Mantua, news at the Ducal Palace: the tour route is expanded and the Corte Nuova reopens

Important news in Mantua for the Ducal Palace. The visiting itinerary is widened: in fact, the Corte Nuova itinerary reopens. It is therefore possible to visit Giulio Romano’s L’Appartamento di Troia with a renovated layout, the newly restored Galleria dei Mesi and the Galleria della Mostra. Here are the new features in detail.

TheAppartamento di Troia, designed by Giulio Romano for Federico II Gonzaga around the 1630s (one of the jewels of the Ducal Palace in Mantua), reopens to the public the four rooms that can be visited (the Sala dei Cavalli, the Camera delle Teste, the Camerino dei Cesari and the Sala di Troia) where is housed the important collection of classical statuary, one of the most prestigious in northern Italy, which stands in close relation to the mythological subjects of the 16th-century decorative apparatus. The rearrangement works, entrusted to architect Giampaolo Benedini, restored the perspective continuity that, from the Sala di Manto to the Galleria dei Mesi, runs through the Sala di Troia. Previously, in fact, the foreshortening was interrupted by a large display panel with bas-reliefs: now the element has been divided into two distinct parts, leaving the central section free. In this way the visual continuity along the rooms, an important element of the Giulio Romano project, is again made appreciable. In addition, the famous Ciampolini marble, formerly belonging to Giulio Romano himself, who expressly mentioned it in the Iliad episode of the Struggle over the body of Patroclus frescoed on the north side of the vault in the Hall of Troy, has been placed here. The two works-the fresco and the relief that served as its model-are therefore now displayed close to each other, so that the public can appreciate this particular figurative relationship. The Ciampolini relief is a fragment of a lintel of a Roman monument depicting a battle between Romans and Gauls: the clothing and weapons of the soldiers, with crests, round shields, iron-mesh or scaled lorica, the peculiarities of the opponents with long breeches, belts around the waist or completely naked with hexagonal shields, leave no doubt as to the identification of the scene. It is a battle from the Gallic campaigns of the first century B.C., which Giulio Romano recovers in the invention underlying the execution of the fresco on the vault.

The marble, formerly placed along one side of the portico of the Cortile d’Onore in the lapidarium of the Ducal Palace, has an interesting history. The name of the relief comes from the antiquities collector Giovanni Ciampolini, who lived in Rome between the 15th and 16th centuries. The frieze in question belonged to his collection, in the house near Campo de’ Fiori, and enjoyed some fame. Giulio Romano and his friend Gian Francesco Penni, both former pupils of Raphael, purchased the collection from Giovanni Ciampolini’s heirs in 1520. We do not know exactly when the work became part of the Gonzaga collection. It may have been given by Giulio Romano himself during his lifetime; in any case, Giulio’s collection of antiquities was dispersed by his son, Raphael, after his father’s death (1546). In addition to the Ciampolini relief, it will still be possible to admire other important pieces from the collection of ancient art: these include the front of the sarcophagus depicting the Myth of Endymion (late 2nd cent./early 3rd cent. A.D.) displayed in the Chamber of Heads, the Amazonomachy (mid-2nd century A.D.) and the bas-relief with The Labors of Hercules that belonged to Vespasian Gonzaga, both displayed in the Hall of Troy (170-180 A.D.).

As for the Gallery of the Months, restoration work to consolidate the vault was completed a few days ago. The work was divided between restoration of the intrados-the visible part of the barrel vault-and the extrados, that is, the part accessible only from the attics. The two interventions, different in type but closely complementary, were financed by the Ducal Palace from budget funds. The project for the restoration of the intrados frescoes and stuccoes was carried out under the responsibility of restorer Daniela Marzia Mazzaglia of the Ducal Palace and executed by the company Lithos srl. The structural work, seismic improvement of the vault, on the other hand, was carried out by the firm Lares srl, based on the design of engineer Giovanni Gualerzi and under the responsibility of architect Antonio Giovanni Mazzeri of the Ducal Palace.

The presence of the scaffolding was an opportunity to place on the west header two reproductions made with three-dimensional scanning techniques of the bas-reliefs that originally adorned the upper parts on either side of the passageway, next to the header exedra. The original bas-reliefs have been in Palazzo Te since the early 19th century; in 1811 they were detached in solid form for use in the Caryatid Chamber of Palazzo Te. Only three were actually detached, as the Kronos/Saturn that was made by Giulio Romano around a clock face-the first monumental clock in a Renaissance interior-remained in situ. Around 2005 a clock copy, of the ’Aurora’, was placed on the east head; today two 3D copies, on the west head, of the ’Day’ and ’Night’, have been made, thanks to the willingness of the Palazzo Te management, which allowed the reliefs, made, along with the copies, by AD Metaheritage srl.

Also new for the Galleria della Mostra, the sumptuous exhibition space about 64 meters long that the Gonzaga had commissioned at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries to display their picture gallery. Two terracotta sculptures depicting angels in the act of holding a bronze scroll had been located for decades in the New Gallery of Corte Vecchia, between the Archers’ Room and the Hall of the Popes. The two works recently underwent conservation work, also with state funding, entrusted to Chiara Ceriotti of the Arké firm, under the in-house direction of Daniela Marzia Mazzaglia. Of fine workmanship, the two sculptures had several microfractures, probably due to the original firing stages, and damage on the cartouche. Analysis revealed traces of two different glazes (applications of thin layers of color) over the terracotta: an older one with a faux bronze finish and another with a white finish. Restoration has retained traces of these two layers, without supplementing them. From the documents we discover that originally there were to be four statues: the quartet of statues was intended to adorn the two heads of the Exhibition Gallery. At that time the appearance of the four angels must have been characterized by the faux-bronze patina, maintained at least until 1769, the year in which the angels are mentioned in a document, naming the blackish imitation-bronze finish confirmed by the traces still present. A later white repainting, spread over the entire surface, is to be dated instead to before 1787, the date given in an inventory where mention is made of its placement in the Guastalla apartment. With the change of location, presumably, it was decided to “update” its finish in neoclassical taste. Having lost knowledge of the original provenance of the sculptures, they remained to adorn the Corte Vecchia. From the documents we discover that the four statues had been reduced to two during the 19th century: of the second pair that formed the quartet, traces were lost in the meanders of history and to this day their fate is unknown. In recent decades the two surviving statues stood, on high pedestals, in the Galleria Nuova.

It was the well-known Mantuan scholar Renato Berzaghi - who passed away a few years ago - who discovered that the terracottas were once placed in the niches on either side of the heads of the Galleria della Mostra and suggested the name of their author: Carlo Pallago. Pallago was a Florentine artist who had worked extensively in southern Germany, with Friedrich Sustris in Burg Trausnitz near Landshut, with Hubert Gerhard in Augsburg in the Church of Saints Ulrich and Afra, in Kirchheim in the Fugger Castle, and especially in Munich in the Residenz (in the Grottenhof, 1587-1588) and in St. Michael’s Church. He had thus worked in the same places and in the same years that Antonio Maria Viani had worked in Bavaria. If Viani moved to Mantua in 1592, Pallago remained in Munich until 1596, working mainly in the Antiquarium of the Residenz, but in 1598 the sculptor was definitely in Mantua where, seized by illness, he made a will indicating in Viani the one who was to take care of his funeral; to a daughter of the Cremonese architect he also left a necklace with a gold medal. The two terracotta angels are to be attributed to Pallago because of their close similarities to the terracotta figures put in place in the church of St. Michael in Munich, particularly the Angels with the symbols of the Passion in the choir and nave of the church, a collaborative work of the Florentine artist and Hubert Gerhard. Considering the presumed original location in the Exhibition Gallery, the subject matter of the Mantuan statues will have to be considered non-religious in nature, and these will perhaps be interpreted rather as Victories. At the conclusion of the restoration, it was decided to return the two works to the Exhibition Gallery in their original location, where the public can currently admire them.

Closing the itinerary on Corte Nuova is the unusual collection composed of artifacts from the animal, plant and mineral world of the Gonzaga Wunderkammer a sort of three-dimensional encyclopedia of the visible world at a time when science, folklore and myth merged in a curious and bizarre synthesis. A crocodile, a narwhal tooth (the unicorn’s horn), an armadillo, a rare bezoar, a shark’s jaw, fossils, stones, lapis lazuli and other artifacts displayed to evoke the awe of a once-in-a-lifetime collection that fascinated travelers and scientists from all over Europe over the past centuries.

The section devoted to shells is expanded and richly integrated, reminding us of the wealth of “Conchyliorum, Concharum, et Turbinatorum, quae a longinquis maribus allata, colorum varietate contendere inter se videntur” (shells from the remotest seas that compete with each other in shape and color) described in 1622. Still present are the “Pessi marini et altri animali monstruosi” that already “adorned” the studiolo of Frederick II in the early 16th century; there is an elephant’s foot, similar to that already remembered in the Ducal Palace in 1601 by a Frenchman, Pierre Bergeron (“un pied tout entier de la grand beste”); flint arrowheads, known then as ceraunia, which were believed to be the “petrified lightning bolts.” To the world of symbols refers the chameleon-remembered as early as medieval and Renaissance treatises as a symbol of versatility (in positive terms)-and the gallery now also houses a white peacock. In 1593 a pair was expected as a gift from Florence, from the Medici court, to whom the Gonzaga family was related. At that time these birds roamed freely through the gardens, just as birds of paradise and tropical parrots could be seen flying in the halls of the palace.

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Mantua, Ducal.

Mantua, Ducal.

Mantua, Ducal Palace.

, Ducal Palace, Corte Nuova.

, Ducal Palace, Corte Nuova.

Mantua, news at the Ducal Palace: the tour route is expanded and the Corte Nuova reopens

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