Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with market stalls at the weekends and come early evening, waves of promenading Man-
tuans ebb and flow between them.
Palazzo Ducale
PALACE
( 0376 22 48 32, bookings 041 241 18 97;
www.mantovaducale.benicultura.it
;
Piazza Sordello 40; adult/reduced
€6.50/3.25; 8.15am-7.15pm Tue-Sun)
For over 300 years the enormous Palazzo Ducale was the
seat of the Gonzaga - a family of wealthy horse breeders who rose to power in the 14th
century to become one of Italy's leading Renaissance families. At the height of their
power, the palace's 500-plus rooms, three squares and 15 courtyards, occupying 34,000
square metres, were adorned with over 2000 artworks. Sadly the collection, with the ex-
ception of the frescoes and gilt ceilings, was auctioned off by Vicenzo II to Charles I of
England in 1627, just prior to the collapse of the family's fortunes in 1630.
A visit to the palace, for which you should budget several hours, takes you through just
40 of the palace's finest rooms. The biggest draw, however, is the mid-15th-century fresco
by Mantegna, the
Camera degli Sposi
(Bridal Chamber). Executed between 1465 and 1474,
the room, which is entirely painted, shows the Marquis, Lodovico, going about his courtly
business with family and courtiers in tow. Painted naturalistically and with great attention
to perspective, the arched walls appear like windows on the courtly world - looking up at
the Duke's wife Barbara, you can even see the underside of her dress as if she's seated
above you. Most playful of all though is the trompe l'œil oculus featuring bare-bottomed
putti balancing precariously on a painted balcony, while smirking courtly pranksters ap-
pear ready to drop a large potted plant on gawping tourists below.
Other palace highlights worthy of attention are Domenico Morone's
Expulsion of the
Bonacolsi
(1494), in Room 1, depicting the Gonzaga coup d'état of 1328, and Rubens'
vast
Adoration of the Magi
in the
Sala degli Arcieri
(Room of Archers), which Napoleonic
troops brutally dismembered in 1797. In Room 2, the
Sala del Pisanello
, fragments and fas-
cinating preliminary sketches of Pisanello's frescoes of Arthurian knights remain, while
the cream-and-gold
Galleria degli Specchi
(Gallery of Mirrors) is actually a complete 17th-
century Austrian reworking - under the Gonzaga the gallery housed prized paintings, in-
cluding Caravaggio's radical
Death of the Virgin
(which is now in the Louvre).
Look up for some of the palace's finest remaining features, its frescoed and gilt ceilings
including, in Room 2, a labyrinth, prophetically predicting the capricious nature of good
fortune. Below it, as if in illustration, are two portraits of Eleanor Gonzaga (1630-86),
