomat Aurelio Zibramonte reported that he was unable to ascertain whether or not the couple had shared ‘night congress’.26 Margherita’s departure from Parma was delayed while physicians and anatomists were summoned to examine the couple.27 When Margherita finally arrived in Mantua at the end of April, she was still a virgin and there were already whispers concerning Vincenzo’s sexual deficiencies. The Gonzaga might have hoped that the erotic and verdant imagery of the Palazzo Te would aid the couple in establishing sexual relations as well as stimulate a performance of Vincenzo’s robust and potent masculinity. Accounts of Margherita’s sojourn at the Palazzo Te are sparse, but an unnamed Florentine correspondent recounts that she was accompanied to the palace by her grandfather, Ottavio Farnese, and her brother, Ranuccio, as well as Vincenzo I and many courtiers and ladies from both Parma and Mantua. After her arrival Margherita, Rested for a little while in the palace, where a most beautiful repast of confections was laid out for her, and changing (mutandosi) her clothes, she was beautifully decorated in a dress of silver brocade, and with many jewels.28 25 Brown and Lorenzoni, “‘Al Suo Amenissimo Palazzo di Porto’,” 37–39. 26 ‘[C]ongresso notturno’. ASMn, AG, b. 1379, fasc. 1, f. 114r. At the time of the wedding, Margherita was only twelve years old and had not yet menstruated. 27 Valeria Finucci, “The Virgin’s Body,” 202–205. 28 ‘[R]iposata ch’ella fu un pezzo nel detto Palazzo [Te], ove era apparecchiata una bellissima collation di confetture, et mutandosi di vestimenti, tutta benissimo guarnita con una vesta di broccato d’argento, et molte gioie intorno’. ASF, MdP 2958, 1 May 1581, transcribed by Lepri, “Nuovi documenti,” 185, doc. II. The jewels and

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The author’s use of the word mutandosi is interesting here, for it means both to change and to transform. While at the Palazzo Te Margherita changed from her Parmese attire into the Mantuan finery provided for her by her groom, and thereby transformed into a Mantuan wife and princess. Margherita’s metamorphosis from Farnese to Gonzaga was inscribed upon her body, which was divested of its natal clothing even as it was decorated with signs of the wealth and honor of her marital family. The space and place of the Palazzo Te also played a role in Margherita’s transition. The palace itself was in a liminal position vis-à-vis the city of Mantua. It occupied an island outside the city walls, but within walking distance of the city center. Only after she entered the Porta di Pusterla would Margherita have been within the confines of the city. Like Margherita, the Palazzo Te was both a part of Mantua and outside its confines. Rooms such as the Camera di Ovidio and Camera di Psiche contained frescoes celebrating metamorphosis, and the architecture also seems to move and change as keystones rupture pediments, triglyphs slip out of place, and masks gaze down from the metopes. The bride’s movements through the palace likewise emphasized transformation, as the themes and imagery of the rooms differ sharply and transitions between rooms can be abrupt. The open and airy Loggia delle Muse, through which Margherita entered the palace, contrasts with the stately rhythm of the Sala dei Cavalli, which is in turn at variance with the opulence of the Camera di Psiche. A meal was laid out for Margherita, probably in the Camera di Psiche, a room which traditionally served as the dining chamber of the palace. By 1581 the room had accumulated over fifty years of practices that reinforced associations between culinary and sexual appetites, while also accommodating transgressive performances of feminine sexual agency and masculine subjugation. The task before Margherita and Vincenzo was to re-orient the room by taming its beasts and disciplining their desires. On the one hand, the frescoes seem to encourage female sacrifice in marriage, for Psyche undergoes seemingly impossible or dangerous tasks, and is finally commanded to journey to the underworld in order to win Cupid’s love. Psyche’s perseverance is rewarded by Jupiter, who sanctions her marriage to Cupid and deifies her. The ceiling frescoes might therefore have implied that Margherita should be willing to endure sacrifices in her marriage, and that she was elevated by her union with Vincenzo. Yet, Psyche’s active pursuit of her goal is foregrounded in nearly every scene; she is the protagonist who drives the story and who ultimately sees her desires fulfilled. The frescoes therefore also carved out a space for Margherita as an active participant in married life. clothing with which Margherita adorned herself had been left at the palace upon Vincenzo’s order. He was informed on 30 April by Teodoro Sangiorgio that the dress and the ‘best jewels of the house (quel meglio che sarà in casa di gioie)’ would be left for the bride at the Palazzo Te. ASMn, AG, b. 2614, fasc. XIII, f. 450r. The dress had been ordered from Milan in March. Ibid., b. 1379, fasc. IV, f. 264r.

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The Camera di Psiche represents romantic love in marriage, an ideal that was at odds with the reality of Margherita’s politically arranged union, but one that was nevertheless encouraged. Prior to their arrival, reports had reached Mantua that Margherita and Vincenzo were enamored with one another. In early March Aurelio Zibramonte wrote to Guglielmo Gonzaga with satisfaction that ‘love grows between the esteemed spouses’.29 Several weeks later, on 31 March, Cesare Cavriani, the master of dance at the Gonzaga court, reported that Margherita ‘loves the Prince with all her heart’, and that whenever she talked of him ‘sweet tears fall from her eyes’.30 Given her continued virginal state, Margherita likely hoped that her own marriage might mirror that joyous union depicted above her in the Camera di Psiche. In the banqueting scenes on the walls below, Psyche and Cupid appear once again, this time with their daughter Voluptus (Fig. 12), a chubby blond baby who closely resembles the male infants depicted on Renaissance birth wares. In fact, at first glance, the child appears masculine, or at least gender neutral. Margherita may have already been familiar with the composition, for it had been produced as an engraving by Giorgio Ghisi in 1574.31 Whether in print or in fresco, the ambiguous representation of Voluptas and Margherita’s own sexualized circumstances may have led her to see the kind of male baby she hoped the produce. Naked cavorting boys often appear on Renaissance birth wares where they functioned as talismans to encourage a woman’s production of healthy sons and the continuity of the family bloodline.32 The relationship to childbirth would have been heightened by the form and content of frescoes in both the Camera di Psiche and the Loggia di Davide, which echo birth salvers in their octagonal shape, requirement for physical movement in order to clearly view all of the scenes, and their use of ambiguous female imagery.33 In both the Camera di Psiche and the Loggia di Davide, the frescoes are set amidst lush landscapes, emphasizing the fertility the couple hoped to enjoy. The frescoes also represent sexual desire as a positive goal that leads to fertility and pleasure. On the north wall of the Camera di Psiche a lunette above the scene of Venus and Mars bathing depicts the river god from Psyche’s story as an old man whose flowing beard becomes the river he guards (Fig. 13). Water also gushes from between his legs to create an effective, if humorous, image of male virility. Likewise, the desires of libidinous satyrs who dine with nymphs on the west wall are made obvious by their erect penises, and the outcome of the satyrs’ lust is seen in a nearby satyress who nurses her infant (Pl. 3). As devotees of Bacchus, satyrs were known for their love of wine and women, and were also associated with the cultivation and 29 ‘[C]rescia l’amore fra le sudette ser.mi sposi’. ASMn, AG, b. 201, f. 27r. 30 ‘S[ua] A[ltezza] ama tanto di cuore il S.r Prencipe suo, che qualhor parla di lui le vengono le lagrime dalli occhi di dolcezza’. Ibid., f. 41r. 31 Boorsch, Lewis, and Lewis, Giorgio Ghisi, 19–22. 32 Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 129–130. 33 For more on the relationships between the Loggia di Davide and Renaissance birth wares, see Chapter 3.

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abundance of the land. Viewing them as quintessential emblems of lust, Renaissance artists such as Andrea Mantegna also pictured satyrs as followers of Venus, and Renaissance antiquarians linked satyrs to the Roman cult of Priapus. Through their association with Bacchus, Venus, and Priapus satyrs were closely connected with agricultural fertility and male virility.34 For Vincenzo and Margherita, the satyrs in the Camera di Psiche further reinforced the sexual and dynastic expectations of their families, while the images of Cupid and Psyche with their child represented the ways in which marriage could tame and direct desire toward procreation.35 As she looked around the Camera di Psiche Magherita encountered images and structures that were in the midst of change, just as she was. On the eastern wall she would have seen frescoes of Pasiphae and the Bull, Polyphemus and Galatea, and Jupiter and Olympia (Pl. 4), all of which suggest that love and sexual desire have the power to alter gods and mortals alike. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Polyphemus’ love for Galatea leads him to change his appearance and his nature: he combed his hair, trimmed his beard and his ‘passion for slaughter, his brutal ways and his boundless bloodlust were all in abeyance’.36 Likewise, Pasiphae attempts to become a cow in order to satiate her passion for the bull and Jupiter assumes the guise of a serpent in order to seduce Olympia. Margherita, too, hoped to undergo a physical transformation. The mutating structures, spaces, and imagery of the Palazzo Te gave the young princess cause to hope that love and physical intimacy would change her from a virgin into a wife. The frescoes in the Camera di Psiche offered Margherita Farnese opposing practices of female sexuality, and her status as a newly-wed may have led her to identify with Psyche or Ariadne rather than Pasiphae. However, Margherita’s actions and experiences at the Palazzo Te may have produced the opposite. Like Pasiphae, Margherita changed her attire, and through an alteration of her outer appearance, became someone else. In the fresco, Pasiphae climbs into the cow’s skin aided by Daedalus in a manner similar to the way in which female attendants would have helped Margherita into the voluminous dress left for her at the Palazzo Te (Fig. 17). Like Pasiphae, Margherita climbed into a new skin and assumed a guise calculated to please her sexual partner. Yet, the figure of Pasiphae was not one with whom a Renaissance noblewoman would want to associated. Bestiality constituted the most serious of sexual sins.37 Counter-Reformation theologians did allow that husbands and wives might derive physical pleasure from sexual intercourse, but the missionary position was still regarded as the only ‘natural’ sexual posture.38 Pasiphae’s actions were clearly outside the realm of permissible sexual activity. 34 Lynn Frier Kaufmann, The Noble Savage, 68–75. 35 Anthony F. D’Elia, Renaissance of Marriage, 99–101. 36 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 13.768–769. 37 Joyce E. Salisbury, “Bestiality,” 178–182. 38 Tomás Sánchez, De sancto matrimonio, 566–567.

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Echoes of her own bodily movements that Margherita saw in Giulio Romano’s image of Pasiphae may have encouraged her to ponder the similarities between herself and the Cretan queen. Like Pasiphae, Margherita was a beautiful young woman of ample fortune married to an illustrious lord, and therefore expected to subjugate her sexual desires to his. Yet, like Pasiphae, Margherita remained unsatisfied by her husband. In most versions of the myth, Pasiphae had chosen to pursue the bull, and had even ordered the slaughter of her rival cows.39 She clothed herself as an animal in order to fulfill her unnatural desires. In contrast, Margherita dressed herself as a virtuous bride, and through her clothing and jewelry configured her body as the sexual property of her husband. Pasiphae’s armature advertised the bestiality of her nature, but Margherita’s dress clothed her body in marital sexuality and procreative hopes. Margherita’s performance occurred within a space that had long associations with the indulgence of sexual appetites on the part of both men and women. The Palazzo Te was not an empty building waiting to be activated by Margherita’s actions. Rather, the layers of previous practice and interpretation meant that the spatial relationships of the Palazzo Te were material and corporeal.40 The palace surrounded and staged Margherita’s experiences, and thus the space and its inhabitant worked to mutually define one another. The palace foregrounded tensions between the satiation of sensual desire and the repercussions of uncontrolled female sexuality, thereby constructing Margherita as both a desiring subject and a sexualized object. The eroticized spaces of the Camera di Psiche impinged upon her, breaking frames and invading the room, whirling in a dizzying procession above her, and inviting her to step into a painted fantasy. The frescoes collapsed subject and object, compelling her to identify with first one body and then another. Margherita’s position was neither stable nor unified; instead, her nuptial identity was in the process of being made. At the same time, Margherita’s performance changed the spaces of the Palazzo Te. Her spatial practices brought the palace within the sphere of marriage, restructuring the building as a site of physical union, corporeal transformation, and dynastic fertility. The conjugal union and fertility presented at the Palazzo Te was not Margherita’s fate. In May of 1582 Margherita Farnese was sent back to Parma after the irate Gonzaga claimed that due to ‘ostacoli machinali’ on the part of the young princess, the couple was unable to consummate the union.41 A letter from Cesare Cavriani records the different opinion in Parma, where rumors were spreading that Vincenzo was simply 39 Pasiphae’s tale appears in numerous Classical sources, including Euripides, Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus but it is likely that the Gonzaga court encountered her story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8.131–133; 9.736–741) and his Ars Amatoria (1.289–327), Virgil’s Eclogues (6:41–60), and Apuleius’ Golden Ass (10.18–35). Only Virgil characterizes her as a piteous soul, driven mad by her desire, while Ovid and Apuleius describe her lust as a more extreme form of the sexual urges of all women. Maurer, “The Trouble with Pasiphaë,” 203–208. 40 Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion. 41 Nina Glassman, Lettere proibite, 7–8.

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finding it difficult to deflower his wife.42 The Gonzaga were desperately in need of a fruitful union because Vincenzo was the only surviving male heir, and thus the only hope for the continued succession of the dynasty.43 In spite of the sexualized and fecund images she was encouraged to model at the Palazzo Te, Margherita Farnese’s marriage to Vincenzo I Gonzaga was annulled on 12 October 1583.44 Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, the papal legate sent to adjudicate the case, ruled that Margherita was unable to consummate the marriage and she was sent to the convent of San Paolo in Parma where she took the name Suor Maura Lucina.45 Margherita Farnese was forced to return the jewels that Vincenzo had bestowed upon her at the Palazzo Te, an act which gave her such pain that she went to bed with a fever.46 In retribution for the annulment the Farnese spread rumors that the sexual failure had not been Margherita’s but Vincenzo’s. Before he could take another bride, Vincenzo would have to prove his virility.

Gender Trouble Margherita’s continued virginity created political turmoil for the Gonzaga duchy and called into question Vincenzo’s masculinity. The prince’s inability to conquer his wife’s hymen was not a private affair; it was political and dynastic, and inextricably bound up with Early Modern ideas of masculinity and sexuality.47 The fracture of the Gonzaga-Farnese alliance caused tension and animosity between the houses, and both families became the laughingstocks of the European courts. The ensuing rumors concerning Vincenzo’s sexual prowess also cast a pall on his marriage prospects, placing the Gonzaga at a distinct disadvantage when conducting future negotiations. Vincenzo was expected to wed a noble virgin bride whom he would deflower and impregnate, thus continuing the Gonzaga dynasty. Margherita’s intact hymen, and the many doctors called in to examine it, bore powerful witness to Vincenzo’s failure to make a wife and mother out of his bride.48 The embarrassed and enraged Farnese alleged that the Gonzaga heir was impotent. The Catholic Church forbade the marriage of men who were impotent, and based the determination on three factors: erection, penetration, and 42 For example, one letter from Parma described rumors which claimed that Margherita was simply possessed of an unusually thick hymen: ASMn, AG, b. 201, f. 105r-v. 43 Leonardo Mazzoldi et al., Mantova: la storia, 3.29. If Vincenzo failed to produce a legitimate male heir the duchy would fall to Lodovico Gonzaga-Nevers, leader of the French cadet branch of the dynasty. Despite their reception of the Henry III in 1574, the Gonzaga were staunch Habsburg allies. 44 Ibid., 3.28. 45 Giuseppe Coniglio, I Gonzaga, 347. 46 ASF, MdP, 24 Augus, 1583, Avviso from Milan. MAP, doc. ID 10760. 47 Valeria Finucci, “Devianza sessuale e imperative genealogici,” 385–398. 48 For a recounting and analysis of Margherita’s various medical examinations, see Valeria Finucci, The Prince’s Body, 28–61.

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ejaculation.49 The Church viewed impotent marriages as inherently immoral and even deceptive. Moreover, neither an impotent man nor his spouse would be able to participate in the so-called secondary goal of marriage, the intimacy and physical satisfaction brought about by sexual intercourse.50 Early Modern culture associated female docility with sexual satiation and believed that the wives of impotent men might become ill, turn to adultery, or engage in other acts of rebellion.51 The Farnese never charged Vincenzo Gonzaga with impotence in a court, and thus never had to stipulate which of the three criteria the prince had failed to meet. However, Margherita Farnese’s intact hymen provided ample fodder for court gossips, who impugned the prince’s virility and masculinity. In the court of public opinion, Vincenzo’s gender trouble arose not from his inability to father children, but from his failure to sexually satisfy and thus control his wife. Research by Patricia Simons has demonstrated that Early Modern male sexual identity was related less to the penis than to the testes, which produced verum semen due to the heated and thus superior nature of the male body. The colder female body also produced semen, but it was considered inferior.52 Female wombs, described as pots or jars in bawdy literature, were receptacles for male semen.53 Parenthood was one way to determine that the male body emitted semen and the female womb received it, but, Simons argues, it was not the primary means by which masculinity or femininity was determined. Rather, their heat made masculine bodies project outward, from their bristling beards to their erect penises. Masculinity was concerned less with paternity and penetration, than with projection and ejaculation.54 Gabriele Beato, a physician who had treated the Gonzaga men, confirmed that Vincenzo ‘lies with women, he enters them and emictit semen’.55 According to the medical professionals who examined him, the problem lay in the size and stamina of the prince’s member. The same doctors who probed Margherita’s hymen also examined Vincenzo, and some of them argued that if his penis ‘had been smaller or harder’ he might have been able to deflower her.56 Gabriele Beato was likewise concerned that Vincenzo would never father children because ‘he has a very large member’, an

49 Joseph Bajada, Sexual Impotence, 16–21. 50 Aidan McGrath, A Controversy, 41, 110. 51 Angus McLaren, Impotence, 61–69; Simons, Sex of Men, 9–16. 52 Sex of Men, 1–22. 53 Ajmar-Wollheim, “Erotic objects and marriage,” 143. 54 Simons, Sex of Men, 37–38. For the opposite view, see Finucci, The Manly Masquerade. 55 ‘[S]tando il Principe con donne, si corrompe et emictit semen’. Report written 20 May 1583 by Cardinal Pier Donato Cesi to Francesco de’ Medici. Transcribed by F. Orlando and G. Baccini, Il parentado, 8–9. 56 ‘[S]e il Ser.mo Prencipe havesse minor membro et più duro […] S.A. haverebbe di già consumato il matrimonio’. Transcribed by Giancarlo Malacarne, Le feste del Principe, 88. The doctors also checked for the effects of a fistula, which was thought to impede potency, but were unable to draw a conclusion.

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observation that had also been made by Marcello Donati.57 Far from signifying virility, a large penis was thought to inhibit procreation, as the extra time it took semen to travel from the male testes to the female womb allowed the heated male seed to cool making it less likely to generate offspring, particularly male offspring.58 Beato also noted that the prince failed to ‘stay erect in order to penetrate as deeply as was necessary to impregnate a woman’.59 From a gendered standpoint, Vincenzo’s problem was that he was not quite erect enough. But Vincenzo was not only a man, he was also a prince, and his failure to adequately demonstrate masculine projection had dynastic implications. The prince’s difficulty maintaining an erection meant that he could not penetrate a virgin bride, thus he could not consummate a politically important marriage. Moreover, his large penis meant that even if he could penetrate his bride, he might not be able to engender the male children that the Gonzaga needed. While the prince’s apparent inability to father children did not challenge his masculinity, it did call into question his fitness to rule the dynasty, and thus his princely identity.60 Yet Beato’s report and the rumors and jokes discussed below demonstrate that Vincenzo’s masculinity was not easily separable from his status as the heir to the Gonzaga dynasty. Accusations of impotence led to doubts concerning Vincenzo’s masculinity, while his inability to father children challenged his princely authority. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vincenzo’s situation suggests that social status was inextricably bound to the construction and perception of Early Modern gender roles.61 The prince’s perceived sexual failures had repercussions for his status as a ruler and as a man, and the two quickly became so intertwined that observers could not easily separate them. Rumors about Vincenzo’s difficulties in deflowering and sexually satisfying his wife also concerned his ability to father children and thus continue his dynasty. Even before Vincenzo’s marriage to Margherita Farnese had been annulled, the Gonzaga had approached the Medici in an attempt to rekindle marriage negotiations with Francesco I de’ Medici’s daughter, Eleonora, that had gone sour when the Farnese offered a higher dowry. The Medici were not in a hurry to end up like the Farnese, who had ‘become the joke of Italy’, after their daughter was sent back in disgrace.62 Before the marriage between Vincenzo I Gonzaga and Eleonora de’ Medici 57 ‘[S]econdo lui [Beato] ogni di seria più impotento di haver figlioli perchè ha la materia grandissima’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 8–9. Donati’s observations can be found in Attilio Zanca, Notizie, 15. Accounts differ, however. In December doctors arrived to test whether Vincenzo could ‘thrust sufficiently against the palm of a hand so as to be able to pass through a maiden’, and the Prince was deemed potent. ASF, MdP 3255, 22 December 1583. MAP, doc. ID 10834. Translated by Finucci, The Prince’s Body, 49. 58 Simons, Sex of Men, 134–138. 59 ‘[S]econdo lui [Beato] ogni di seria più impotento di haver figlioli perchè ha la materia grandissima […] non crede che possa poi eriger da penetrar dentro come saria necessario per posser ingravidare’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 8–9. 60 Davide Galesi, “L’eros politico,” 245–264. 61 Cf., Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit 17–50; Biow, Importance of Being an Individual. 62 ‘[H]aver’ a esser’ la favola d’Italia, come è stato Parma’. ASF, MdP 5109, 19 August 1583. MAP, doc. ID 17625.

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was concluded, the Medici therefore required assurances that the prince was, in fact, potente. Cardinal Cesi, a papal legate who acted on behalf of the Medici throughout the negotiations, reported to Francesco de’ Medici that the Gonzaga were eager to ‘resolve this question of impotency’, for it had ‘already been published throughout all of Lombardy’, and they wished the rumor to go no further.63 The Gonzaga therefore agreed to provide witnesses to Vincenzo’s sexual abilities. Gabriele Beato reported that Vincenzo had had relations with ‘women who are not virgins’, and had even been ‘with a virgin a few months ago and he was so potent that she was taken ill and it was necessary to treat her’.64 The bishop of Casale similarly swore that the prince had ‘deflowered two virgins and he has impregnated one of them’.65 Cardinal Cesi was clearly skeptical of the surplus of former virgins in Mantua and judged it prudent to ‘make a test’ outside the confines of the duchy.66 Thus was born the prova, a test in which Vincenzo would demonstrate his potency by deflowering a virgin before witnesses. While there may have been some actual anxiety on the part of the Medici, they also intended to embarrass the Gonzaga, who had previously rejected Eleonora and the Medici family in favor of the more lucrative Farnese connection.67 The Gonzaga were well aware of the Granducal machinations, and they complained that it was ‘an indignity and a shame that the Grand Duke seeks to make the Prince act in such a manner’.68 However, the Gonzaga also realized that the Farnese family’s accusations had ‘placed the Prince under much suspicion’, and they therefore agreed to subject Vincenzo to the ordeal.69 The negotiations for the prova were protracted and labyrinthine, allowing even more time for news of Vincenzo’s problem to spread.70 The Gonzaga continually stipulated that Vincenzo must be granted three nights to prove his virility, a demand that raised some eyebrows in Florence and abroad. On 20 January 1584 the Florentine ambassador to Ferrara, Orazio Urbani, wrote to Francesco de’ Medici that Vincenzo’s 63 ‘[C]hiarir questo dubio dell’impotentia […] essendosi già publicato tal dubio per tutta Lombardia’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 15. 64 ‘[C]on donne che non siano vergini, anzi ha inteso ancora che volse provare con una vergine alcuni mesi sono, et si mostrò tanto potente che la trattò male e bisognò medicarla’. Transcribed by ibid., 12. 65 ‘Il Vescovo di Casale fu iuramenti grandi che esso sa certissimo che il principe ha sverginato due vergini et una di esse ne ha ingravidata’. Transcribed by ibid., 15. 66 ‘[F]arne la prova’. Transcribed by ibid. 67 Grand Duchess Bianca Capello may also have been exacting revenge for the Gonzaga family’s criticism of her marriage to Francesco. Molly Bourne, “Vincenzo Gonzaga and the Body Politic,” 40. 68 ‘[I]l che era una indignità anche vergogna che’l Gran Duca cercara di fare al S.or Prencipe con modo tale’. ASMn, AG, b. 1514, fasc. I, f. 31v. 69 ‘[H]a posto quello Prencipe in tanta suspicione’. Ibid., b. 203, f. 321r. 70 The prova was originally scheduled to take place in Ferrara under the watchful eye of the Este family and with the orphaned daughter of Pirro Ligorio. However, for reasons that are unclear, the test was held in Venice with a Florentine girl named Giulia from an orphanage. Bourne, “Vincenzo Gonzaga and the Body Politic.” For documents concerning the negotiations, see Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado; Altri documenti inediti sul parentado.

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continued insistence upon a prolonged examination period suggested that the Farnese may have been correct that ‘the defect was not, after all, totally on the part of the young lady’.71 The Medici were not the only party who doubted Vincenzo’s abilities, and the situation quickly became fodder for gossip and mockery. A few days later Orazio Urbani reported a joke at the Prince’s expense that he had overheard in Ferrara. While speaking to a woman who had recently married a man from Mantua, Urbani gallantly remarked that ‘all things Mantuan are beautiful and good’, intending to refer to the lady’s husband. The Este courtier Alfonso Turco archly interjected: ‘It is true that they are all beautiful, but perhaps not good.’ Urbani records that the party responded ‘with a thousand laughs’ at Vincenzo’s expense.72 Turco’s joke lampooned Vincenzo’s inability to sexually satisfy his wife as well as his princely failure to produce sons and heirs. As the time for the prova drew nearer, speculation concerning Vincenzo’s sexual performance intensified. On 14 February 1584, a letter from Camillo Capilupi, the Gonzaga ambassador in Florence, to Teodoro San Giorgio in Mantua describes a lewd drawing of Vincenzo that was making its way through the Italian courts. Capilupi had talked with the ambassador from Ferrara, who told him of a letter that had been sent from Ferrara to Florence: [I]n which was drawn a membro virile, and in the middle [it was] crooked, with the following words: Your Lordship must know that the member of this gentleman is like this drawing, [and] you can see how it will be for the poor lady he takes as a wife.73

The Ferrarese ambassador assured Capilupi that he knew the drawing to be a base lie, but Capilupi nevertheless commented that the letter was part of a ‘high handed plot to impede the union’.74 The drawing and accompanying text demonstrate that Vincenzo’s lack of potency was a well-known source of humor throughout Italy. By the time that Vincenzo arrived in Venice to undertake the prova in March the pressure was building. News of Vincenzo’s sexual history had been spread throughout Italy by gossips and ambassadors, and his reputation as a leader and the continuity 71 ‘[C]he il defetto non sia però totalmente dalla parte della giovane’. Transcribed by Il parentado, 81. 72 To quote the passage in its entirety: ‘[R]agionando io con la più favorita dama della Sig.a Donna Marfisa, che si maritò questa state a Mantova, le dissi in certo proposito che tutto le cose mantovane son belle e buona, volendo inferire del marito, onde allhora il conte Alfonso turco, il quale tutti questi giorni insieme col Sig. Ipolito Bentivoglio ha havuto carica di tener servitù al Sig. Principe, rispose: È vero che son tutte belle, ma non forse tutte buone, volendo inferire di qualche una del Sig. Principe, e con mille risa passò a ragionare d’altro’. Transcribed by ibid., 103. 73 ‘[N]ella quale era designato un membro virile, et a mezzo storto con parole che segguigevano: V.S. sappia che il membro di quell s.re sta come questo disegnato, si che può vedere come starà quella povera s.ra pigliandolo per marito’. ASMn, AG, b. 203, f. 341r. 74 ‘[O]rdita da alta mano per impeder questa congiuntione’. Ibid.

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of the Gonzaga dynasty were at stake. The strain must have been too much for the young Prince, for on the first night he proved incapable of the task. Belisario Vinta, the man charged by Francesco de’ Medici with overseeing la prova, reported that after several hours with no apparent activity Vincenzo ran from the room crying, ‘Cavaliere, oh my, I feel awful’.75 Stomach pains that had plagued the Prince earlier in the week had returned because he had been indulging in rich foods.76 The girl was still a virgin and Vinta was stupefied by what had happened. He wrote in a postscript to Francesco de’ Medici that Vincenzo had resolved to try again, but that the Mantuan party would suffer ‘great confusion and shame, if the Prince does not succeed in recovering his honor’.77 The Prince’s physical body was a sign of his political body, and thus Vincenzo’s inability to sustain an erection and deflower a virgin signified his inability to rule.78 Vincenzo’s only hope of contracting a political marriage and thus furthering his dynasty and proving his fitness to rule Mantua was to discipline his unruly body. A few days later Vincenzo succeeded, calling out to Vinta in mid-coitus: ‘[C]ome here, touch it and feel it with your hand’.79 Vincenzo’s desire for the ambassador to both see and touch for himself seems extraordinary, but such a use of witnesses had precedent in biblical and papal ritual.80 It may also have been a not uncommon way for men to assert their virility in the face of accusations of impotence. Before Vinta was appointed to the task, Cesare d’Este had volunteered to bear witness to Vincenzo’s trial, and had been instructed ‘not only to watch, but to touch with his hands as much as he can’.81 Over a century before, a man from Venice named Nicolò had performed a similar act after his wife accused him of impotence. Nicolò asked the parish priest to testify on his behalf, and, in order to assure that the priest’s testimony would be convincing, Nicolò invited his witness to the house of two prostitutes. At one point, Nicolò asked the priest to feel his member while he was ‘carnally knowing’ one of the women.82 The similarity of Nicolò’s request to that of Vincenzo suggests that a membro duro was the best way for a man to assure witnesses of his potency. 75 ‘Cavaliere, oimé, sto male’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 162. 76 Ibid., 163. The document refers to ‘cibi di quaresima’ or Lenten foods, which most likely signifies sea food, perhaps even oysters, which were acclaimed for their aphrodisiac qualities. 77 ‘[U]na gran confusion et vergogna, se non riesce al Principe di ricuperar l’honor suo’. Transcribed by ibid., 169. 78 Galesi, “L’eros politico,” 250. See also Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. 79 ‘Cavaliere, cavaliere, vien qua, tocca et palpa con la mano’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 175. 80 Bourne, “Vincenzo Gonzaga and the Body Politic,” 42; Simons, Sex of Men, 106. 81 ‘[N]é solalmente vorrà vedere, ma tochare con le mani al più che potrà’. Transcribed by Orlando and Baccini, Il parentado, 61. 82 The story is related and the court documents transcribed by Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 146–147.

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The prova demonstrated that Vincenzo could fulfill at least part of his dynastic duties: he could deflower a virgin, and was thus capable of consummating his politically arranged marriage with Eleonora de’ Medici. Yet, the prova had not fully put to rest questions concerning the Prince’s masculinity. The many reports of his sexual liaisons with women, virgin and non-virgin alike, cast the Prince as a man at the mercy of his sexual urges, who could not conform to the rational, self-controlled masculine ideal. Vincenzo had attained a reputation as a libertine that would follow him for the rest of his life.83 Reports detailing the marriage festivities in Florence likewise cast doubt on the Prince’s gender performance. Simone Fortuna, the ambassador of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, witnessed Vincenzo’s behavior amongst his new in-laws. The ambassador spitefully wrote: I have not seen the Prince [Vincenzo] for six years, so that to me he seems much transformed: he has put on considerable weight, which renders him less agile; he does not have a beard nor any color, and in appearance he seems to have some similarity to his wife.84

Fortuna accuses Vincenzo of effeminacy on several counts. First, the fact that he has put on weight demonstrates intemperance and shows that he lacks masculine self-control. Second, he lacks facial hair, which was not only a primary way of differentiating between men and women and boys, but which also indicated a healthy balance of the male humors.85 Third, his lack of color indicates that he lacks the masculine heat necessary to extrude facial hair and produce verum semen.86 The prince lacked both primary and secondary signifiers of sex, and thus appeared like his wife. Like a woman, Vincenzo could not control himself and his inner deficiencies were made manifest on his body, which also appeared womanly. The Gonzaga had been so unsuccessful in managing Vincenzo’s reputation that not even the conclusion of the Prince’s marriage to Eleonora could put a stop to the rumor mill. In October of 1584, over four months after Eleonora’s arrival in Mantua, the Milanese ambassador Orlando Bazzi wrote to Francesco I de' Medici in cipher in order to relate rumors circulating in Lombardy. The ambassador reported that courtiers were whispering that Vincenzo I Gonzaga was impotent and that Francesco had imprisoned the Mantuan prince and demanded the return of Eleonora’s dowry.87 83 This reputation has only grown in the modern age, most notably via the movie Una vergine per il principe (1965) directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile and the novel by Maria Bellonci, Segreti dei Gonzaga. Reprinted in 2001. 84 ‘Sono ben sei anni ch’io non eravo veduto il Principe, onde m’è paruto molto trasformato: ha messo carne assai, che lo rende poco agile, non ha barbe nè quasi colore, a nell’aria par ch’abbia qualche similtudine con la moglie’. Transcribed by Guglielmo Enrico Saltini and Carlo Gargiolli, Le nozze, 9. 85 Will Fisher, “The Renaissance Beard,” 155–187; Simons, Sex of Men, 29–30. 86 Sex of Men, 5, 29–30. 87 ASF MdP, 3255, coded insert to a letter dated 17 October 1584. MAP, doc. ID 11027.

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Bazzi states that he does not believe these stories, though that seems to be the common refrain of those spreading rumors concerning Vincenzo. Whether or not Bazzi and his Milanese compatriots believed the reports, the very existence of such stories demonstrates that Vincenzo’s masculinity and his princely authority would not be easy to restore. For Fortuna, Bazzi, and other Early Modern observers gender was unstable but observable, and was seen as a series of performances that inscribed the body with recognizably masculine or feminine codes. Fortuna’s description of Vincenzo Gonzaga focuses on that which the Prince lacked: corporeal and behavioral signifiers of masculinity. Vincenzo’s male sex did not guarantee that he was perceived as masculine; in fact, his actions and physical appearance led him to be seen as feminine. Because he had failed so miserably at signifying masculinity, Vincenzo continued to be beset by rumors even after the successful consummation of his marriage. Vincenzo’s performative missteps offer a glimpse at the ways in which the images and spaces of the Palazzo Te were shaped by the bodies and behaviors of its inhabitants. For Vincenzo and the Gonzaga family the profusion of fertile and sexualized images at the palace was intended to serve as a stage on which the bride and groom could enact appropriate gender roles amidst a bountiful atmosphere that spoke to political power and social prestige, as well as conjugal felicity and procreative abundance. The spaces of the building and its gardens facilitated their transformation from bride and groom to husband and wife. While Margherita Farnese may have initially been hopeful, I would like to suggest that three years later when Eleonora de’ Medici arrived, her anxieties regarding the gender performance of her husband and the future of her marriage troubled her reception of the palace and its images. As she visited the Palazzo Te in the company of her new husband and in-laws what Eleonora saw may not have been depictions of masculine reason, vigor, and restraint. Rather, references to erotic relationships designed by Giulio Romano to emphasize the virility and wit of the Gonzaga princes instead highlighted Vincenzo’s own problematic sexuality.

Mixed Masculinities On 29 April 1584 Eleonora de’ Medici entered Mantua as the triumphant bride of Vincenzo Gonzaga. Like Margherita Farnese before her, Eleonora’s wedding procession began at the Palazzo Te, where she ate a meal and changed into clothing and jewels left for her by the Gonzaga family. Many elements of Eleonora’s entry into Mantua seem to have been calculated to upstage that of her unfortunate predecessor. Margherita Farnese had been greeted by up to 800 soldiers upon her arrival in Mantua;

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Fig. 51: Ippolito Andreasi, Northern Wall of the Loggia delle Muse, 1567. Brown pen and grey wash on paper, 30.1 x 66.2 cm, inv. 10905. © Museum Kunstpalast – Horst Kolberg – ARTOTHEK.

Eleonora was met by 600 mounted soldiers and over 700 musketeers.88 The gifts Vincenzo and his family bestowed upon his new bride also outshone those of his previous wife. When he met her at the Palazzo Te, Vincenzo gave Eleonora ‘a headpiece of pearls, diamonds and rubies […] in the form of a crown’.89 Additionally, her fatherin-law, Guglielmo Gonzaga, presented Eleonora with ‘a collar of pearls, diamonds and rubies with a pendant gem and three very large pear-shaped pearls […] which they say was valued at 65,000 scudi’.90 Despite their complaints regarding the cost of a second wedding, the Gonzaga spent lavishly in an attempt to impress the Medici with their wealth and to signal the honor and magnificence of the Gonzaga dynasty. Like her predecessor, Eleonora entered the Palazzo Te through the Loggia delle Muse, a space decorated with enigmatic hieroglyphs, Orphic frescoes, and images of the Muses and the Mantuan arts (Pl. 10). The loggia was designed to represent the Gonzaga family’s courtly erudition and status as prominent patrons of arts and letters. While the loggia takes its name from the stucco figures of the Muses on the vault above, the most visually arresting decorative elements would have been two frescoes on either side of the entryway that depict scenes from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The frescoes are badly damaged, but their subject and composition are recorded 88 Compare ASMn, AG, b. 389, f. 353r: ‘[Margherita] accompaganata al Palazzo del Te oltre degli sodetti [duecento] arcobug.ri, da cinquanta gentilhuomini […] una battaglia di soldati a piedi’, and ASMn, AG, b. 204, f. 211r, which details the arrangements for Eleonora’s arrival: ‘La farà la batagglia nel prato avanti il Palazzo del Te […] Cor[saletti] 606; Ar[chibugieri] 760’. 89 ‘Il Sig. Principe fu anco a visitarla al palazzo del Tè, et le presenta un’acconciatura di perle, diamanti et rubini da portarla in testa in forma di corona’. ASF, MdP 6354, f. 420r. MAP, doc. ID 16152. 90 ‘il Sig. Duca le mandò un collare di perle, diamanti, et rubini con un gioiello pendente et tre perle pere molte grosse, et di fattione molto vistosa, dicono loco di valuta di un 65 mila scudi’. Ibid.

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in a drawing by Ippolito Andreasi (Fig. 51). To the left of the portal, Aristaeus pursues a doomed Eurydice, while on the other side of the doorway Orpheus has retreated to the countryside to play his lyre and lament his inability to save his wife from death. The two lunettes in the Loggia delle Muse are based upon Virgil’s account in the Georgics, in which Aristaeus is the protagonist who learns that he must make a sacrifice to Orpheus in order to atone for his involvement in Eurydice’s death.91 Virgil’s Georgics was not the only or even the most popular source for the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; it was likely selected due to the Gonzaga’s desire to publicize Virgil’s Mantuan origins.92 During the Medieval and Renaissance periods the version put forth by Ovid in his Metamorphoses had a strong impact upon literary and artistic representations of the myth. For many writers, artists, readers, and beholders the Ovid’s first century text was interpreted through the lens of the Ovide moralisé.93 The depictions of Orpheus at the Palazzo Te presupposed a visitor who was familiar with both the Ovidian and Vergilian versions of the myth, as well as its allegorical implications. In the Camera di Ovidio, also known as the Camera delle Metamorfosi, a small fresco represents Orpheus in the underworld (Fig. 52). Orpheus kneels at the center of the composition and plays his lyre for Pluto and Proserpina in the hopes that they will return Eurydice to him. Also present in the fresco are the three-headed dog Cerberus, the robed figure of Sisyphus, and the Furies, all of whom are mentioned by both Virgil and Ovid, further complicating the reception of the Orphic myths at the Palazzo Te. The long allegorical tradition associated with the story and its popularity at Renaissance courts meant that Eleonora de’ Medici and Vincenzo Gonzaga brought a rich visual and literary history to bear upon the images at the Palazzo Te. In Virgil’s version of events the blame for Eurydice’s death falls upon Aristaeus and Orpheus. Artistaeus’ rapacious intentions caused the young woman to flee blindly toward the snake that caused her first death. Her second, and final, death was caused by her husband, who traveled to the underworld and won her freedom by playing his lyre for Proserpina. Orpheus was warned not to look upon his wife until they emerged into the world of the living, but, as Virgil narrates, ‘a stroke of madness’ assailed the hero.94 He looked back at Eurydice who vanished like smoke. After his failure to rescue his wife, Orpheus spurned women and refused to return to the pleasures of life. In contrast, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Eurydice’s first death was due to her own carelessness: she failed to notice the snake that bit her.95 As in Virgil, the 91 Virgil, Georgics, 4.317–565. Aristaeus is attempting to restore his prized bee hive. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice does not truly begin until line 450. 92 Soon after becoming Marchesa, Isabella d’Este had campaigned to replace a lost statue of the Mantuan poet, and Virgilian themes are prominent in maiolica commissioned by the Gonzaga family. Lisa Boutin, “Gender Neutrality.” 93 Carla Lord, “Three Manuscripts of the Ovide Moralisé,” 161–175. 94 Virgil, Georgics, 4.495. 95 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.1–65. For an analysis of the differences between Virgil’s and Ovid’s texts see W.S. Anderson, “The Orpheus of Virgil and Ovid,” 25–50.

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Fig. 52: Camera di Ovidio, detail of south wall with Orpheus and Eurydice in the Underworld, 1527. Fresco. Palazzo Te. Courtesy of the Comune di Mantova.

gods of the underworld agreed to return Eurydice to Orpheus, but he lost her again when he turned to gaze back at her. Ovid absolves Orpheus of guilt in Eurydice’s second death, for in the Metamorphoses Orpheus fears that she is dropping behind and looks back out of love and concern. While Virgil’s Eurydice chastises Orpheus for his ‘burning need’ to see her, in Ovid she remains mute, for ‘what could she complain of, except that he’d loved her?’96 In both Virgil and Ovid, Orpheus renounces female company following the death of his wife. Ovid’s hero goes one step further, for he begins the practice of ‘plucking the flower of a boy’s brief spring before he has come to his manhood’.97 In both versions, local women are angered by Orpheus’ rejection and rip apart the body he has denied them. Whether as a lover of boys or a man who refuses to remarry, Orpheus is hardly a model of nuptial bliss; despite his devotion to Eurydice, he did not save his wife. Morever, in Virgil’s narrative Orpheus’ love for Eurydice is characterized as emasculating, a love too great for reason.98 While he does not mention Orpheus’ pederasty, like Ovid, Virgil also effeminizes the hero: his love for Eurydice unmans Orpheus and ultimately causes his death.99 96 Virgil, Georgics, 4.495; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.61. 97 Metamorphoses, 10.84–85. 98 Anderson, “The Orpheus of Virgil and Ovid,” 29–30. 99 Katherine Crawford, Sexual Culture, 29–32.

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In the Medieval period, Orpheus was recast as a prototype for Christ, a metaphor for the dangers of passion, and, conversely, an allegory of the soul’s desire for excellence, and even as an ideal courtly husband.100 At times, writers went so far in describing Orpheus as a triumphant knight and lover that he was allowed to lead Eurydice out of the underworld, and manscript illuminations of the Ovide moralisé sometimes depict the couple stepping into the living world together, a tradition which continued into the Renaissance.101 Renaissance humanists found in Orpheus a figure onto whom they could graft their social and political aims. He was a statesman, who, through his eloquence brought civilization to the wilderness, and an artist who created harmony in all things. He was also, like many humanists, a poet whose words had the power to unite the soul with God.102 His refusal to marry was also seen as edifying: when men eschew marriage, women are left without male guidance. The end result is chaos and death.103 When Giulio Romano and his assistants painted the Orphic frescoes in 1528 they imputed the hero’s virtues of temperance, justice, and liberality to the Gonzaga dynasty. However, the frescoes also provoked behavior, for the intertextual and intervisual nature of Orpheus meant that he was both an exemplar and a warning, both a husband who loved his wife, and the inventor of pederasty. Orpheus was a high-minded humanist role model and a figure for the different types of sexual relationships available to Renasissance men. At the Palazzo Te male courtiers could choose to engage in humanist discourse as well as investigate sensual pleasure; they could pursue women and the sexual delights they offered and then later decide to renounce their company in favor of solitary pursuits set amidst the landscape in the company of other men. Almost fifty years after their creation, the context of the frescoes had changed beyond what either Giulio Romano or Federico II Gonzaga could have anticipated. The Gonzaga selected the Palazzo Te as the starting point for wedding processions precisely because of its associations with dynastic virility and abundance. The rumors occasioned by Vincenzo’s problematic performance reveal that the palace could resist attempts to control its reception. The specters of Vincenzo’s failed marriage and the prova haunted the spaces of the Palazzo Te. Margherita Farnese’s 1581 experience of the building had not been able to fully discipline its unruly, multivalent spaces. When Eleonora de’ Medici arrived in 1584, the palace hesitated between pasts and present, not yet fully enmeshed in marriage rituals, nor still a space associated with masculine reason and princely license. 100 For a longer review of the Late Antique and Medieval receptions of Orpheus, see John Block Friedman, Orpheus; Crawford, Sexual Culture, 29–38. 101 Friedman, Orpheus, 170–175. Marcantonio Raimondi, a printmaker closely associated with Giulio Romano, created an engraving in which Orpheus leads Eurydice into the sunlight. 102 John Warden, “Orpheus and Ficino,” 90–98. 103 Crawford, Sexual Culture, 45–48.

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The very stories spread by the Gonzaga family in defense of Vincenzo’s virility portrayed him not as a constant lover, but as a man who loved many women. Moreover, Eurydice’s status as virtuous and beloved wife was ambiguous. In Christian allegory she was sometimes identified with dangerous sensuality that tempts men away from reason.104 In contrast, Renaissance cassoni emphasize Eurydice’s chastity by depicting her in poses that mirror the Virgin Mary. Rosemarie San Juan has argued that such images portrayed her as a desirable, yet chaste wife whose emotional suffering presented an heroic opportunity for brides to enact loyalty and virtue.105 If Eleonora did cast herself in the role of Eurydice, it is not clear whether she saw herself as an unobtainable beloved, a temptress, or a virtuous wife. Despite the visual and literary tradition that Giulio Romano could have used to classify Eurydice as examplar or as warning, he chose to depict Aristaeus and his prey in an ambiguous and novel manner. Eurydice does not look over her shoulder, as both she and the mythological Daphne often do when fleeing their pursuers. The backward glance allowed the artist to clearly represent the woman’s terrified facial expression and also provided a tantalizing twist of the body that sexualized her. In contrast, the emotions of Giulio’s Eurydice are difficult to discern, and in both the damaged fresco and Ippolito Andreasi’s 1567 drawing she appears rather expressionless. Additionally, the spiritello is an unusual figure in the Eurydice iconography and his actions are also unclear. In the original fresco he appears to grasp Eurydice’s veil in an attempt to slow her and thus aid Aristaeus, while in the Andreasi drawing the spiritello rather appears to restrain Aristaeus. Whether as hindrance or help, his presence lends the fresco a playful atmosphere that mitigates any clear moral interpretation of the scene. Giulio’s Aristaeus and Eurydice was not created for a marital context, yet Eleonora de’ Medici’s previous experience of the myth and her newly-wed status would have led her to interpret the images in that way. The Medici princess was already familiar with the iconography of Orpheus and would have been well-acquainted with its multiple interpretive possibilities, for a similarly multi-layered painting depicted her grandfather in the guise of the hero. Agnolo Bronzino’s engimatic portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus (Fig. 53) has been interpreted as a political allegory, a wedding portrait, and a work which seduces both male and female viewers through an idealized depiction of the nude Duke.106 There is no scholarly consensus on the portrait precisely because it draws upon rich visual and textual traditions. Whether as a peacemaker, husband, or a site of homoerotic bonding, Cosimo-Orpheus is depicted as a robust and potent man. His muscled body is a visual quotation of the Belvedere Torso, lending the Duke a timeless and heroic aspect, and he holds the bow of his lira di braccio erect between his legs. 104 Friedman, Orpheus, 90–95; Crawford, Sexual Culture, 124. 105 Rose Marie San Juan, “Mythology, Women, and Renaissance Private Life,” 137–139. 106 See, respectively, Karla Langedijk, “Baccio Bandinelli’s Orpheus,” 47–49; Robert B. Simon, “Bronzino’s Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus,” 17–27; Elizabeth Cropper, “Pontormo and Bronzino,” 27–29; Simons, “Homosociality and erotics,” 36.

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Fig. 53: Agnolo Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus, c. 1537–39. Oil on panel, 93.7 x 76.4 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen, 1950-86-1.

However, for Cosimo’s granddaughter the frescoes at the Palazzo Te were somewhat more fraught. Eleonora de’ Medici was not Vincenzo Gonzaga’s first wife, and could therefore not convincingly play Eurydice to his Orpheus. Even if Eleonora wholeheartedly accepted the annulment of Vincenzo’s first marriage to Margherita Farnese, the images of Orpheus that greeted her upon her arrival in Mantua would have done little to allay her fears concerning her husband’s potency. Vincenzo and Orpheus were both unmanned by women: Vincenzo fled from his prova on the first night, and after Eurydice’s death Orpheus spurned the company of the female sex and was eventually overcome and torn to pieces by angry women. Unlike Bronzino’s portrait, Giulio Romano’s frescoes do not present Orpheus as a triumphant and virile man. It is Aristaeus who is represented as a lover of women. His active pursuit of Eurydice contrasts shaprly with Orpheus’

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torpor.107 Orpheus reclines against a tree in the background with his lyre in his hand and his legs spread out before him. He is static, caught in his own despair, and therefore unable to engage in the pursuit of sexual or intellectual pleasure. In contrast to Eurydice and Aristaeus, in which Eurydice and her pursuer rush across the foreground, Orpheus Amongst the Animals is calm and sedate (Fig. 51). The beholder’s focus is drawn not to Orpheus, but to a monkey or ape that sits on a ledge in the foreground of the fresco and looks outward. The animal sits at the edge of the picture plane and its gaze bridges the space between the fresco and that of the beholder. The ape invites its audience into the painting, for it is clearly a part of Orpheus’ entourage. The inclusion of the ledge also separates the two realms, and the impression of vast space within the fresco makes Orpheus appear even more unreachable. The animal emphasizes Orpheus’ unusual position, for the ape’s inattentive gaze away from the painting’s subject contrasts with the utter absoption of Orpheus, who is so focused upon his music that he becomes a part of the scene he has created. The ape collapses space and time by bridging the space of classical myth and contemporary Mantua, suggesting a mergence of beholder and beheld. The beholder may sympathize with the animals who are enraptured by Orpheus’ song, or with Orpheus, who is able to charm those around him even in the midst of despair, but who is also sexually inert. Finally, Vincenzo and Eleonora might have focused on the ape, a creature famed for its imitative abilities as well as its sexual deviance.108 Like other exemplars at the Palazzo Te, the Orphic fresco asks beholders to make the virtuous past live again through acts that create layered performative façades.109 In contrast to the practices of Federico II and Charles V, in 1584 the expereinces of Vincenzo and Eleonora may have called forth a more troubling response and created conflicting performative scripts. Giulio’s juxtaposition of an active Aristaeus and a passive Orpheus arguably remains faithful to Virgil’s intent, but it proved problematic in the nuptial context, where the images appear to effeminize the hero and strip him of agency. Orpheus appears non-generative, inactive, and impotent. Eurydice also lacks visual similarity to other mythological or religious female figures and therefore does not clearly exemplify either virtue or vice. In modeling themselves after Orpheus and Euridyce, Vincenzo and Eleonora were enacting a failed marriage and setting the stage for death and deviance. From the Loggia delle Muse the bridal party entered the Sala dei Cavalli wherein portraits of Federico II Gonzaga’s favorite horses stand calmly in front of Corinthian pilasters that frame windows into pastoral landscapes (Pl. 5) The Gonzaga closely 107 Anderson has proposed a similarly literary tension between Aristaeus, who boldly sets out to recover his lost bees, and Orpheus who ‘becomes and emblem of inertia and death’. Aristaeus is Virgil’s true hero and Orpheus is a foil who highlights the moral value of the farmer as productive and life-sustaining. “The Orpheus of Virgil and Ovid,” 34–35. 108 H.W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore, 260–270; 289–302. 109 For the role of exemplars in the making of time at the palace, see Chapter 3.

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Fig. 54: Agostino Carracci after a drawing by Giulio Bonasone, Semper Libidini Imperat Prudentia, from Achille Bochi’s Symbolicarum Quaestionum, 1555. Engraving, 20 x 14 cm. Bayerische Bibliothek, Munich, inv. 13704199 Passau.

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identified with their horses, and the presence of the family stables nearby further reinforced the close bonds between the dynasty and its animals.110 In selecting the Palazzo Te as the site of the bride’s entry into the city, Guglielmo and Vincenzo Gonzaga likely intended that Eleonora would impute the fearlessness, good breeding, and virility of the Gonzaga horses to her groom. She would have seen that, like his forebears and their horses, Vincenzo was sexually potent, strong, and ready to sire a stable of Gonzaga heirs with his wife. In both art and literature the unbridled horse was a symbol of passionate male lust that could only be tamed by marriage. In addition to Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, a 1574 engraving by Giulio Bonasone with the inscription Semper Libidini Imperat Prudentia (‘Prudence always controls desire’) depicts one horse being brought under control by a bridle while unbridled horses rear in the background (Fig. 54).111 Pietro Aretino’s experienced prostitute Nanna tells her overheated lover to ‘Go and have the horse groomed, so that as soon as I have eaten I can mount him’.112 In Aretino’s dialogue, as well as Titian’s painting and Bonasone’s print, the wild urges of the cavallo must be calmed through frequent exercise and controlled by bridles or stirrups. In contrast, Giulio Romano’s horses need no taming. They stand already bridled and placidly await their masters. In the 1530s Federico II Gonzaga and his guests may have interpreted the horses in the Sala dei Cavalli as representations of robust Gonzaga masculinity checked by virtue and reason, but by 1584 their inactivity had become problematic. Rather than reinforcing Vincenzo’s well-controlled virility, the submissive horses hinted at the quiescence of his manhood and suggested that his own cavallo was likewise inert. While the Loggia delle Muse and the Sala dei Cavalli may have presented mixed messages to Eleonora, the Camera di Psiche appears to represent marriage as both a divine union and an earthly delight. In staging Eleonora’s arrival at the Palazzo Te and her route through it, the Gonzaga re-imagined Giulio Romano’s frescoes of running waters, ithyphallic satyrs, and idealized nudes as potent images which would dispel any doubts concerning Vincenzo’s sexual abilities. However, I would like to examine the possibility that for Eleonora the Camera di Psiche would have called attention to precisely what her husband lacked: the complexion, appearance, and vigor of a man. The fresco of Jupiter and Olympia on the eastern wall provides a useful lens through which to investigate Eleonora’s position as a visitor and beholder (Pl. 1). The image ostensibly depicts the very behaviors in which Vincenzo and Eleonora were expected to engage: sexual intercourse and the advancement of a principality through procreation, for the act depicted resulted in the birth of Alexander the Great. Moreover, the fresco implicates its beholders in the action of the image for Olympia grasps the 110 See Chapter 2. 111 Santore, “The tools of Venus,” 192. 112 Aretino, Dialogues, 141.

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fictive frame of the painting and effectively ruptures the boundary between image and beholder. Jupiter is shown with ruddy coloring and promient facial hair as well as an erect membro virile. Olympia, whose pale skin and receptive sexual position conform to feminine gender norms, appears to enjoy her encounter with Jupiter, another sign of the god’s masculinity. Yet, the fresco also problematizes the erotic male gaze while opening a space for female desire. In the background Olympia’s husband, Philip of Macedon, spies upon his wife’s encounter with Jupiter through an open door. For daring to look upon a god Philip’s eyes are put out by Jupiter’s eagle, suggesting the dangers of the erotic gaze in general, but the male gaze in particular. In contrast, Jupiter turns Olympia’s head towards him, so that she looks directly at the god. For a female beholder, especially a bride, Olympia’s gaze invites female desire: Olympia, and by extension Eleonora, could look upon the idealized and virile body of Jupiter without restraint. Yet in the context of Vincenzo’s problematic sexual and gender performance, Philip’s thwarted gaze and his unfulfilled desire also call to mind the Gonzaga Prince’s lack of vigor and potency.

Re-Staging the Bride From the marital missteps of Orpheus to inactive horses and the ambiguity of Jupiter and Olympia, the Palazzo Te presented mixed messages to Eleonora de’ Medici and her entourage. Yet, when it came time for the wedding procession of his eldest son, Francesco IV, to Margherita of Savoy, Vincenzo Gonzaga turned once again to the Palazzo Te. More than any other Gonzaga prince, Vincenzo appreciated the theatrical nature of the palace. During his reign the Palazzo Te became a centerpiece of Gonzaga court entertainment and a building known throughout Europe for its frescoes and mysterious acoustic effects.113 After years of official inactivity, the palace once again played host to banquets for visiting diplomats, and Vincenzo commissioned additional work in the gardens including the addition of a grotto.114 The continued use of the Palazzo Te by Vincenzo and his heirs is partially attributable to Vincenzo’s taste for opulence and his attempts to highlight and expand Gonzaga patronage.

113 The increased ceremonial role of the Palazzo Te is attested to by documents such as ASMn, AG, b. 402, f. 470r-473v, a list of expenses incurred at the Palazzo Te from March through August 1593. Among other more quotidian outlays, the list includes six ducats paid to a Spanish buffoon for entertaining the Duchess, 13 lire paid to four violinists who played for the Duke, and costs for the transportation of four paintings from the Palazzo Ducale to the Palazzo Te and then back again. For the role of the Palazzo Te outside Mantua, see Chapter 4. 114 William V, Duke of Bavaria, was given a tour of the palace during his visit in March of 1593. ASMn, AG. B. 2659, 29 March 1593. In 1604 the visiting Archduke Maximilian was treated to a tournament of arms in the courtyard of the Palazzo Te. Ibid., b. 2260, 30 Apri, 1604. For work on the grotto, see Chapter 4.

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A certain amount of habit or even inertia may also be responsible. After Eleonora’s entry 1584 the processional route between the Palazzo Te and the Palazzo Ducale had been firmly established by three triumphal entries. The course from the Palazzo Te to the Palazzo Ducale was relatively straight and wide, which better accommodated the triumphal carriages and throngs of participants and spectators. It also took visitors past many of the major monuments of the city, including the Palazzo San Sebastiano and its Albertian church across the street, and the Basilica of Sant’Andrea, and therefore showed the architectural wealth of the city to its best advantage. Moreover, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Gonzaga began to stage larger and more elaborate nuptial festivities that included processions, comedies, jousts, and mock naval battles.115 Its sumptuous decoration, large rooms and axial location made the Palazzo Te an ideal place from which to stage the bride’s triumphal entry into the city. Vincenzo also recognized that the Palazzo Te could be used to enact princely values such as magnificence, largess, and witty erudition. In addition, he knew that the Palazzo Te could provoke the performance of virile masculinity, or remind visitors of its lack. His revived use of the palace in court entertainments and nuptial ceremonies demonstrates his recognition of the building’s active role in the construction and continuity of the Gonzaga’s princely identity. However, unlike his father and grandfather before him, Vincenzo also appears to have recognized the subversive potential of the palace. He altered the triumphal procession of his daughter-in-law, Margherita of Savoy, in order to re-shape the way in which the bride and her entourage experienced the Palazzo Te. The union of Francesco IV Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy was part of a double-wedding that also included Margherita’s sister, Isabella, and Alfonso III d’Este. The unions were intended to bind the Spanish house of Savoy to powerful families in northern Italy. The marriage of Francesco and Margherita was further meant to end hostilities between the dukes of Mantua and Savoy concerning the territory of Monferrato, which had passed to the Gonzaga in 1536, but which the Savoy had been attempting to annex.116 The couple were married in Turin on 19 February 1608, though one of Marhgerita’s cousins, Henry I, Duke of Nemours, acted as the proxy for the groom, who did not arrive in Turin until March. The Gonzaga then expected Margherita to travel to Mantua to celebrate the wedding in early April, but her father continued to postpone the date of his daughter’s departure to the growing impatience of 115 Compare the 1561 arrangements for the marriage of Guglielmo Gonzaga to Eleonora von Habsburg with the 1608 celebration staged for Francesco IV Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy: Andrea Arrivabene, I grandi apparati; Follino, Compendio. 116 Upon the death of Giovanni Giorgio Paleologo in 1533 the Gonzaga claimed rights to Monferrato through Margherita Paleologa, the sole surviving heir of the dynasty and the wife of Federico II Gonzaga. Federico was granted the title Marchese of Monferrato by Charles V in 1536. Monferrato was not contiguous with the duchy of Mantua, and instead adjoined the duchy of Savoy. Monferrato prove to be an almost constant drain on Gonzaga military and fiscal resources. Davari, “Federico Gonzaga,” 58–90; Romolo Quazza, La guerra, 14–55.

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her new in-laws.117 By the time that Margherita and her entourage arrived in Mantua on 24 May the Gonzaga were disgruntled and offended by Carlo Emanuele’s manifest reluctance to deliver his daughter. Nevertheless, the Gonzaga were determined to impress their new in-laws with all the pomp and magnificence possible. The nuptial festivities of Francesco IV and Margherita were the grandest that had ever been held in Mantua. In staging the wedding of his eldest son and heir, Vincenzo was competing with the courts of Turin, Modena, and Florence, all of whom also held sumptuous marriage fetes in 1608.118 Federico Follino recorded the bride’s triumphal entry and the elaborate entertainments that followed, which featured a joust, a mock naval battle between Christians and Turks, and performances of Monteverdi’s Arianna and Guarini’s L’Idropica, as well as a other theatrical and musical events.119 Follino’s printed pamphlet even includes fold-out engravings of the naval battle and a triumphal cart seemingly pulled by sea horses, both designed by the engineer Gabriele Bertazzolo. The Palazzo Te was more involved in the celebration of the 1608 marriage than it had been on any previous occasion: not only was it the entry point of Margherita of Savoy during her triumphal procession, the wedding party also spent the day there on 27 May where they received Alfonso d’Este III and his new bride, Isabella of Savoy, and the penultimate feast of the celebrations was held at the palace.120 While the Palazzo Te did not play a role in the most magnificent banquets and theatrical performances arranged during the nuptials, its liminal position at the edge of Mantua was used to both open and close the ceremonies. In addition to further exploiting the location of the palace within the framework of the nuptial celebrations, Vincenzo I Gonzaga also changed the way in which the bride and her entourage approached the Palazzo Te. In contrast to Vincenzo’s two brides, Margherita of Savoy did not encounter her groom and father-in-law outside the building and then follow them inside via the Loggia delle Muse. Instead, Margherita entered the palace from the east by means of the Loggia di Davide, where she was met by Eleonora de’ Medici, Duchess of Mantua, and Margherita Gonzaga, 117 On 10 April Vincenzo Gonzaga wrote that ‘the entrance of the Infanta, our daughter-in-law, has been deferred due to certain new reasons until the 28th of the month (l’entrata dell’Infanta nostra Nuora s’è differita per certi novi rispetti alli 28 dell mese)’. ASMn, AG, b. 2163, fasc. I, f. 67r. On 22 April Vincenzo Gonzaga was advised that ‘due to certain impediments of the Duke of Savoy, the arrival of the Infanta, our daughterin-law has been extended until the fourth or sixth of May (per certi impedimento del signor Duca di Savoia, s’è prolongata la venuta dell’Infanta nostra N[u]ora sino alli quattro o sei di Maggio)’. Ibid., f. 85r. Vincenzo’s frustration becomes evident on 16 May when he describes the Duke of Savoy as someone ‘who continues to procrastinate (che con andar procrastinando)’. Ibid., f. 105r. 118 For the celebrations of the weddings of Margherita and Isabella of Savoy in Turin, see Varallo, “Le feste per il matrimonio.” For relations between the Este and the house of Savoy, see Pierpaolo Merlin, “La corte estense nel primo Seicento,” 135–148. For the wedding of Cosimo II de’ Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria, see Paolo Carpeggiani, “Le feste fiorentine del 1608,” 14–56; Sanger, Art, Gender and Relgious Devotion, 18–21. 119 Follino, Compendio, 29–124; Besutti, “Il matrimonio dell’infanta Margherita,” 491–506; Bonnie Gordon, “Nuptial Voices,” 349–384. 120 Follino, Compendio, 7, 27–29, 149.

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Fig. 55: Eastern (garden) façade, 1530–32. Palazzo Te. Photo by author.

the dowager Duchess of Ferrara.121 The Gonzaga women ushered Margherita into the palace where she rested from the fatigue of her jouney and then dressed for the triumphal entry that would follow. While Vincenzo and Francesco likely accompanied Margherita into the palace, they are not mentioned in the brief description of the bride’s activities inside the palace, and the impression provided by Follino’s text is that Margherita’s visit to the Palazzo Te was supervised and conducted by the Gonzaga women.122 Because she entered through the Loggia di Davide rather than the Loggia delle Muse, Margherita’s first impression of the Palazzo Te was one of overwhelming triumph. Giulio Romano had modeled the eastern garden façade of the palace on a tripartite Roman triumphal arch (Fig. 55). In contrast to the playful deceptions and spatial ruptures of the courtyard façades, the sheer size and grandeur of the garden façade overwhelms inhabitants. Giulio and his assistants had also filled the spandrels 121 Ibid., 7. Follino writes that Margherita of Savoy was met by the Gonzaga women under the gran loggia. The Loggia delle Muse was never referred to as grand, but the Loggia di Davide was described as ‘un gran loggia’ on a ground plan of the palace made in 1567 (Fig. 10). 122 There is some ambiguity in Follino’s description of Margherita’s sojourn at the Palazzo Te. He first writes that after she arrived, the duchesses ‘conducted her inside the palace (conducendola dipoi entro il palazzo)’, where she rested from her travels. Follino then continues that Margherita ‘was quite restored by those gardens (Ristorata che ella si fù alquanto per quei Giardini)’, which suggests that Margherita spent some time outdoors. Ibid. Follino may be indicating that Margherita rested in one of the rooms that faced the gardens, such as the Camera di Psiche, which had previously been praised as ‘the most beautiful and most airy room in that palace (luogo più bello et più fresco di quel palazzo)’. ASMn, AG, b. 389, f. 153v.

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Fig. 56: Giulio Romano, Winged Victories and Barbarian Prisoners, c. 1530. Pen and brown ink with brown wash and squared off in black chalk, on paper, 22.2 x 43.9 cm, inv. 3503. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

of the archway with frescoes of winged victories, trophies, bound captives, and other spoils of war, which would have heightened the visual intricacy of the façade (Fig. 56). From the garden tantalizing glimpses of the loggia and courtyard beyond would have drawn Margherita toward the façade and into the buidling, thus compelling her to enact her own triumphal procession. Coupled with the rhythm of the columns, archways, and colonettes the façade must have appeared very dynamic and imposing to the young Margherita of Savoy. Vincenzo may have chosen to stage the bride’s entrance through the garden façade because its blatant and physically commanding pronouncement of victory could serve as a reminder to the bride and her family of the Gonzaga dynasty’s continued hold over Monferrato. He also re-oriented the bride’s approach to the Palazzo Te in order to mitigate interpretive problems occasioned by the Orphic frescoes in the Loggia delle Muse. Margherita’s first impression of her new home was one of fertile gardens and victorious architecture, rather than images of death and impotence. The bride encountered the matriarchs of her new family under the large barrel vault of the Loggia di Davide amidst images of David’s heroic exploits and his infamous pursuit of Bathsheba. In addition to imputing David’s virtues to the Gonzaga princes, the fresoces in the Loggia di Davide also portray the pleasures and dangers of the erotic gaze.123 During the reign of Federico II, the combination of an alluring Bathsheba, a voyeuristic David, and a doomed Uriah would have allowed male beholders to appreciate the tension between scopic pleasure and its consequences. 123 See Chapter 3.

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As a bride, Margherita of Savoy may have seen the frescoes as a warning to guard her behavior and her chastity. Yet, in the Toilette Bathsheba engages in corporeal rituals with which Margherita would have been familiar. The Infanta had likely been dressed by ladies-in-waiting who similarly fixed her hair, held up a mirror, and selected jewelry for her approval. Margherita also sought to draw the gaze of a man, but it was that of her husband. In staging Margherita’s arrival in Mantua, Vincenzo I attempted to reshape the way in which the bride and her entrouage would experience the palace, and thus attempted to manipulate her position in Mantua. The painted bodies of victorious women and bound prisoners on the façade coupled with the physical bodies of the Gonzaga duchesses and the clothing of her own form in order to produce Margherita as the model wife and daughter. Along with the living exempla of the Gonzaga duchesses, the triumphant façade, the exhortations to conjugal chastity within the loggia, and the fecund sights and smells of the gardens cast Margherita as the ideal wife and mother. At the same time, Margherita’s reception at the palace emphasized her liminal position at the court. The Loggia di Davide is itself a threshold into a building that was both inside and outside of Renaissance Mantua. Like the palace, Margherita was inextricably bound to the Gonzaga and was the very means by which the dynasty might continue, but at the same time she was a member of a rival family. The militaristic setting of the garden façade reinforced the message of its frescoes, for the booming canon and images of victors and captives reminded Marhgerita of the might of the Gonzaga and cast her as both a victorious defender of the dynasty and as its spoils. As she walked through the façade, Margherita began her triumphal procession, a ritual that similarly represented her as an heroic individual and circumscribed her within the confines of the Gonzaga family. The presence of the duchesses of Mantua and Ferrara served as living exempla to the new bride, reminding her of her duty to her new family. At the same time, the presence of Margherita of Gonzaga, whose failure to produce a male heir led to the reappropraition of Ferrara by Pope Clement VII, roused the specter of dynastic collapse.124 Vincenzo’s changes to the bride’s triumphal entry thus set up a new set of associations between the palace and its inhabitants. Margherita’s arrival continued the associations between the palace and the procreative potency of the Gonzaga princes. The ways in which Vincenzo staged her performative practice also reinforced her liminal status as a corporeal tie between two warring factions, recalling the palace’s history as an arena of political jockeying. Yet, the inclusion of the Gonzaga d­ uchesses also reframed the Palazzo Te within discourses of feminine agency and gendered ­performance. Margherita of Savoy was the object of procreative and political aims, and also the embodied subject whose active participation in the Gonzaga family might set the stage for her own triumphs. 124 For the Este loss of Ferrara, see Guido Guerzoni, Le corti estensi.

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Marital Missteps Like the marriage of Vincenzo I and Margherita Farnese, the union of Francesco IV Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy did not last long, and like his father’s ill-fated matrimony, the end of Francesco’s marriage caused considerable anxiety concerning the future of the Gonzaga dynasty. Francesco IV died on 22 December 1612, less than a year after he became Duke of Mantua. Francesco’s untimely death ushered in a dynastic crisis that threatened to break up the Gonzaga patrimony. Although Margherita of Savoy had borne him three children, including one male heir, only the eldest daugher, Maria, outlived her father. Francesco’s lack of male progeny meant that the duchy of Mantua fell to his younger brother, Ferdinando, while Margherita of Savoy claimed the duchy of Monferrato for her young daughter.125 Although Ferdinando Gonzaga was the next eligible heir, he was a cardinal and had to renounce his ecclesiastic position before he could assume the title of Duke, a three-year long process which left the duchy in dynastic limbo.126 Ferdinando’s reign was troubled by anxieties surrounding his masculinity, and therefore his ability to rule. The transformation from supposedly chaste cleric to virile prince was not facilitated overnight. Despite the fact that Francesco had kept a mistress in Rome, questions concerning his masculinity and sexuality followed him to Mantua. In 1615 the Venetian ambassador Giovanni da Mulla reported that while Ferdinando was ‘thin and muscular’, he was also ‘of delicate complexion, with an elegant (leggiadro) appearance and of smooth face, and full of grace (venustà)’.127 In his description of Ferdinando’s physical appearance the Venetian ambassador uses terms normally reserved for women. Ferdinando is leggiadro, the masculine form of leggiadria, a word which denotes the delicate grace and elegance displayed by women.128 He is also possessed of venustà, or the beauty and elegance displayed by the female form.129 While da Mulla stresses Ferdinando’s passion for music and poetry, he does not credit the Duke with masculine pursuits such as hunting or swordplay. The ambassador continues that there is anxiety in Mantua concerning the succession, and that it would be best for Ferdinando to marry quickly and produce heirs. However, there are rumors in Mantua concerning ‘the inability of the Duke and of 125 Coniglio, I Gonzaga, 409–414; Blythe Alice Raviola, “The Three Lives of Margherita of Savoy-Gonzaga,” 62–69. The duchy of Monferrato was able to pass through female heirs in the absence of a direct male descendant, a fact demonstrated by Margherita Paleologa in 1533. Margherita of Savoy’s claims to Monferrato as regent for her daughter opened the way for renewed hostilities between the dukes of Mantua and Savoy, which contributed to the War of Mantuan Succession (1628–1631). 126 Ferdinando formally renounced his cardinalate in December of 1615. Coniglio, I Gonzaga, 414–415. 127 ‘[M]agre ed asciuta, di delicata complessione, di leggiadro aspetto e di faccia amabile e piena di venustà’. Transcribed by A. Segarizzi, Relazioni, 1.139. 128 Fermor, “Gender and Movement,” 50. 129 Mark Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, 25, 44, 174, 86. The art theorist Lodovico Dolce connected venustà to the female nude in his discussion of Apelles.

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[his younger brother] Don Vincenzo to procreate’.130 Da Mulla concedes that while many consider these rumors to be malicious lies, [T]he grave and significant problem is that the Duke is not married, he remains thus and continues on: the years pass, and the occasions [for marriage] also fly by, and together with them, all hopes of a good resolution.131

Giovanni da Mulla paints a portrait of Ferdinando Gonzaga as feminine in his behavior and appearance, potentially impotent, and disinclined to take a wife and thereby carry out his dynastic duty. Ferdinando’s masculine performance was that of a cleric, not a prince. Moreover, the difficulties facing the dynasty were not confined to Ferdinando. If he could not produce heirs there was no reason to believe that Vincenzo II was better prepared to succeed. The failure of the remaining Gonzaga heirs to marry and procreate, and the concerns about their ability to do so, caused a series of claimants to come out of the woodwork and led to anxieties about the future of the dynasty. Amidst rumors of effiminacy and sexual deficiency, Ferdinando began to court Camilla Faà da Bruno, a sixteen-year-old girl from Monferrato who had entered the Gonzaga court some years earlier as a lady-in-waiting to Margherita of Savoy.132 At first, Ferdinando proposed that Camilla become his official mistress, but she cannily insisted that they wed. The two were secretly married on 19 February 1616. Despite the fact that Camilla quickly became pregnant, Ferdinando began to regret his decision. His continued war with the duchy of Savoy meant that he needed political and financial capital that could only be gained through an advantageous marriage. Ferdinando’s cousin, Caterina de’ Medici was being pushed upon him by his determined aunts, Margherita Gonzaga, the dowager Duchess of Ferrara, and Marie de’ Medici, the Queen of France.133 Camilla’s son, Giacinto, was born in December 1616; her marriage to Ferdinando had ended by 1 February 1617. Only a few days later, on 7 February 1617, Ferdinando married Caterina de’ Medici. Camilla was forced into a monastery, first in Mantua and then in Ferrara, and Giacinto was raised at the Gonzaga court as Ferdinando’s natural son. After she took her final vows in 1622, Camilla wrote a

130 ‘[D]ell’inabilità del signor duca e di don Vincenzo all procreazione’. Transcribed by Segarizzi, Relazioni, 1.145. 131 ‘[I]l grave e rilevante intricco è che il signor duca non si marita, sta così e porta innanzi: gli anni trascorrono, e l’occasioni anco possono fuggirsi e, con esse insieme, le speranze del bene’. Transcribed by ibid. 132 Antonio Possevino, Historia Belli Monferratensis, 6–7; Giuseppe Giorcelli, “Documenti storici del Monferrato,” 74–76. Camilla and the other ladies were kept on at the Gonzaga court in the hopes that Francesco would marry Margherita of Savoy and the ladies could resume their duties. Negotiations with Carlo Emanuele soured and Ferdinando remained unwed. For Camilla’s time at the Gonzaga court, see Molly Bourne, “A State Affair,” 215–224. 133 Coniglio, I Gonzaga, 411–416.

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history of her relationship with Ferdinando Gonzaga in which she describes their courtship and brief marriage.134 The Palazzo Te was embroiled in Ferdinando’s pursuit of Camilla as well as his eventual marriage to Caterina de’ Medici. In her memoir, Camilla reports that Ferdinando organized a ball at Palazzo Te in September 1615 for the express purpose of meeting her.135 After many declarations on the part of the Duke and protestations on the part of Camilla, the ball ended. Throughout her autobiography Camilla takes care to position herself as someone who had ‘brain enough to know I have no such merits to raise myself to those [higher] ranks’, but was swept off her feet by the Duke’s attentions.136 Camilla’s reconstruction of events is self-serving and we must be careful of accepting her word, especially when she imputes motives to others. However, the inclusion of details such as the location of the ball at the Palazzo Te seems incidental to the narrative identity that she creates, and thus might be taken with less skepticism. If Ferdinando arranged the evening in order to meet Camilla and offer her a sexual or nuptial union, it is likely that his selection of the Palazzo Te as the stage for his proposal was meaningful. The liminal location of the palace allowed Ferdinando to pursue Camilla in a place that was adjacent to his seat of power, yet outside the formal court structures present at the Palazzo Ducale. The ball would have taken place in the Sala dei Cavalli, a room which had historically been used for dancing, and in which the vigorous steps of male dancers eched the movements of the famed Gonzaga steeds. Ferdinando could therefore perform his masculinity for his potential lover through corporeal signs that recalled both his own virility and the virtues of the family that he was asking Camilla to join. The fact that the palace had been used in recent wedding processions may also have led Ferdinando to associate the building with love and marriage. Like the 1584 wedding of Vincenzo I Gonzaga and Eleonora de’ Medici, Ferdinando’s 1617 marriage to Caterina de’ Medici was conducted in the midst of sexual and procreative anxieties. Like her cousin Eleonora, Caterina was not her husband’s first wife, and both Caterina and Francesco were under immense pressure to produce a male heir. Yet, Camilla Faà did not fade quietly into the background like Margherita Farnese. She continued to write to Ferdinando, and refused to take final vows until 22 May 1622, leaving Caterina’s marriage in a precarious state for five years. On

134 The manuscript copy of Camilla’s memoir is located in the private archives of the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara. In the nineteenth century Leopoldo Cammillo Volta made two copies, one of which resides in Casale with the Faà family, the other of which is preserved in the Mantuan archives (ASMn, Documenti Patrii d’Arco, n. 144). Giuseppe Giorcelli published the Mantuan manuscript in 1895 “Documenti storici del Monferrato,” 90–99. Using Giorcelli’s transcription, Valeria Finucci has published an English translation: “The Italian Memorialist,” 128–137. I rely on Finucci’s translation, though it should be noted that she has mistranslated the name of the Palazzo Te as ‘Tea Palace’. 135 Finucci, “The Italian Memorialist,” 128–129. 136 Ibid., 129.

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3 March 1622 Camilla wrote to Ferdinando that she had been informed by the Medici agent, Ottavio Morbeola, that she was expected to renounce her title as Marchesa of Monbaruzzo and to remain at Corpus Domini for the rest of her life. She was bitterly unhappy about her transformation from potential duchess to nun and chastised Ferdinando that ‘it seems to me a great thing that I must be resolved to take the veil against my will, and that then I must live and die in a place where I do not even know a dog’.137 Camilla attempted to stall the process as long as possible, and one month later Morbeola reported that she was faking an illness in order to avoid responding to his proposals.138 She took the name Suor Caterina Camilla, perhaps as a way to placate Caterina de’ Medici and remind the new Duchess of her duties toward Giacinto.139 In December of 1622 Camilla contacted Caterina de’ Medici and begged to be allowed to move to a convent in Mantua. In a coded insert the Medici envoy, Andrea Cioli, wrote that the new Duchess feared that if Camilla was allowed to take up residence in Mantua Ferdinando ‘could not refrain nor restrain himself from entering the monastery where she was’.140 Caterina had therefore asked Cioli to make certain that Camilla never received permission to move to Mantua. Despite the fact that Caterina and Ferdinando were legally married, the Duchess continued to feel insecure in her position. Amidst continuing doubts concerning Ferdinando’s marital status, Caterina de’ Medici’s entry into Mantua on 3 March 1617 was intended to proclaim her position as his true bride and Duchess of Mantua. She disembarked at Virgiliana and was escorted to the Palazzo Te, where, like the brides before her, Caterina rested and prepared herself for her entry into the city.141 Unlike brides before her, Caterina was not met by either her groom or her new in-laws at the Palazzo Te. Instead, Ferdinando and his brother met her at Virgiliana, and when the party reached the Isola del Te Caterina 137 ‘[P]arendomi gran cosa l’avermi bisognata risolvermi contro mia volia di monarcharmi e che poi anco abia da vivere e morire in loco dove non vi è un cane ch’io conosia’. ASMn, AG, b. 206, f. 55r. 138 ASF, MdP 6113, f. 276r-v. MAP, doc. ID 18755. 139 Bourne, “A State Affair,” 223. 140 ‘[I]l sig.r Duca si potesse mai astenere, ne ritenere che non entrasse dentro al monasterio dove ella fusse’. ASF, MdP 2954, 10 December 1622. MAP, doc. ID 8195. 141 ASMn, AG, b. 394, f. 29r-30r. This document is undated and unsigned. However, upon close reading it appears to refer to the wedding procession of Ferdinando and Caterina. First, the document states that the groom (sua altezza) was accompanied by a cardinal (Sig.r Cardinale). Vincenzo II was named a cardinal-deacon in 1615, though he never took holy orders and was allowed to marry; Vincenzo II is referred to as Sig.r Cardinale in other documents as well. Second, a certain Marchese Malaspina, perhaps Giulio Cesare Malaspina, is mentioned at several points in the document; the Malaspina do not appear to have been Gonzaga courtiers, but are mentioned in letters from Christine of Lorraine to her daughter, Caterina de’ Medici. Beatrice Biagioli and Elisabetta Stumpo, Lettere alla figlia Caterina de’ Medici, 96, 171, 291, 303. Third, the document refers to the bride as ‘the most serene lady Duchess (la Serenissima Signora Duchessa)’. Caterina de’ Medici is one of only three brides who married a duke, rather than a duke’s son. The other two brides were Margherita Paleologa and Caterina von Habsburg. Both of their entries are well-documented and did not include the Palazzo Te. For the entry of Margherita Paleologa, see ASMn, AG, b. 2516, f. 66r-67v, and for the entry of Caterina von Habsburg, see ASMn, AG, b. 199, f. 85.

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entered the palace to rest while the Duke and his entourage entered the city.142 The bride was received by Margherita Gonzaga and the other noblewomen of Mantua at the Palazzo Ducale.143 Thus, it appears that Caterina entered the Palazzo Te in the company of her own ladies-in-waiting and perhaps a few Gonzaga retainers. Although it is unlikely that Caterina knew that the Palazzo Te had facilitated the relationship between Ferdinando and Camilla Faà, the palace’s use as a site of courtly entertainments in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries must have reawakened previous spatial performances. Ferdinando’s practices recalled Federico’s deployment of the palace as a place to stage masculine vigor and princely liberality. The former cardinal’s flirtatious approach to Camilla even echoes Charles V’s 1530 discussion with Livia Cathabena da Gonzaga. At the same time, the bridal performances of Margherita Farnese, Eleonora de’ Medici, and Margherita of Savoy lingered, tinging the palace and its spaces with promises of happy union that were rarely realized. The Palazzo Te hovered between these pasts and the present. Its layers of practice and performance intersected with Caterina’s experience such that images of playful spiritelli, lascivious satyrs, and mythical lovers may not have possessed the same sense of promise that they had held for previous Gonzaga brides. Caterina had married into an embattled dynasty that was short of funds, bereft of a clear successor, and emasculated by poor judgment and intemperance. The virtues of masculine vigor and reasoned self-control represented at the Palazzo Te were absent in her husband. The triumph of romantic love depicted in the frescoes of Cupid and Psyche may have reminded Caterina that her groom had only recently declared his undying love for a woman who was, like Psyche, socially beneath him and spurned by his own family. The images of justice and temperance that decorated the Camera degli Imperatori and the apartment of the secret garden depicted the very virtues which her husband lacked. Ferdinando was not robust like the horses in the Sala dei Cavalli, and the centuries of dynasty represented in the Camera delle Imprese were on the brink of extinction. In early March the gardens would have been brown, muddy, and barren. As with the 1581 wedding of Vincezo I and Margherita Farnese, the marriage of Ferdinando and Caterina de’ Medici failed to enact the fertility and virility promised by the Palazzo Te. The couple had no children. In his attempt to secure the political future of Mantua Ferdinando had disinherited his only male heir and plunged the duchy into further disarray. Ferdinand’s problematic marital performance coupled with his lack of legitimate heirs put an end to the use of the Palazzo Te in Gonzaga nuptial rituals. Caterina de’ Medici was the last bride to enter Mantua from the Palazzo Te, and while she did not benefit from the bounteous imagery on the walls, she did 142 ASMn, AG, b. 394, f. 29r-30r. The same set of circumstances is described in a document dated 11 March 1617 written by one Gioseffo Casato from Mantua. Unfortunately, the location of the document is currently unknown. Transcribed by Attilio Portioli, Il matrimonio. 143 ASMn, AG, b. 394, f. 30r.

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reap rewards from the gardens. After Ferdinando’s death in October of 1626, income from the gardens on the Isola del Te was used to repay Caterina’s dowry.144 Identity formation is an iterative process, ‘a stylized repetition of acts’ that constructs façades of gender and class.145 Margherita Farnese encountered the palace in the context of sexual and marital anxiety, and thus may have seen the erotic and fecund imagery of the Palazzo Te as an impetus to normalized sexual relations with her husband. Yet, she was unable to engage in the daily and even mundane gestures, movements and discourses that would constitute her identity as a Gonzaga wife and mother. When Eleonora de’ Medici arrived just two years later, her performative interaction with the Palazzo Te revealed the cracks in Early Modern gender roles by emphasizing the inability of her husband to correctly perform his masculinity. For Margherita of Savoy, her female encounter and triumphal appproach drew upon the liminal spaces of the palace in order to emphasize her own position as both an outsider and a crucial member of the Gonzaga family. Like her cousin Eleonora, Caterina de’ Medici arrived in Mantua amidst marital uncertainty and dynastic crisis, and thus the spaces and images of the palace may have evoked her husband’s lack of normative masculine identity, rather than proudly proclaiming it. The use of the Palazzo Te in Gonzaga bridal processions reveals that the visitor’s experience was determined by his or her performative engagement with the building. While the frescoes were intended to incite acts virility and robust physicality on the part of the groom and chastity and sexual receptiveness on the part of the bride, the palace could not be so easily co-opted. The experiences and expectations of inhabitants interacted with space in dynamic and iterative ways, producing corporeal performances that were divergent, unpredictible, and troubling. When the bodies of their husbands failed to perform normative masculinity, the multivalent possibilities of the Palazzo Te allowed the brides to perceive the absence. Vincenzo I and Ferdinando Gonzaga could not convincingly enact the roles which the palace expected from them, and their failure to adhere to established masculine gender roles exposed the subversive potential of the palace. The dynamic and polysemous spaces of the Palazzo Te meant that the building, its interpretation, and its use were never stable. As the circumstances of the Gonzaga dynasty changed, so, too, did their relationship to the palace. Due to its liminal position and the need to stage grander and more impressive marriage rituals in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the building took on a new role as the site of the bride’s official welcome to the Gonzaga family. As the place wherein the foreign princess became a Gonzaga wife, the Palazzo Te was the space in which the bride’s new identity began to be formed. The Gonzaga princes and their brides performed their masculine and feminine roles in a space already inscribed with sexual 144 ASF, MdP, 2654, 1627. MAP, doc. ID 5775. 145 Butler, Gender Trouble, 191.

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and gendered practices. Previous iterations of the building as a site for the performance of princely virtue, virility and wit shaped the ways in which foreign princesses experienced the palace. At the same time, the triumphal entries of Gonzaga brides set the Palazzo Te in a new marital context, and therefore drew upon aspects of the space that could not have been anticipated by its initial architect or patron.

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Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. “Zacharias: or The Ousting of the Father: The Rites of Marriage in Tuscany from Giotto to the Council of Trent.” Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. In Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, 178–212. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Kuchta, David. The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Langedijk, Karla. “Baccio Bandinelli’s Orpheus: A Political Message.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20, no. 1 (1976): 33–52. Lepri, Nicoletta. “Nuovi documenti sulle nozze di Vincenzo Gonzaga e Margherita Farnese(1581).” Civiltà mantovana 42, no. 124 (2007): 166–93. Lord, Carla. “Three Manuscripts of the Ovide Moralisé.” The Art Bulletin 57, no. 2 (1975): 161–75. Malacarne, Giancarlo. Le feste del Principe: giochi, divertimenti, spettacoli a corte. Modena: Il Bulino, 2002. Maurer, Maria F. “The Palazzo Te and the Spaces of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy.” Indiana University, 2013. Maurer, Maria F. “The Trouble with Pasiphaë: Engendering a Myth at the Gonzaga Court.” In Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, edited by Marice Rose and Alison C. Poe, 199–229. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Mazzoldi, Leonardo, and Mario Bendiscioli, eds. Mantova: la storia. Vol. 2, Da Lodovico secondo marchese a Francesco secondo duca. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1961. Mazzoldi, Leonardo, Renato Giusti, Rinaldo Salvadori, and Ugolino Nicolini, eds. Mantova: la storia. Vol. 3, Da Guglielmo terzo duca alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1963. McGrath, Aidan. A Controversy Concerning Male Impotence. Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1988. McLaren, Angus. Impotence: A Cultural history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Meijer, Bert W. Parma e Bruxelles: committenza e collezionismo farnesiani alle due corti. Milan: Silvana, 1988. Merlin, Pierpaolo. “Savoia ed Este: due dinastie nel secolo di ferro.” In La corte estense nel primo Seicento. Diplomazia e mecenatismo artistico, edited by Elena Fumagalli and Gianvittorio Signorotto, 135–48. Rome: Viella, 2012. Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Quazza, Romolo. La guerra per la successione di Mantova e del Monferrato (1628–31). 2 vols. Mantua: G. Mondovì e figli, 1926. Randolph, Adrian W.B. “Performing the Bridal Body in Fifteenth-Century Florence.” Art History 21, no. 2 (1998): 182–200. Raviola, Blythe Alice. “The Three Lives of Margherita of Savoy-Gonzaga, Duchess of Mantua and Vicereine of Portugal.” In Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino, 59–76. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Roggero Bardelli, Costanza. “Luoghi di loisir ducale e di corte.” In Politica e cultura nell’età di Carlo Emanuele I. Torino, Parigi, Madrid, edited by Mariarosa Masoero, Sergio Mamino, and Claudio Rosso, 397–410. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999. Romani, Marina. Una città in forma di palazzo: potere signorile e forma urbana nella Mantova medievale e moderna. Brescia: Centro di ricerche storiche e sociali Federico Odorici, 1995. Romano, Giovanni, and Anna Maria Bava, eds. Le collezioni di Emanuele I di Savoia. Turin: Fondazione CRT, 1995. Exhibition catalogue. Roskill, Mark. Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. New York: College Art Association, 1968. Ruggiero, Guido. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Salisbury, Joyce E. “Bestiality in the Middle Ages.” In Sex in the Middle Ages, edited by Joyce E. Salisbury, 173–86. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.

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San Juan, Rose Marie. “Mythology, Women, and Renaissance Private Life: The Myth of Eurydice in Italian Furniture Painting.” Art History 15, no. 2 (1992): 128–45. Sanger, Alice E. Art, Gender and Religious Devotion in Grand Ducal Tuscany. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Santore, Cathy “The tools of Venus.” Renaissance Studies 11, no. 3 (1997): 179–207. Saslow, James M. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Seidel Menchi, Silvia, and Diego Quaglioni, eds. Matrimonio in dubbio: Unione controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001. Simon, Robert B. “Bronzino’s Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus.” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 81, no. 348 (1985): 17–27. Simons, Patricia. “Homosociality and erotics in Italian Renaissance portraiture.” In Portraiture: Facing the Subject, edited by Joanna Woodall, 29–51. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Varallo, Franca. “Le feste per il matrimonio delle Infante (1608).” In Politica e cultura nell’età di Carlo Emanuele I: Torino, Parigi, Madrid, edited by Mariarosa Masoero, Sergio Mamino, and Claudio Rosso, 475–90. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999. Warden, John. “Orpheus and Ficino.” In Orpheus, the Metamorphoses of a Myth, edited by John Warden, 85–110. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. “Early Modern European Festivals – Politics and Performance, Event and Record.” In Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance, edited by J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring, 15–25. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Witthoft, Brucia. “Marriage Rituals and Marriage Chests in Quattrocentro Florence.” Artibus et Historiae 3, no. 5 (1982): 43–59. Zanca, Attilio. Notizie sulla vita e sulla opere di Marcello Donati da Mantova (1538–1602), medico, umanista, uomo da stato. Pisa: Tip. Editrice Giardini, 1964.



Epilogue: Ruin and Rebirth

For nearly a century the Palazzo Te, its inhabitants, and its appropriators cooperated in the performance and practice of gender at the Renaissance court. After Ferdinando I Gonzaga’s death in 1626 the palace seems to have languished under the subsequent reign of Vincenzo II Gonzaga, who was admittedly beset by other problems. Despite the fact that he had accused his wife of witchcraft, Vincenzo II had been unable to disentangle himself from his barren marriage to Isabella Gonzaga of Novellara.1 Under pressure from debtors, Vincenzo II sold the famed Gonzaga art collection to the British crown in 1627.2 Childless, impoverished, and in poor health, Vincenzo II made preparations for the duchy to pass to the francophone Gonzaga-Nevers branch of the family, and arranged the marriage of Maria Gonzaga, the only surviving child of Francesco IV Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy, to Carlo II Gonzaga-Nevers.3 Vincenzo II died on Christmas day 1627. The succession of Carlo II to the duchy of Mantua was contested by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, who did not appreciate a French presence in Italy, as well as by Cesare II Gonzaga, Duke of Guastalla, and Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, each of whom believed that he should inherit Mantua.4 The War of Mantuan Succession began in 1628. As a result of the war, disease spread through the city, decimating the population, and conveniently carrying off Camilla Faà’s son, Giacinto, who also posed a threat to the succession. The Sack of Mantua by imperial troops in 1630 ravaged what was left of the artistic and architectural patrimony of the city.5 The Palazzo Te became a barracks for imperial troops, who left behind graffiti and carried off its furnishings and movable goods.6 Some twenty years later Duke Carlo II Gonzaga-Nevers enlarged the gardens, adding a casino, and commissioned furnishings and wall hangings to replace those looted by the invading imperial troops.7 However, the damage caused by the Sack of Mantua left a lasting impression of defeat and ruin, and the palace was no longer used by the Gonzaga dukes to welcome foreign visitors to their city. Writing almost a century later, the British traveler John Breval noted that the palace still bore the scars of the Sack, which had left it in a ‘naked and deplorable state’.8 The occupation and subsequent looting of the 1 Coniglio, I Gonzaga, 422–423. The accusations of witchcraft seem to have been masterminded by Ferdinando Gonzaga, but Vincenzo was evidently desperate to free himself, and therefore supported his brother. Isabella was tried for witchcraft in Rome and cleared of all charges. The pope refused to annul the union, but Vincenzo II and Isabella continued to live apart. 2 Alessandro Luzio, La galleria dei Gonzaga; Christina Anderson, Flemish Merchant of Venice. 3 Mazzoldi et al., Mantova: la storia, 3.93–94. 4 Ibid., 3.95–97. 5 Federigo Amadei, Cronaca universale, 3.419–549. 6 Davari, Descrizione del palazzo del Te, 61; Chiara Tellini Perina, “La Camera dei Giganti,” 83. 7 Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.60–62. 8 John Breval, Remarks, 1.242.

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Palazzo Te emasculated what had once been a space dedicated to the magnificence and courtly masculinity of the Gonzaga princes, and its violation by foreigners further problematized the court lady’s delicate balance of chastity and availability. By the time Charles Dickens visited Mantua in 1844 the Palazzo Te was ‘as desolate and neglected as a house can be’.9 During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the palace changed hands between Napoleon, the Habsburgs of Austria and the House of Savoy.10 The magnificent Gonzaga stables were destroyed, but the palace’s associations with sport were maintained by the addition of a racetrack and a soccer stadium.11 The canals dividing Mantua from the mainland were filled in, and a public park was established. Inhabitants of Mantua still describe visiting the park as going ‘sul Te’, retaining a linguistic trace of its former island locale.12 In its current iteration as a museum, the palace hosts musical events and weddings. Whether conscious of it or not, contemporary visitors are repeating Early Modern practices, albeit in slightly different forms. The palace continues to act on beholders, even as we act on it, all of us caught up in the process of becoming. This book has proposed that we approach the Renaissance built environment as a performative space wherein individuals produced and enacted gender roles and identities. Space is not a passive receptacle for a society’s ideas about itself; rather, I have argued that space is an active participant in the making of individual and collective subjectivity. Using the Palazzo Te as a case study, I have maintained that pictorial, corporeal, and social spaces were deeply implicated in the production and performance of gender roles. The built environment directs the body through space, and shapes the individual’s experience and response. The façades, frescoes, and stuccoes of the Palazzo Te incited action and corporeal signification, making it an integral player in the social construction of gender. The Palazzo Te enfolded its inhabitants in a dynamic environment where tensions between absence and presence, past and present, and the intersection of surface and substance, facilitated, and at times commanded, the performance of similarly complex and multi-layered roles. The dynamic architecture and decoration of the palace created an environment that reflected gender roles and also encouraged visitors to participate in their production. Banquets, dances, and processions staged at the palace provided an opportunity for courtiers to enact and reinforce gender roles, while also allowing individuals to negotiate and even transgress social norms. The palace asked inhabitants to identify 9 Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, 31. 10 For the afterlife of the Palazzo Te, see Belluzzi, Palazzo Te, 1.229–269. 11 Places have strange and enduring memories. A 1609 letter from Ferdinando to his father, Vincenzo I, casually mentions a game of soccer (‘calcio’) at the palace. To my knowledge, this letter has never been published. ASMn, AG, b. 2164, 30 March 1609. 12 Technically, it should be al parco or al Te. The use of the grammatical form sul Te is appropriate for an island, however, and most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mantuans used this construction when they spoke of visiting the palace and its environs.

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with David’s licentious gaze, Pasiphae’s subversive sexuality, and the giants’ troubling corporeality, as well as the sacrifices of Psyche, the triumphs of ancient Rome, and the virtues of emperors and princes. Through appropriation and citation of its visual motifs, the Palazzo Te participated in larger Italian and European productions of gender, at once positioning the building and the bodies that inhabited them as open and porous, while also representing them as transcendent and idealized. Within the larger discourse of Early Modern gender, this study has focused on the interactions between the palace, the individuals who created and used it, and social norms and expectations. Although the Gonzaga consistently attempted to use the Palazzo Te to construct normative representations of masculinity and femininity, individuals negotiated the palace and its gendered implications in different ways. Federico II Gonzaga employed the palace as a suburban pleasure villa where he and his guests could engage in the dual delights of activity and contemplation. The spaces of the palace proliferated beyond its confines, creating a network of monstrous places that accommodated the transgression and subversion of courtly gender roles. Federico II’s son, Guglielmo I Gonzaga, transformed it into the official entry site of triumphal processions into Mantua, thereby closely connecting the Palazzo Te to concepts of princely magnificence and dynastic continuity. Vincenzo I exploited the building’s long-standing associations with virility and license by deploying it to welcome brides, stage theatrical and musical performances, and by adding a grotto to the secret garden. The liminal position, polyvalent imagery, and dynamic spaces of the Palazzo Te meant that it could respond to changing cultural, social, and political circumstances. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the palace’s adaptability ensured its status as a place wherein the Gonzaga and their guests produced, enacted, and mediated their dynastic and individual identities. Finally, this book has argued that the Renaissance self was produced and performed through corporeal experiences of spaces, images, and objects. Instead of a unified viewing eye, I have proposed a beholding body composed of constantly ­shifting surfaces. Architectural and pictorial space in general, and the Palazzo Te in particular, appeals to a mobile body that touches, hears, smells, and tastes, as well as sees. At times, a building coerces the bodies of its inhabitants: The Palazzo Te ­transforms visitors into triumphant emperors as they walk through its façade; in the Mouth of Hell at Bomarzo in beholders become the monster’s voice; and the Grotte des Pins consumes all of the forms that come into contact with it. Because space is mutable, inhabitants also acted upon the building. In the Sala dei Giganti at the ­Palazzo Te, beholders can choose to remain in the violent center of the room, or retreat to the corners to whisper secrets to one another; at the Villa Doria, ­inhabitants identified with the triumphant Jupiter and with his eroticized conquests; and at ­Pratolino visitors can enter the giant’s body in order to plumb its depths and uncover its secrets, yet emerge unscathed.

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Instead of proposing definitive interpretations, I have investigated the multiple ways in which Renaissance courtiers interacted with and experienced the built environment. At times, beholders found that art and architecture supported normative performances of gender, instructing through exemplum or setting the stage for witty conversation and virile action. Space could also be unruly, especially for female beholders, whose corporeal experiences led them to identify with both goddesses and monsters, and to enact chastity and sexual agency. Buildings were not closed off, unified, or whole; rather, they were always in the process of coming into being. Renaissance art and architecture created spaces that remain polyvalent, temporally disjointed, unstable, and troubling. Rather than trying to tame the spaces of the past, we must embrace them.

Bibliography Archives ASMn, AG. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga.

Primary Sources Davari, Stefano, ed. Descrizione del palazzo del Te di Mantova, di Giacomo Strada, illustrate con documenti tratti dall’Archivio Gonzaga. Mantua: Stab. Eredi Segna, 1904. Breval, John. Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, relating chiefly to their antiquities and history. 2 vols. London: H. Lintot, 1738. Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. New York: William H. Colyer, 1846.

Secondary Sources Amadei, Federigo. Cronaca universale della città di Mantova. Edited by Ercolano Marani Giuseppe Amadei, Giovanni Practicò. 5 vols. Mantua: C.I.T.E.M., 1745. Reprint 1955. Anderson, Christina. The Flemish Merchant of Venice: Daniel Nijs and the Sale of the Gonzaga Art Collection. New Haven: Yale, 2015. Belluzzi, Amedeo. Il Palazzo Te a Mantova. 2 vols. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 1998. Coniglio, Giuseppe. I Gonzaga. Varese: dall’Oglio, 1967. Luzio, Alessandro. La galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–28. Milan: L.F. Cogliati, 1913. Mazzoldi, Leonardo, Renato Giusti, Rinaldo Salvadori, and Ugolino Nicolini, eds. Mantova: la storia. Vol. 3, Da Guglielmo terzo duca alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale. Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1963. Tellini Perina, Chiara. “La Camera dei Giganti nella considerazione degli storici e nella memoria dei visitatori.” In I Giganti di Palazzo Te, edited by Carlo Marco Belfanti, Chiara Perina Tellini and Giuseppe Basile. Mantua: Sintesi, 1989.

Index Note: Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations absence  created by Giulio 111–113 and gender 72, 96, 115 and presence 101–115, 124, 138 Adam (Michelangelo) 61 Adonis, Mars Chasing Adonis 56, 59–61 Alberti, Leon Battista 20, 139–140, 141 see also Sant’Andrea, Basilica of  Albicante, Giovanni, woodcuts of Milan arches 107 Alexander the Great  Alexander Placing the Works of Homer in a Coffer 113, 114  images at Palazzo Te 95, 108, 113 supposed son of Jupiter and Olympia 208 allegory  implications of Orphic myth 201, 203, 204 as discourse 96–97 see also exemplum  Allegory of Immortality (Giulio Romano) 166 n. 108 The Ambassadors (Holbein) 142 Andreasi, Ippolito 53, 72 n. 80, 103, 104, 200–201, 204  animals  in Camera di Psiche frescoes 72 in Orpheus Amongst the Animals 206 see also horses; Pasiphae  apparati  as basis for permanent construction at Palazzo Te 111–113 celebrating arrival of Charles V 107–108 see also triumphal arches; triumphal processions  Appartamento del Giardino (Secret Garden) see Secret Garden  Appennino (Pratolino) 132, 137, 162, 165, 166, 167–168 see also monstrous consumption  Apuleius, Lucius, Golden Ass 56, 57 arches see triumphal arches  architecture see built environment; Classical architecture; façade (architectural); license; Giulio Romano  Aretino, Pietro  on dining 59 horses as sexual metaphors 67, 208 praise for Giulio’s work 95 production of gender roles 18 on Sansovino’s Venus 62, 62 n. 42 Ariadne  Bacchus and Ariadne 59, 60, 61 as model for brides 190 Sleeping Ariadne 146 Aristaeus  Aristaeus and Eurydice 201, 204, 205–206 in Virgil’s Georgics 201 see also Eurydice  artifice  at court 25–26

and gender 41–42 and nature in Renaissance gardens 64 of materials 37, 39–40, 103–104 of images or spaces 36, 40–41, 63, 72–73, 76, 113 of rustic architecture 151–152, 154, 161 tensions between nature and 20–21, 132, 137, 161–162 see also courtesy literature; gender; Giulio Romano; sprezzatura; sprezzata purità; stucco  Assumption of the Virgin (Correggio) 142, 143  Bacchus  Bacchus and Ariadne 59, 60, 61 satyrs as followers of 189–190 on southern wall of Camera di Psiche 62 ball playing 64, 65 banquet  and conversation 58–59, 62 as display of magnificence and largess 52, 66–67 as social ritual 52–54, 59, 77 n. 100 and marriage 183–184, 211 visual representations of 54–58, 63 see also dining  Bartoli, Pietro Santi, etchings of Sala dei Giganti 164 n. 103, 171, 172  Bathsheba 102, 113 n. 65, 116–119, 213–214 see also Loggia di Davide  Battisti, Eugenio, on Giambologna’s Appennino 137 Baxandall, Michael 141 beholders  asked to inhabit conflicting identities 126, 208–209 as embodied 27, 119–120 constructing alternative interpretations of artworks 116–117 creating façades of timelessness 92–93 dynamic relationship between spaces and 76, 115, 209 Giulio’s architecture threatens space of 72 identification with Other 145, 162–166, 168 knowledge and wit required of 51, 52, 56, 80, 94 n. 11, 113, 126, 158 as mobile 119, 142 relationship to exempla 94–97, 120 relationship with space 122, 124–125, 136, 142–145, 162–164, 229 see also body; corporeality; gaze; identity; object; viewer; women  Bertazzolo, Gabriele 16, 211  bestiality 83, 150, 190–191 Bestial Order 153–154, 160 birth salvers see deschi da parto (birth salvers)  body  of brides 182–185 buildings as 29–31, 131, 160 food as euphemisms for parts of 59

232  horses as euphemisms for parts of 67, 208 as inhabitant of space 27–28 monsters as creatures of 136–137 in dynamic relationship to space 74–76 relationship to the mind 28, 79–80, 141, 141 n. 35 role in constructing gender experience 163 and subjectivity 27–28 as surface on which gender performed 24, 26, 33, 63, 73, 96, 113, 229 see also built environment; corporeality; courtesy literature; gender; giants; object; phenomenology; practice; subject/subjectivity  Bomarzo see Mouth of Hell (Sacro Bosco); Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo  Bonasone, Giulio, Semper Libidini Imperat Prudenti 207, 208  Book of the Courtier (Castiglione) see Castiglione, Baldassare  Boschetti, Isabella 68 n. 72, 117–118, 120–122 Bourdieu, Pierre, on corporeality 28 bridal processions  bridal bodies 182–185 bridal entries 98–99 of Caterina de’ Medici (1617) 218–219 and courtly competition 183, 184 of Eleonora de’ Medici (1584) 199–201, 203, 206, 208–209 of Eleonora von Habsburg (1561) 43, 185, 185 n. 19 of Margherita Farnese (1581) 181, 185–187 of Margherita of Savoy (1608) 209–214 Palazzo Te’s last use in 219–221 ritual of traductio 184 see also body; identity  Bronzino, Agnolo, Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus 204, 205  Bruni, Leonardo, on art of conversation 79 built environment  agency of 15–16, 27 as body 29–31, 131–132, 160 experience of 26–27, 32, 228 as caught in process of becoming 33, 137–138, 230 as site of gender production 73, 173 relationship to space 32 see also body; experience; object; space; subject/ subjectivity  Butler, Judith 21, 23 n. 36, 72, 84 n. 139, 159 n. 91 Camera degli Imperatori  depicted virtues 219 features and frescoes 38–39, 95, 113 imprese 120–123 painting juxtaposed with stucco 113–115 relationship with the beholder 122 Camera degli Stucchi  and Classical models 108, 109 as performative surface 108–109, 111 see also stucco  Camera dei Venti 15, 54, 77–81, 85, 116 Camera delle Aquile 36, 79, 93, 102, 138 see also Fall of Phaeton; stucco 

Index

Camera del Sole e della Luna, steep foreshortening and perspective 40 Camera di Atilio Regolo, frescoes 113 n. 65 Camera di Ovidio (or delle Metamorphosi)  landscape scene of Palazzo Te 39 Orphic frescoes 201 Camera di Psiche  banquets and dining in 52, 54–63, 188 features and frescoes 40, 55–58 female experience in spaces of 81–85, 187–191, 208, 219 Giulio’s handling of picture plane in 32, 55, 61, 62, 138 interaction of Charles V with 15, 39, 50 relationship to Stadtresidenz 155–156 see also eroticism  Camera Picta (Palazzo Ducale)  oculus 22–23, 94 portraits of Roman emperors and Gonzaga family members 114–115 relationship with the beholder 122, 124–125 tapestries veiling walls 138 see also linear perspective  Camerino delle Grottesche 135  Campbell, Stephen, on Mantegna 115, 125 Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy see Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy  Castello di Malpaga, Bergamo 54 Castiglione, Baldassare  acquaintance with Isabella Benadusa 81 n. 124 Book of the Courtier 18–21, 23–26, 27, 39, 43, 81, 94 concepts engaged by Camera Picta and Sala dei Giganti 125 on courtier performance of subordinate status 148, 148–149 n. 59 enacting changeability required by 158 on gendered implications of dance 73, 74, 75 on humor 173 on noble birth 66, 66n. 59 on representation of skills 64, 65 on speech and conversation 79, 80, 82, 83 values attached to elite masculinity 50 see also courtesy literature; sprezzatura; sprezzata purità  Catholic Church  on bestiality 190 on bodies of men and women 29 on marriage 183, 192–193 Cavriani, Cesare  on love between Margherita and Vicenzo I 189 on Vincenzo’s rumored impotency 191–192 Ceresara, Paride, on Boschetti’s device 120 Certeau, Michel de, on ‘spatial practices’ 31 Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy 210–211, 227 see also Margherita of Savoy  Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor  1530 arrival in Mantua 15, 49–50 1532 return to Mantua 85, 91–93 1533 visit to Genoa 147–148 association of gigantomachia with 123 conversations with Federico’s guests 76–77, 81–82, 219

Index

equestrian statue on Milan arch 108 horsemanship performed for 64–65 horses and gifts from Federico II 66–67 identities 80, 81, 95, 145–146, 149 impact of Camera di Psiche on 39 masculinity and femininity performed before 42, 49–50 see also Jupiter; triumphal arches; triumphal processions  Chigi, Agostino, frescoes showing zodiac at time of his birth 77 Christ, Orpheus recast as prototype for 203 clandestine marriage  Church’s effort to end 183 of Ferdinando I 182, 216–217 Classical architecture  corporeality of 29 disdain for the rules of 36–37 monuments cited by Giulio 42, 91–92, 104 mixing of Classical Orders 150–152, 153, 154, 156 see also license; Rome; individual Orders by name  Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, on monsters 134 n. 6, 136 Colonna, Francesco, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 56, 60–61, 172 n. 128 Column of Trajan 109–111 Composite order 151, 152–154, 154 n. 81, 159 Continence of Scipio 113, 114  conversation  art of 76–85 gendered implications of 81–83 importance during formal dining rituals 52, 54, 58–59 Corinthian Order 69, 146, 150, 153, 206 corporeality  experience as corporeal 17, 32, 41, 141, 143–145, 229 as monstrous 43 and inscription 28, 68, 73, 75, 85, 184–185, 187–188, 199 and linear perspective 141–142 relationship to discourses of gender and space 17, 76, 143 and space 31–33 vision as corporeal 122 see also body; experience; identity; monsters/ monstrosity; space; stucco; subject/subjectivity  Correggio see Assumption of the Virgin  Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus (Bronzino) 204, 205  Council of Trent see Catholic Church  courtesy literature  artifice revealed 161–162 on body under control of mind 28 on gender roles 18–21, 23–26, 50 on how men believed women should act 82 see also Castiglione, Baldassare; della Casa, Giovanni; gender; Guazzo, Stefano  courtyard (Palazzo Te)  and gender 22–23 façades of 22, 37, 103, 151, 212  triglyphs in 36, 37, 73, 103, 104, 107, 108, 136, 188 see also façade (architectural); keystones  Cronaca del soggiorno di Carlo V in Italia 50, 52, 66–67, 68, 74, 81, 83 Cupid, frescoes of with Psyche 57, 62, 187, 188–189, 190

233 Damisch, Hubert 141 dance  female steps 49 and gender identity 68, 73–76 male steps 49, 68, 76 Dante Aligheri, misquoted at entrance to Mouth of Hell 169–170 Dario (horse portrait) 70–71 Davent, Léon, etching of Grotte des Pins 161  David  David Spying on Bathsheba 113 n. 65, 116, 117, 118–119 as exemplum 94, 102, 116–119, 213–214 see also license; Loggia di Davide  della Casa, Giovanni, Il Galateo overo de’ costumi 18, 21, 23–24, 79, 80 see also courtesy literature  deschi da parto (birth salvers) 119, 142, 189 d’Este, Alfonso III, marriage to Isabella of Savoy 210 d’Este, Cesare, as proposed witness to Vicenzo’s prova 197 d’Este, Isabella 18 n. 6, 69 n. 75, 187 Deutscher Bau, Landshut 156–159 see also Stadtresidenz, Landshut  devices see imprese of Federico II  Dickens, Charles, on state of Palazzo Te in 1844 228 dining  associations between culinary and sexual appetites 188–191 pictured in Camera di Psiche 52–58 dining in the garden/grotto 170 and experience of space 58–63 see also banquet; Camera di Psiche; conversation; gender; sexuality  di sotto in sù works  Camera Picta (Palazzo Ducale) 124–125 Camera del Sole e della Luna 40 Camera di Psiche 55 Grotte des Pins 164–165 n. 105 Sala dei Giganti 138–139 Donati, Marcello, on Vicenzo I’s alleged impotency 194 Doria, Andrea  association of gigantomachia with 123 status as Genoa’s first citizen 145–149 see also Villa Doria  Doric order 51, 108, 153, 154, 160 eagle as emblem of Habsburg dynasty and Imperial Rome 123, 148 eastern façade see garden façade  echo chambers 145, 170–171, 173 effeminacy  of Castiglione’s courtier 148 n. 59 of Ferdinando I 215–216 of Orpheus 202 Vicenzo I accused of 198–199 see also masculinity  eroticism  in Camera di Psiche 55–57, 59–63 in Early Modern visual culture 59, 62, 67, 83, 173, 182, 208 in Early Modern poetry and literature 59, 67, 83, 208

234  and female beholders 43, 82–85, 182, 187–191, 208, 219 and the gaze 117, 118–119, 209, 213–214 and giants 146–147, 148–149 homoeroticism 62–63 see also sexuality; gaze  Eurydice  Eurydice and Aristaeus (Giulio Romano) 201, 204, 205–206 Orphic frescoes 200–206, 213 exemplum  beholder as living 120 collapses time 92, 95, 115 as model of virtue and vice 93–94, 102, 115, 203, 204 as performative 95 and production of gender roles 92, 93, 95–97 see also Camera degli Imperatori; Camera degli Stucchi; Loggia di Davide; virtue  experience  of the built environment 26–31 as embodied 26–28, 229 and identity formation 28, 41 and space 32 see also built environment; corporeality; gender; identity; practice; subject/subjectivity  Faà di Bruno, Camilla, (Suor Caterina Camilla) Marquise of Monbaruzzo 182, 216–219, 227 façades (architectural)  Giulio’s treatment of 36, 37, 39–40, 40 n. 104, 132, 152 likened to human body 131, 131 n.1 as masquerade 50–52; 72 of Sant’Andrea based on triumphal arch 104–105 Serlio, Sebastiano on 160 of Stadtresidenz, Landshut 155–156, 158 and walls as play of absence and presence 41 of Villa Farnesina (Villa Chigi) 56 west courtyard façade 15, 37  see also courtyard (Palazzo Te); garden façade; stucco  façades (figural or illusionary)  as performative 21, 72, 92–93, 96–97, 101, 113, 120, 206, 220, 228 courtiers to produce seemingly effortless 19, 20, 161–162 see also body; gender  Fall of Phaeton 36 Fall of the Giants (Perino del Vaga) 123, 132, 137, 145–148 Farnese, Margherita (Suor Maura Lucina) 181, 182 n. 3, 185–193, 199, 203, 219–220 femininity  and monstrosity 134–137, 138, 162 and nature 141 as passive and receptive 24, 42, 63, 76, 85, 209 see also gender; sexuality; sprezzata purità; women  fertility  expected of bride 184–185 garden/landscape as metaphor for 181, 189, 213, 214 Palazzo Te staged as site of 191, 219 Finucci, Valeria, on Castiglione’s portrayal of women 18 fireplace at Sala dei Giganti 145, 164, 164 n. 103 Folengo, Teofilo, Baldo 172–173

Index

Follino, Federico, pamphlet on marriage of Francesco IV 211 Fontainebleau see Francis I, King of France; Grotte des Pins (Fontainebleau)  Fortuna, Simone, accused Vicenzo I of effeminacy  198–199 Foucoult, Michel 28 n. 59 Francesco di Giorgio Martini 29, 30  Francis I, King of France  Francis I as Minerva, Mars, Diana, Amor and Mercury 162, 162 n. 102, 163  patron of Grotte des Pins, Fontainebleau 131, 159 Furti di Giove tapestries by Perino del Vaga 146, 147  Gadamer, Hans-Georg, on meaning 43 galliard (alla gagliarda) danced before Charles V  74–75 garden façade  activated by movement 92, 95 attic 103, 104  features of 36, 104 and gender performance 99 relationship to Sant’Andrea 104–107 relationship to triumphal apparati 107, 110–111 as triumphal arch 103–108 women’s experience of 96, 119–120, 212–214 see also apparati; façade (architectural); triumphal arches; triumphal processions  gardens  composition of at Palazzo Te 64, 64 n. 47, 103 dining in 170 income used to repay Caterina de’ Medici’s dowry 219–220 as liminal sites 137 and Margherita of Savoy 213 and monsters 170, 173–174 physical feats in 64–65, 67, 68, 76, 81, 228 n. 11 at Palazzo di Porto 187 relationship to nature 64 see also artifice; fertility; garden façade; Secret Garden  gaze  as agency 122–123 collapsing space of artwork and beholder 206 collapsing subject and object 122, 125–126, 144 as erotic 59, 62, 84, 146, 209, 213–214 as illicit 15, 117, 213, 219 as objectifying 22–23, 96, 122–123, 141 n. 33 see also eroticism; gender; surveillance, culture of; voyeurism  gender  binary conception of as troubled 84–85, 161–162 dance and 42, 49–50, 63, 73–76 dining and 54 discourses of in courtesy literature 17–26 exempla and 92–93, 96–97, 115, 119 experience and 26–27 the gaze and 22–23 implications of conversation 59, 76, 80–83 license and 158–159, 162 linear perspective and 140–144

Index

and monstrosity 145, 149, 173–175 as performative 21–26, 34, 40–42, 50, 73, 85, 96, 99, 101, 113, 115–116, 131, 199, 216, 220–221 as produced in the built environment 15–16 as produced through space 16–17, 29–33, 37, 43, 49–50, 228–229 revealed as artificial construction 41, 72, 76, 137–138, 149, 162 relationship to the body 20, 24, 28–29, 64–65, 163 relationship to class 17–18, 194 self-fashioning and 25, 25 n. 46 triumphal entries and 98–99 troubled performances 182, 192–199, 220 see also body; corporeality; courtesy literature; femininity; homosocial bonding; masculinity; men; practice; sexuality; subject/subjectivity; women  Genoa see Charles V; triumphal arches; triumphal processions; Villa Doria  Ghisi, Giorgio, engraving after the Camera di Psiche 189 Giambologna see Appennino (Pratolino)  giants  at the Sacro Bosco 168–169 as devouring everything around them 136–137, 164–165 relationship to the body 143 relationship to monsters 134 n. 6 and time 135–136 see also Appennino (Pratolino); Jupiter; monsters/ monstrosity; Sala dei Giganti (Palazzo Te); Sala dei Giganti (Villa Doria)  Giarda, Christoforo 96–97 gigantomachia 123, 124, 132 gioco di pala see ball playing  Giorgio Martini, Francesco di see Francesco di Giorgio Martini  Giulia of Aragon 68 Giulio Romano (Pippi)  Allegory of Immortality 166 n. 108 as part of Raphael’s workshop 56 n. 18, 138, 145 as possible author of Stadtresidenz 156 n. 85 approach to Palazzo Te 33–34, 36–37 appropriation of prior monuments 92, 94–95, 104–107, 111–113, 114–115, 124–126 debate over his artistic control 34 n. 87 designing Emperor’s triumphal entries into Mantua 97–101 familiarity with story of Cupid and Psyche 56–57 handling of picture plane in Camera di Psiche 138 imitation of by other artists 132, 132 n. 2, 152, 156, 160 inventiveness and artifice 39–42 Palazzina Paleologa 93 Palazzo Stati-Maccarani 152 n. 72 Porta del Te 107–108, 152 praise for 39, 77 n. 101, 94–95, 134, 151–152 Primaticcio apprenticed with 159 La Rustica (Palazzo Ducale) 161 Victory 99–100 Victory Inscribing the Name of Charles V on a Shield 110–111

235 Villa Madama (Rome) 104, 156 n. 86 Winged Victories and Barbarian Prisoners 213  work on Basilica of Sant’Andrea 104–107 see also artifice; Classical architecture; di sotto in sù; façades (architectural); identity; Mantua; Marmirolo; Palazzo Te; Rome; rustication; stucco; triumphal arches; victory  Goffen, Rona, on Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia 24–25 Gombrich, Ernst  on ‘beholder’s share’ 26 on textual sources of Camera dei Venti 78 Gonzaga dynasty  contested succession 227 family member interactions with the Palazzo Te  27, 32 marriage strategies 67–68, 194–195, 214 relationship to their horses 42, 49, 65–68, 206, 208 threatened by apparent impotency 192–199, 215–216 ties to imperial tradition of Rome 100–101 Gonzaga, Federico II, Marquis, First Duke of Mantua, Marquis of Monferrato  association of gigantomachia with 123 Federico II Gonzaga (Titian) 71  Folengo’s Orlando dedicated to 172–173 in historiography 34 imprese in Camera degli Imperatori 113–115, 120–122 made Duke of Mantua by Charles V in 1530 49–50 marriage to Margherita Paleologa 185 patron of Palazzo Te 33–34, 77 n. 101 relationship with Isabella Boschetti 56, 117–118, 120–122 uses of Palazzo Te 27, 49–50, 91, 219, 229 see also Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor; horses; imprese; Jupiter; sexuality; virtue  Gonzaga, Ferdinando I, Sixth Duke of Mantua, Marquis of Monferrato 182, 215–220 Gonzaga, Francesco III, Second Duke of Mantua, Marquis of Monferrato 134 n. 3, 185 Gonzaga, Francesco II, Marquis of Mantua 65, 111 Gonzaga, Francesco IV, Fifth Duke of Mantua and Duke of Monferrato 183–184, 209, 210–214 Gonzaga, Guglielmo I, Third Duke of Mantua, First Duke of Monferrato 185, 189, 200, 208, 229 Gonzaga, Isabella of Novellara, accused of witchcraft 227 Gonzaga, Livia Cathabena da 76–77, 81–82, 83, 84, 85, 219 Gonzaga-Nevers, Carlo II 227 Gonzaga stables 34, 64–65, 75, 228 Gonzaga, Vicenzo I, Fourth Duke of Mantua and Monferrato  exploited Palazzo’s association with virility and license 208, 229 grotto (Palazzo Te) built by 166–168, 166 n. 110, 209, 229 marriage to Eleonora de’ Medici 194–195, 199–201, 203–206, 208–209, 219 marriage to Margherita Farnese 181–182, 185, 191–193

236  rumors surrounding his potency 43, 182, 191–199, 220 understanding and use of Palazzo Te 209, 210, 211, 214 see also effeminacy; impotency; prova; Secret Garden  Gonzaga, Vicenzo II, Seventh Duke of Mantua and Monferrato 216, 218 n. 141, 227, 227 n. 1 Gonzaga women greeting brides 214, 219 Grosz, Elizabeth, on corporeality 28 Grotte des Pins (Fontainebleau) 132, 136, 159–162, 164–165, 164–165 n. 105, 167, 168 see also monstrous consumption  grottesche  at the Palazzo Te 135–136 at the Stadtresidenz 132 grotto (Palazzo Te) 166–168, 166 n. 110, 209, 229 Guazzo, Stefano, La civil conversazione 79, 80, 134–135 see also courtesy literature  Guerra, Giovanni, etching of Mouth of Hell 170 Habsburg, Eleonora von, Duchess of Mantua 185, 185 n. 19 Hell Mouth 136 see also Mouth of Hell (Sacro Bosco)  Henry III Valois, King of France, visit to Mantua 186 Hercules, images 69, 108 see also masculinity; virtue  Hillls, Helen, on buildings and identity 32 Holbein, Hans (The Younger), The Ambassadors 142 homosocial bonding 18–19, 52, 59, 62–63, 85 see also masculinity  Horace, Ars Poetica, on formulated monsters 150 horses  dancing terms used to describe 75–76 Gonzaga dynasty famed for 42, 49, 65–68 horsemanship 64–65, 64 n. 47 as metaphors for male sexual organ 67–68, 85 as metaphors for masculine virility 43, 85, 206, 208 portraits in Sala dei Cavalli 168–172 paintings as series of signifying absences 72 Sale dei Cavalli in other Gonzaga palaces 65, 65 n. 56 see also Aretino, Pietro; body; Charles V; Gonzaga dynasty; Marmirolo; Sala dei Cavalli; sprezzatura; virility  hybridity 132, 134, 149–150, 154, 172 see also monstrous hybridity  Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Colonna) see Colonna, Francesco  identity  of brides transformed at Palazzo Te 185, 187–188, 220 built environment and 15, 27–28, 32–33 courtly 50–51, 65–66, 100–101, 120, 158–159, 210 differing from or alternate to prescribed social practice 18, 25–26, 126, 170–171, 174–175 exempla and 95–96 Giulio’s artistic 34 n. 86, 94–95 monsters and 138, 156 as performative 162, 168, 220 produced through corporeal experience 132, 229 see also experience; femininity; gender; masculinity; sexuality; subject/subjectivity 

Index

Il Galateo overo de’ costumi (della Casa) see della Casa, Giovanni  impotency  Catholic Church definition of 192–193 lewd drawing of Vicenzo’s membro virile 196 rumors of Vicenzo I’s 43, 182, 191–199, 220 see also prova; virility  imprese of Federico II in Camera degli Imperatori 113– 115, 120–122 Ionic Order 29, 150, 156, 158, 160 Isola del Te  continued linguistic reference to 228 contrast with city of Mantua 50–51 Palazzo Te as located on 49 Italienischer Bau, Landshut 132, 155–159 see also Statdresidenz, Landshut  Jardin des Pins see Grotte des Pins (Fontainebleau)  Jones, Ann R., on Castiglione’s portrayal of women 18 Joseph Fleeing Potiphar’s Wife (Raphael) 61 Julius Caesar 95, 113, 114  Jupiter  amorous escapades depicted in Furti di Giove 146 identification of Charles V with 69, 145–146 identification of Federico II Gonzaga with 123 and Juno in Sala dei Cavalli 69 Jupiter and Olympia 15, 59, 61, 190 portrayals at Palazzo Te and Villa Doria 229 see also Sala dei Giganti (Palazzo Te)  keystones  rupturing pediments 36, 108, 152, 159, 188 slipping below edges of their arches 132, 136, 155, 164 La civil conversazione (Guazzo) 79, 80, 134–135 La Rustica (Palazzo Ducale), consummate artifice of 161 Lavin, Marilyn, on artists in Italian churches 58 Lazzaro, Claudia, on Renaissance garden 64 Lefebvre, Henri  feminist critique of 31–32 on social space 31 leisure 56, 63, 115–117 license  of banquet 63 architectural 131, 154, 154 n. 78, 156 artistic 150–151, 153, 160–162 Composite as order of 154 n. 81, 159 David’s possession of Bathsheba 116 and monstrosity 149, 162 Palazzo Te’s associations with virility and 229 see also gender  Ligorio, Pirro  as possible designer of Sacro Bosco 165 n. 106 on Domitian’s underground banquet 170 orphaned daughter as candidate for prova 195 n. 70 liminality  of Margherita of Savoy’s position 214 of Palazzo Te 137, 188, 211, 217, 220, 229 linear perspective 139–144

237

Index

disrupted or fractured by mobile viewing practices 119, 142, 146, 149 and gender 143–144 see also corporeality; gender; perspective  Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Vasari) see Vasari, Giorgio  Loggia delle Muse 22–23, 188, 200–201 Loggia di Davide  bridges temporal gap between 1530 and 1532 101–107 exempla 94, 114 frescoes echoing birth salvers 189 Margherita of Savoy entered palace through 211–214 Loggia of Psyche (Villa Farnesina) 54, 56, 56 n. 18, 138–139, 140  loggia, western (Palazzo Te) 36–37, 38  Lombardi, Alfonso, busts for the Palazzo Te 102, 102 n. 43 Lotto, Lorenzo, Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia 24–25, 25  Lucretia 24–25 Lucretius, De rerum natura 63 Ludwig X von Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria 131, 132, 155–159 mancia 184 Mantegna, Andrea  frescoes in Camera Picta 22–23, 114–115, 124–125, 138 oculus in Camera Picta 22–23, 94, 124–125 Triumphs of Caesar 111–113 Mantua  city plan 16  Emperor’s triumphal entries 97–101 Giulio’s references to art and architecture of 94–95, 104–112 hostility with Savoy over Monferrato 210 political alliance with Holy Roman Empire 49–50 related to the imperial past 92, 115 ruled by regents 1540–1556 134 n. 3 Virgil born near 201 war of succession and sack of 227–28 see also Charles V; Giulio Romano; triumphal processions  Margherita of Savoy, Duchess of Mantua, later Vicereine of Portugal 182, 183–184, 209, 210–214 Marmirolo (Gonzaga hunting lodge)  Giulio’s work on 93 location of a Sala dei Cavalli 65 n. 56 used to entertain visitors to Mantua 50, 155 marriage  art depicting social and sexual goals of 182 Catholic Church on 183, 187, 192–193 frescoes offering opposing sexual practices 188–191 see also bridal processions; clandestine marriage; weddings  Mars  Mars and Venus at the Bath 56, 59–61, 189–190 Mars Chasing Adonis 56, 59, 60–61 statues in Sala dei Cavalli of Venus and 69 masculinity  as active and projective 42, 63, 74–75 and anxiety 18–19, 19 n. 12 emasculation 227–228

Hercules as paragon of male virtue 69 and intellect or reason 42, 51, 52, 59, 67 performance of by Ferdinando I 182, 215–220 performance of by Vincenzo I 182, 187, 199–208 as timelessly heroic 96 see also effeminacy; gender; homosocial bonding; men; prova; sexuality; sprezzatura  masquerade see façade (architectural); stucco  Medici, Caterina de’, Duchess of Mantua 182, 185, 216–220 Medici, Eleonora de’, Duchess of Mantua 43, 166, 182, 194–195, 199–201, 203–206, 208–209, 220 Medici, Francesco I de’, Grand Duke of Tuscany  marriage to Christine of Lorraine 183 required prova to test Vicenzo’s potency 194–198 men  as object of the gaze 96, 122–123 role reversal possible 149 see also gender; masculinity; sexuality; sprezzatura  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice see phenomenology  Metamorphoses (Ovid) 56, 145, 160, 188–189, 190, 201–202 metamorphosis  of beholders 117 or Margherita Farnese 188, 190 figures in Grotte des Pins ensnared in own transformation 160 structures in midst of change 190 turning human into giant and back 126 see also mutandosi  Michelangelo 61, 160, 171 Michelozzo, use of rusticated masonry 152 Milan arches 107–108 Monferrato, dispute between Mantua and Savoy over 210, 210 n. 116, 213 monsters/monstrosity  embodied by Palazzo Te and its descendants 137–138, 173–174 emotions of fear and delight engendered by 132, 136–137, 171–172, 173 see also corporeality; femininity; gardens; gender; giants; identity; license; linear perspective; perspective; sexuality; space; subject/subjectivity; time  monstrous consumption 162–175 monstrous hybridity 132, 134, 149–162 Morel Favorito 72 Mouth of Hell (Sacro Bosco) 136, 162, 164–166, 167, 168–71 see also monstrous consumption  Mulla, Giovanni da, on Ferdinando I 215–216 mutandosi 187–88 see also metamorphosis  mythological figures  in Camera delle Aquile 36 decorating Sala dei Cavalli 69 dining in Camera di Psiche amid 52–63 eyes of Olympian gods in Sala dei Giganti 125 see also specific figures by name  nature see artifice; femininity; gardens; rustication 

238  object  agency of 15–16 n. 2, 43 beholder as 63, 147 body as 28 built environment as 28–29, 29 n. 61, 32 and experience 27 n. 52, 229 as part of construction of gender 26 as part of production of space 31 see also gaze; men; subject/subjectivity; women  oculus see Camera Picta (Palazzo Ducale); Mantegna, Andrea  Olympia, Jupiter and Olympia 15, 59, 61, 190 Olympus, Mount/Mons Olympus 69, 77, 102 Onians, John, on Serlio 154 Orpheus  Orpheus Amongst the Animals (Giulio Romano) 206 Orpheus and Eurydice, Orphic frescoes in Loggia delle Muse 200–206, 213 see also sexuality  Orsini, Vicino (Pier Francesco), Lord of Bomarzo 132, 165–166, 166 n. 108, 170 otium see leisure  Ovid  Ars Amatoria 56 Ovide moralisé 201, 202 see also Metamorphoses (Ovid)  Palazzo di Porto 185–187, 186 n. 20 Palazzo Ducale (Mantua)  Camera Picta 22–23, 94, 114–115, 122, 124–125, 138 role in bridal processions 181, 185, 219 Palazzo Te  Breval and Dickens on deterioration of 227–228 building plans 34, 35, 53, 133  contrast of disparate elements or rooms 37–38, 55, 69, 188 design and construction 33–43, 93, 123–126 Giulio’s re-use of triumphal entry designs 97–101 influence on early modern architecture 17, 43, 131–134, 155–157 and Sack of Mantua 227 Serlio on 151–152 Vasari on 36, 39–40, 79, 109, 138, 144 see also bridal processions; Isola del Te; liminality; monstrous consumption; specific rooms and structures by name  Paleologa, Margherita, Marchioness of Monferrato, Duchess of Mantua 67–68, 185 Panofsky, Erwin 140, 140 n. 27, 141 Parmigianino, Farnese prominent patrons of 182 n. 3 Pasiphae  image as negative example 83–84, 118 parallels with Margherita Farnese 190–191 Pasiphae and the Bull 59, 61, 83–84 past and present  merging 95, 101, 120, 136, 154, 162, 228 shifting between 100, 108 tension between 92, 203 see also time  Payne, Alina, on Serlio 154, 160

Index

performativity see Camera degli Stucchi; exemplum; façades (figural or illusionary); identity; gender; space  Perino del Vaga  as architect at Villa Doria 145, 145 n. 48 Sala dei Giganti (Villa Doria) 145–149 perspective  monstrous 138–149 slanted in David Spying on Bathsheba 113 n. 65 see also linear perspective  Phaeton see Fall of Phaeton  phenomenology 27–28, 30–31, 142 n. 37 Pippi, Giulio see Giulio Romano (Pippi)  Platina (Bartolomeo Sachi), on virtuous pleasures of dining 58–59 Plato, on banquet as means of ordering society 58 Plutarch, Life of Alexander 56 Porta del Te 107–108, 152 Porto see Palazzo di Porto  practice  and gender 18, 30, 51, 206 as constituting space 31–32, 50, 84–85, 91–92, 95, 132, 166, 174–175, 191 as inscribed upon the body 28 leaving traces on or creating layers in spaces 63, 138, 188, 191, 214, 219–221, 228 as produced by space 101, 158–159, 190 see also experience; identity; linear perspective; marriage; space  Pratolino, Villa Medici-Demidoff see Appennino (Pratolino)  Primaticcio  Grotte des Pins (Fontainebleau) 132, 136, 159–162, 164–165, 164–165 n. 105, 167, 168 work at Palazzo Te 93 n. 7, 159 prova of Vincenzo I’s potency 192–199 see also masculinity; sexuality  Psyche, Cupid and Psyche images 55–58, 187, 188–189, 190 see also Camera di Psiche  quadro riportato technique 113, 113 n. 65, 149 Rabelais, François, Pantagruel 136, 172 I Ragionamenti (Aretino) see Aretino, Pietro  Randolph, Adrian, on perspective 142 Raphael 54, 61, 138–139, 140  see also Loggia of Psyche (Villa Farnesina)  Rome  Classical past collapsed with Mantuan present 92, 115, 97–101 Giulio’s references to art and architecture of 94–95, 104–112 rustication  appropriate for some clients 160 at Grotte des Pins 159 on Serlio’s portals 152–154 at the Stadtresidenz 158 as work of nature 151–152 see also Giulio Romano (Pippi) 

Index

Sack of Mantua 227–228 Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo 132, 165 n. 106, 169 n. 114 see also Mouth of Hell (Sacro Bosco)  Sala dei Cavalli  horse portraits 68–72 illusionism 72–73 probable stage for Ferdinando’s meeting with Camilla 217 relationship with dance 42, 68, 73–76 virility 206, 208 Sala dei Giganti (Palazzo Te)  engages with Mantegna’s oculus 94 etchings by Pietro Santi Bartoli 164 n. 103, 171, 172  exemplars 93 form and frescoes 32, 39, 138–139 Giulio’s compared with Perino’s at Villa Doria 145– 146, 149 Giulio’s use of Composite order in 154 Grotte des Pins indebted to 132, 160 Jupiter portrayals 123, 125–126, 147–148, 164 monsters/monstrosity 173–174 moves between past and present 126 relationship with the beholder 136, 142–145, 162–164, 229 terribilità 38 see also giants; Vasari, Giorgio  Sala dei Giganti (Villa Doria) 123, 132, 145–149, 229 salamander (imprese of Federico II) 69 Saminiati, Giovanni, on sitting inside grottoes 170 San Juan, Rosemarie, on Eurydice 204 Sanseverino, Barbara, Countess of Sala 166 Sansovino, Jacopo, Venus 62, 62 n. 42 Sant’Andrea, Basilica of 104–107 satyrs 57, 189–190 Savoy, house of see Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy; Margherita of Savoy  Scipio Africanus 94, 95, 96, 113 see also Continence of Scipio  Secret Garden  garden apartment in 34, 93, 94, 113 n. 65, 219 Vicenzo’s grotto 166–168, 166 n. 110, 167 n. 111, 170, 209, 229 self-fashioning 18, 25, 25–26 n. 46, 28, 31, 33, 80 see also gender  Semper Libidini Imperat Prudenti (Bonasone) 207, 208  Serlio, Sebastiano  adviser in building Grotte des Pins 159 approach to classical orders 160 Extraordinario libro di architettura 152–154 praise for Giulio Romano 39, 151–152 Tutte l’opere d’architettura 131, 151–152, 154 see also façades (architectural); rustication  sexuality  Bathsheba and consequences of adultery 116, 118–119 of brides 188–191 of Federico II Gonzaga 34 n. 86, 67–68 of Ferdinando I Gonzaga 215–216 linked to dining 59, 62–63, 188 of men 67, 73, 76, 193–194 and monstrosity 162 normative sexual positions 190, 209

239 Pasiphae as example of transgressive 83–85, 216 pederasty of Orpheus 202–203, 206 of women 20, 24, 75, 184, 193 see also eroticism; Gonzaga, Vicenzo I; impotency; prova  Shearman, John  on communication between painting and spectator 26, 71 n. 79 on Federico II Gonzaga (Titian) 71 on perspective 141 Simons, Patricia  on male sexual identity 193 ‘unequal two-seed’ theory 24 Sleeping Ariadne 146 space  agency of 43, 228–230 as corporeal 29, 43, 137 as gendered 29–31 in inextricable from time 31 as mobile 131–132 as monstrous 132, 136–137, 171–172, 173 negotiation of gender roles within and through 43, 52 spatial practice 31, 158–159, 166, 174–175, 191 as in the in process of becoming 137–138, 168, 174–175 unstable and dynamic 28, 97 as performative 17, 32–33, 40–41, 50, 76, 85, 91–92, 149, 166, 219, 228 see also artifice; beholders; built environment; body; corporeality; experience; gender; linear perspective; practice; subject/subjectivity; time  spatial turn 31, 31 n. 73 spiritelli  in Camera delle Aquile 36 cavorting in Sala dei Cavalli 72–73 relationship with the beholder 122 in Giulio’s Eurydice iconography 204 sprezzatura  applied to Palazzo Te art and architecture 36–37, 36 n. 91, 39–40, 42, 51, 64 as seemingly natural artifice 19–21 definitions of 19 n. 13 performance to please others 125, 148 recalled by horses in Sala dei Cavalli 65, 70–71, 73, 76 see also Castiglione, Baldassare; gender  sprezzata purità 19–20, 24, 38, 76, 118, 184 see also Castiglione, Baldassare; gender; sprezzatura  Stadtresidenz, Landshut 131, 132, 155–159, 168 see also Deutscher Bau; Italienischer Bau  Strada, Jacopo, on Camera dei Venti 79 stucco  at the Appennino (Giambologna) 168 at the grotto of Palazzo Te 164 n. 105 masquerading as marble on façade at Palazzo Te 39–40, 41, 51, 97, 120 n. 83 as physically or corporeally assertive at Palazzo Te 108–114, 121 at Stadtresidenz 155 and triumphal apparati 119 at Villa Doria 146 see also Camera degli Imperatori; Camera degli Stucchi; Camera delle Aquile 

240  subject/subjectivity  built environment as embodied subject 29–31, 132 constructed through corporeal experience of space 28, 76, 101, 137–138, 171, 173, 191, 228 constructed through exempla 92–93, 95 discourses of produced in literature and art 25 monstrous 135, 174 relationship to body 27–28, 214 subject and object, merging of 28, 115, 122, 125, 142, 144, 149, 191 see also identity; gender; space  surveillance, culture of 21, 22–23, 28, 125 table manners 21 Tanner, Marie, on representations of imperial authority 123 tapestries 138, 146 temporality see time  Ten Books on Architecture see Vitruvius  time  confusion in monstrous spaces 162, 168 merging or collapsing past and present 102, 115, 126 passage of represented 108, 135–136 Palazzo Te exists in and through 42 resistance to temporal stasis 112 and space collapsed in various rooms of Palazzo Te 101–107, 111, 120, 126, 136 timelessness as illusion 92–93, 96–97, 101, 115 see also beholders; exemplum; giants; masculinity; past and present; space  Titian  portrait of Federico II 71  Sacred and Profane Love 208 Toilette of Bathsheba 116, 117, 118–119, 213–214 Toscano, Raffaele, on Camera dei Venti 79 Trachtenberg, Marvin, on perspectival system 141 Trajan’s Column  facsimile for Charles V arrival in Mantua 109–111 relationship to Camera degli Stucchi 109–110 transformation see metamorphosis; mutandosi  triumphal arches  Arch of Constantine 104–105 activated through movement 92, 119 eastern façade (Palazzo Te) as 103, 107 in Genoa (designed by Perino del Vaga) 147–148 in Milan (designed by Giulio Romano) 107–108 façade of Sant’Andrea as 105–107 see also apparati; Rome; triumphal processions  triumphal processions  welcoming Charles V to Genoa 147–148 welcoming Charles V to Mantua 91–92, 95, 97–101 see also apparati; bridal processions; triumphal arches  Triumphs of Caesar (Mantegna) see Mantegna, Andrea  trompe l’oeil 73, 108, 113, 124 Turner, James Grantham  on beholders of sexually charged images 63 on connections between Giulio and Peruzzi’s frescoes 56

Index

Uriah  The Drunkenness of Uriah 118–119 example of deadly consequences of licentiousness 117, 213–214 see also Loggia di Davide  Vasari, Giorgio  confused Camera dei Venti with Camera delle Aquile 79 on Fall of Phaeton 36 on Giulio’s inventiveness 39–40 on imitating nature 21 praise for artists imitating best models 94 on Sala dei Giganti (Palazzo Te) 138, 144 vita of Giulio Romano 34 n. 87 Venus  Giulio likens Bathsheba to 116 Mars and Venus at the Bath 56, 59–61, 189–190 satyrs as followers of 190 statues in dei Cavalli of Mars and 69 Venus (Sansovino) 62, 62 n. 42 victory  Giulio’s statue of Victory for Emperor’s visit 99, 100  theme of Loggia di Davide 101–103 Victory and her scribal shields (multiple versions by Giulio Romano) 110–111 Victory crowns Perino’s triumphal arch in Genoa 148 viewer 27, 140–141 see also beholders  Villa Doria  gigantomachia 123, 132 monstrous dialogue with Palazzo Te 145–149 Sala dei Giganti 145–149, 229 Villa Farnesina (Villa Chigi)  Loggia of Psyche 54, 138–139, 140  representation of zodiac 77 Virgil  Georgics as source for Orphic myth 201 version of Metamorphoses compared with Ovid 201–202 see also Mantua  virginity  of Margherita Farnese 187, 189, 192–194 Vicenzo I’s difficulty with wife’s 193–194 virility  horses representing 64–68, 208 images at Palazzo Te 186 Vicenzo I’s need to prove 192 see also masculinity; sexuality  virtue  corporeal experience 115–117 Hercules as paragon of male virtue 69 horses as corporeal manifestations of Federico’s 67 and leaders best able to exemplify 113–115 role of exempla 95, 96–97 significance for female beholders 118–120 see also exemplum  Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture  buildings to mimic components of human body 29, 160

Index

deplored mixing of orders 156 descriptions of caryatids 159 differentiates between monstrous and successful mixtures 150, 151 voyeurism 117, 118–119, 213–14 see also gaze  Vulcan, fresco in Sala dei Cavalli 69 War of Mantuan Succession 227 Watanabe, O’Kelly, Helen, on triumphal entries 98 Webb, Jennifer, on system of surveillance 22 weddings see bridal processions; marriage; specific brides and grooms by name  winged victories 38–39, 99, 102, 104, 122, 213 Winged Victories and Barbarian Prisoners (Giulio Romano) 213 

241 women  agency of 25 n. 46, 42, 84, 99, 116, 119, 122, 214, 230 as beholders 43, 82–85, 96, 118–119, 182, 187–197, 208, 212–214 discursive production by men 18–20 experience of triumphal processions 98–99 objectification of 25 n. 46, 85, 122, 141 n. 33, 147–148, 191, 214 role reversal possible 122–123 see also femininity; gender; sexuality; sprezzata purità  Zibramonte, Aurelio, on Vicenzo I and Margherita Farnese 187, 189 zodiacs in Camera di Venti and at Farnese villa 77–78 Zuccaro, Federico, on Sala dei Giganti 171