1. THE PRISON OF THE MARTYRS OF BELFIORE (CASTELLO DI SAN GIORGIO)

The Castello di San Giorgio (Castle of Saint George), military structure built in the last years of the fourteenth century, after a project by the architect Bartolino da Novara (who also designed the castle in Ferrara), was originally used as prison too. In the first half of the fifteenth century the prisoners were held in the dungeons of the castle. It’s quite probable that, when Ludovico II decided to move and live in the castle towards the year 1459, it wasn’t no longer used as a prison. The Hapsburgs, who ruled from 1707 to 1866, filled the piano nobile (the first floor) with their archives and used the upper floor as a prison where the Martyrs of Belfiore were jailed. They were the heroes of the Italian Risorgimento, hanged in a place called Belfiore close to Mantua.

The Mantuan conspirators, don Giovanni Grioli, Enrico Tazzoli, Angelo Scarsellini, Bernardo De Canal, Giovanni Zambelli, Carlo Poma, Carlo Montanari, Tito Speri, Bartolomeo Grazioli, Pietro Frattini and Pietro Fortunato Calvi (he, however, had nothing to do with the ”conspiracy of Belfiore”), were related to Giuseppe Mazzini and were sentenced to death and executed between 1851 and 1855. They weren’t all from Mantua, but they were all condemned by general Radetzky and all imprisoned in the Castle, from which only Felice Orsini from Forlì managed to escape. A monument was sculpted by Pasquale Miglioretti in 1872, to recall the tragic end of those defenders of the Italian freedom and independence. The monument, formerly placed in piazza Sordello, was moved in 1930; in 2002 it was rebuilt just in Belfiore, but in the corridor of the prison there are still two bas-reliefs, which were already part of it, portraying the conspirators.

The upper floor of the Castle doesn’t concern only the last time of the Martyrs of Belfiore, but also bears important traces of its Gonzaga past. In the twenties of the sixteenth century – therefore before carrying out the Appartamento di Troia (the Apartment of Troy) – Federico II had a set of rooms decorated on the upper floor, both in the Castle and in the buildings beyond the moat, corresponding to the actual Sala di Manto and Sala dei Capitani (Rooms of Manto and of the Captains). The decoration of the Zodiac Room, that was also the prison of Pietro Frattini, belongs to that decorative season, mostly hidden or eliminated by more important works. The wide cross-vault and the lunettes below were painted around 1520-25 for Marquis Federico II, who would become duke in 1530. The powerful Hercules frescoed in the center of the vault, holding a heavy club and carrying the inscription “UBIQUE FORTIS” (strong everywhere), should allude to Federico himself. The “sky” is divided into twelve sections by rays in gilded pastiglia, each of them corresponding to one of the twelve zodiac signs: possibly the implicit subject is the birth theme of the Marquis. The frescoes, already attributed to Lorenzo Leombruno or to an assistant of Giulio Romano – but the fantastic landscapes would be a work of a Flemish artist – recall the complex Mannerist culture that, in Mantua, mixed the knowledge of such painters as Dosso Dossi and Pordenone with echoes of the Raphaelesque culture.

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini 2. THE PIANO NOBILE OF THE CASTELLO DI SAN GIORGIO (ISABELLA D’ESTE’S APARTMENT; ROOMS OF THE PALAZZINA DELLA PALEOLOGA)

Isabella d’Este came in Mantua as a very young bride (in 1490) and lived on the piano nobile of the Castello for a long time, while her husband Francesco II lived on the ground floor. The cultivated and refined marchioness was a protagonist and a symbol of the Italian Renaissance. In about ten years she created a set of rooms of great beauty inside the Castle, although unluckly few of them is still extant. When she became a widow in 1519, she moved into Corte Vecchia (Old Court) where she had part of her furnishings transferred from the Castle and had them rearranged in the new apartment. However, at least some traces of the Studiolo and of the Grotta survive, as well as a series of small chambers and larger rooms. The Grotta (Grotto) is of particular interest. The actual wooden barrel vault covers paintings with the signs of the Zodiac, frescoed when the small room was used as Ludovico II’s (1444-78) studyroom. Today, the most interesting decorative element is the wooden ceiling, carved for the marchioness by the Mola brothers around 1506-08 and decorated with tablets representing the “musical pauses”. From 1534 onward, the Grotta became the passage leading to the Palazzina of Margherita Paleologa. Exactly above the Grotta is placed Isabella’s Studiolo (Study). The marchioness had it decorated at the end of the fifteenth century, but it was restored at Giulio Romano’s age. A trace of the original inlaid marble floor is left. It housed paintings of great value: works by Andrea Mantegna, Perugino, Lorenzo Costa the Elder, later transferred to Corte Vecchia, like most of the furnishings and collections; since 1628, however, those paintings moved to France and they can now be admired in the Louvre in Paris. The nearby Sala delle Armi (Room of the Arms), placed in the northeast tower of the Castle, houses a 1513 polyptych painted by Cima da Conegliano for the church of Sant’Anna in Capodistria. It’s further possible to enter the Cappellina del Bertani (Bertani’s Chapel), passing through the sacristy. The chapel was turned into a place of worship only in 1561 and it was the prefetto delle fabbriche (supervisor of the works), the painter and architect Giovanni Battista Bertani, who gave it the appearance of a refined small oratory, which seems to glorify the Corinthian order even more than the Virgin to whom it was dedicated. Through the Passo Oscuro (Dark Passage), we get to some rooms where the decorations of the Palazzina della Paleologa were reassembled. The building was carried out by Giulio Romano for Margherita Paleologa of Monferrato, between 1534 and 1536. The one-storey Palazzina had also a hanging garden; the whole building was demolished in 1899. The protests of part of the citizens led, at least, to the detachment of some pictorial decorations. In the twenties, they were reassembled on wooden frames and placed in the rooms on the piano nobile of the Castello where they still are now. Among the rooms that were preserved, the first is the Camerino degli Armadi (Small Chamber of the Cabinets), so called for the wooden closets painted by one of Giulio Romano’s assistants, maybe Agostino de Ganis. Among the rich festoons on the corbels of the vault, the representations of the Four Continents should be noticed. It’s quite probable that the pictorial decoration was realized by Lorenzo Costa the Younger (1535-83). The next room contains frescoes connected with an Oratorio, or Chapel. Anton Maria Viani (1550 c. - 1630) is generally acknowledged as the artist who painted these scenes between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, but instead it is possible that they were frescoed by Ippolito Andreasi, known as Andreasino (1548-1608). The third room, called the Camerino delle Stagioni (Seasons Closet), is the only one that preserves the original decoration painted by Giulio Romano’s assistants.

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini 3. APPARTAMENTO GRANDE DI CASTELLO (THE LARGE CASTLE APARTMENT)

The Large Castle Apartment, built for Duke Guglielmo (1550-87), was at first designed by the architect Giovan Battista Bertani, but, after his death, the works were concluded probably under the direction of Pirro Ligorio from Neaples. Under the apartment there is a long passageway that leads from the lakeside road directly into piazza Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara square), skirting the Basilica. Guglielmo had the whole apartment decorated to exalt his lineage and to commemorate the main events of the city’s history, from the mythological origins to the more recent deeds of his ancestors. The Room of the Captains follows the Sala di Manto (Manto’s Room). Four large canvases (unluckly lost) were hosted herein and celebrated the exploits and events related to the first Captains of the people, starting from Luigi Gonzaga. The tempera mural depicting the Oath of Luigi Gonzaga – now to be seen on the wall opposite the entrance – was thus to be covered by a similar huge canvas. Although the painting shows strong archaisms, it dates back to the years 1576-78 and was realized by an artist (probably Benedetto Pagni from Pescia) who took inspiration from a late fifteenth- century composition. In the middle of the wall painting the dwarf Frambaldo is portrayed, while on the right is the giant Guglielmone, armed: both are mentioned at the court of Luigi in the oldest chronicles. The wooden ceiling and the fireplace were both carried out after a design by Giovan Battista Bertani. The stuccoes, in the corners of the room, portraying the four Captains Luigi, Guido, Ludovico I and Francesco I, are probably the work of the modeller Iacopo d’Ughetto from Modena, who was also author of those in Manto’s Room. In the following Sala dei Marchesi ( Room of the Marquises) the deeds of the Marquises (Gian Francesco, Ludovico II, Federico I and Francesco II ) were celebrated in a series of four very important canvases: the famous “Fasti”( Feats ) painted by Iacopo Tintoretto in 1579, that are now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The paintings represent the military triumphs of the marquises, portrayed in stucco at the corners of the room, together with their wives and accompanied by allegorical and mythological figures by Francesco Segala, an artist from Venice who worked at the court of Guglielmo Gonzaga for some years and also carved the rich ceiling.

The next space is called Loggia del Tasso, because it was believed, but with no ground, that Torquato Tasso had stayed there in 1592, during a visit to Mantua that lasted for some months. It is decorated with stuccoes representing the various stages of human evolution: from the Invention of Fire, through Hunting and War, to the Invention of the Arts. The smaller rooms behind were the private part of the apartment. The decorative plan of the first room was designed by Pirro Ligorio, a leading artist of the Mannerist culture of the second half of the sixteenth century. In the Camera delle Virtù (Room of the Virtues) the lunettes were painted by Lorenzo Costa the Younger, while the bas-reliefs in stucco below illustrate classical musical themes, perhaps alluding to the contrast between Dionysian and Apollonian art. The adjoining Studiolo is decorated with a frieze representing instruments of study and research. The last room of the apartment, known as the Sala dei Duchi (Room of the Dukes) was decorated with four paintings, depicting Federico II Gonzaga’s “Fasti”. The four war scenes, once hung on the walls, were also painted by Iacopo Tintoretto and assistants between 1579 and 1580 (the canvases are now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich).

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini 4. APPARTAMENTO DELL’ESTIVALE (OR “RUSTICA”)

The Appartamento dell’Estivale (Summer Apartment) was built for Federico II in the years 1537-38 by the painter and architect Giulio Romano. He designed an isolated building, which was perpendicular to the lake; its main façade was decorated with heavy ashlers and Salomonic columns that give it a rustic and picturesque appearance. The rustication recalls, in architecture, the non-finito (the un-finished) used by Michelangelo in sculpture; the spiral column, generally a symbol of the temple of Jerusalem, here loses its sacred meaning and gets wrapped with vine shoots.

The interior of the apartment is the result of two successive phases: little survives of the decorations dating back to Giulio Romano’s time, while most of the work was carried out under the direction of Giovan Battista Bertani, in the 1560s. It was then that Lorenzo Costa the Younger, the most skilled artist under Bertani’s direction, painted the Loves of Jupiter in the Camera di Giove: the episodes show him seducing under different disguises. The adjoining Camerino di Orfeo (Orpheus Closet) is lavishly decorated with refined stuccoes describing the myth of the famous singer. His beloved Eurydice died from the bite of a snake, but he descended into the Hades where he obtained permission to take her back to the world of the living, thanks to his musical talent on condition that, leaving the Underworld, he didn’t turn back to look at his lover. But he did it and so he lost her for ever. He was loved by the Maenads, but he rejected them and so he was torn to pieces by them and killed. The classical myth was also the subject of several musical works composed at the court of Mantua, such as the fable set to music in 1494, basing on a libretto by Poliziano, and the version written by Ottavio Rinuccini and set to music by Claudio Monteverdi, the musician from who was active at the Mantuan court between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century.

One of the most charming rooms is, no doubt, the Stanza di Nettuno (Room of Neptune),where the aquatic theme is exalted, by the tritons and the sea divinities painted in the corners and by the marvellous still life stuccoes and frescoes on the vault. The high quality with which the flora and fauna of the lake are painted, interlaced in fishing nets with great naturalism, can be also found in the figures painted on the vault by Lorenzo Costa the Younger. The theme of the mythic origins of Mantua is illustrated in the Sala della Mostra (Exhibition Room). The same theme would be painted again a decade later in the monumental Sala di Manto (Manto’s Room).The gallery, that ends with a serliana, houses a precious collection of thirteen Greek marbles, including an Insular Funerary Stele from 350-340 B.C., a Funerary Banquet relief from 300 B.C., two fragments of a puteal with a Dionysian Thiasos from the1st century B.C., a funerary stele of the Isidian type and a Neo-Attic relief with Dancing Maenad and Satyr. Through the passage on the right we reach the Sala delle Quattro Colonne (Room of the Four Columns); actually they are three separated rooms – decorated at different times during the XVI century – that underwent deep structural changes during the eighteenth century, when they were united. In the third room is a remarkable lumachella fireplace, probably designed by Giulio Romano himself, as the analogies with the fireplaces in Palazzo Te reveal. In the other three rooms looking onto the Prato della Mostra (Sala delle Due Colonne (Room of the Two Columns) and Sala delle Mensole (Room of the Corbels) there are decorations, or traces of decorations, dating back to Bertani’s time.

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini 5. APPARTAMENTO DI GUASTALLA

The Palazzo del Capitano (Captain’s Palace), of which the first floor can be visited fom the First Room of Appartamento di Guastalla, is in the highest part of Piazza Sordello (formerly Piazza San Pietro), on a sort of ridge, originally called “scaglione”, that runs through what was known as the “old city”. Its actual aspect, both inside and outside, is the result of a series of restorations that have brought to light, where possible, the original structure. The oldest part, dating back to the second half of the tirteenth century and corresponding to part of the rooms looking onto Piazza Lega Lombarda, was deeply transformed and enlarged by the fourth decade of the fourteenth century (or 1300 c. according to a different critical tradition), when the Captain’s Palace reached the actual width; the portico in front was added together with the long corridor above and the so called Salone dell’Armeria on the top floor. The majestic mullioned gothic windows of the crenellated façade date back to the beginning of the fifteenth century. Originally the palace was the residence of the Bonacolsi family; the Gonzaga took possession of it when they seized power on 16th August 1328. However, Luigi Gonzaga, the first captain of the people, didn’t live in this palace, but he moved into another palace, called Palazzo Acerbi-Cadenazzi, that stands opposite the square and formerly belonging to the Bonacolsi family. The Palazzo del Capitano was instead the residence of his three sons Guido, Feltrino and Filippino. By the fourth decade the chapel, probably identified with the palace’s “capella magna”, had been magnificently decorated, and during the century several artists came and frescoed the walls of the rooms that had evocative names, certainly deriving from the scenes painted therein: Rooms of the Leopards, of the Emperors, of the Crests, of Lancelot, of the Paladins. The Palazzo del Capitano remained the main residence of the family until the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it was linked with several other buildings, restored or built ex novo, up to a new monumental complex. From the middle of the fifteenth century, when Ludovico II Gonzaga moved into the Castle, the building was probably used as offices and as a residence for the court; it was partly restored and renewed from the middle of the sixteenth century, between the regency of cardinal Ercole and the duchy of Guglielmo Gonzaga, and finally underwent deep transformations at the age of Francesco IV, in 1612. It was then that the prefetto delle fabbriche Antonio Maria Viani gave the interiors the aspect that, to a great extent, they still have, renovating the decorations and the ceilings. Between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Anna Isabella di Guastalla, the wife of the last duke Ferdinando Carlo, lived on the piano nobile of the palace and so the whole apartment is still called Appartamento di Guastalla. The division of the rooms, in the long gallery looking onto the cathedral square , was eliminated only at the beginning of the twentieth century. We enter exactly the gallery from the first room of the Guastalla apartment; the very long corridor, facing directly onto piazza Sordello, was divided into various rooms during the fourteenth century. Among the bright fourteenth century frescoes it’s worth noting those reproducing curtains made from the expensive fur of a squirrel, small loggias and balconies, crests, lozenges and elaborated geometric shapes, all recorded in the ancient documents because the names of the rooms derived from the decorations. At the beginning of the corridor a short frieze frescoed with very light and brilliant colours is what remains of a Stanza degli Imperatori (Room of the Emperors). In an adjoining room, according to the ancient chronicles, Agnese Visconti, the wife of Francesco Gonzaga, committed adultery and was subsequently beheaded.

At the opposite side of the gallery we enter one of the rooms facing onto Piazza Lega Lombarda. On the wall opposite the windows are traces of medieval decorations: the upper part of the large room is decorated with phytomorphic shoots and lozenges in which monstruous animals can be seen; at the bottom, on the other hand, there is a curious geometric pattern, brightly coloured. Here there is an important nucleus of medieval frescoes, all transferred from the city’s churches. A painting with an Annunciation was detached from the church of Ognissanti. It reflects the style of the coeval Venetian picture, with a composition still influenced by Byzantine art. Two frescoes, both representing the Virgin and Child and dating back to the early fourteenth century, were detached from the church of San Francesco. They show the transition of the local art to Gothic style. The influence of Giotto’s presence in can be seen in a panel with Three Saints, a work by the so-called “Master of the Bonacolsi chapel”. A more mature phase, linked to the Emilian culture, can be noticed in a fresco, the Virgin and Child with Saint Gregory Nazianzus, from the church of Sant’Andrea and in a Virgin and Child between two Saints, detached from the bell tower of San Domenico. In the same room are displayed Gothic sculptures and a fourteenth century bone triptych from the Embriachi workshop. The next room houses sculptures and detached frescoes from the fourteenth and early fifteenth century.

The following Room was created by Antonio Maria Viani by enlarging the original fourteenth century chapel of the palace. This room had a barrel vault and a side entrance; the altar must have been placed against the back wall, where a magnificent Crucifixion is painted, and the chapel was illuminated by two windows, looking onto the piazza del Brolo (Brolo Square, now Piazza Lega Lombarda), which are also frescoed in the splays; finally the walls were covered with white and red velvets. It was used as the palatine chapel. The artist who painted it toward the end of the 1330s was able to use both a narrative strenght in the dramatic and tumultuous Crucifixion, and a very precious touch that is particularly evident in the two figures of saints frescoed in the splays of the windows, of France and Saint Catherine, homage to Luigi Gonzaga and to his wife Caterina Malatesta, probably died before 1340. In the main scene should be noticed the daring foreshortening of the horse in the foreground, the crucified thief turning his back on us and, above all, the group of figures on the right. It’s probable that the three men on horseback are Guido (wearing the cap with cheekpieces), Feltrino and Filippino, who lived in the palace and commissioned the fresco to an excellent painter of incredible narrative vigour, probably the so-called “Master of Mombaroccio”. The subject and the iconographic solutions adopted certainly refer to eucharistic themes that were particularly felt in Mantua, where a relic of Christ’s Blood is still kept. The last Room of Guastalla houses the supposed funerary monument of Margherita Malatesta, the second wife of Francesco I Gonzaga, sculpted towards the 1400 by Pietro Paolo dalle Masegne. There are also several stone and terracotta fragments, from the city’s sacred and secular buildings, some epigraphs and a cippus dating back to 1296, inscribed in elegant naskhi characters. It comes from Cilicia and was rediscovered in the early nineteenth century in the underground of the church of San Francesco.

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini 6. APPARTAMENTO DELL’IMPERATRICE (EMPRESS’S APARTMENT)

The Appartamento dell’Imperatrice is so called because it was created by Paolo Pozzo in 1778 for Beatrice d’Este, the wife of Ferdinand of Austria, on the occasion of their stay in Mantua. The rooms were realized inside the thirteenth century Magna Domus, which constitutes, together with part of the Palazzo del Capitano (Palace of the Captain), the main testimony of the earliest architectonic phase of Ducal Palace (Palazzo Ducale), dating back to the Bonacolsi period. The building is formed by the union, that took place in the Middle Ages, of a tower with a palace (the two structures can be seen from the external portico; the span on the right of the Romanesque portal corresponds to the tower). The whole block remained the property of the Bonacolsi until 1355 c., when the last of their possessions of any importance were bought by the Gonzaga. Changes occurred to the Magna Domus during the sixteenth century and, above all, towards the end of the eighteenth century, when it was completely restored together with the Palazzo del Capitano, up to the actual aspect. In the bedroom there is a rich canopy bed dating back to the beginning of the nineteenth century that the viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais had transferred from in 1810. The furnishings are completed by mirrors in neoclassical style, consoles, fireplaces and even fire-wood boxes. Also the next small room presents neoclassical decorations, while the third room, looking onto Piazza Sordello, houses a richly decorated mirror from the early nineteenth century and four eighteenth-century paintings: the Portrait of Maria Theresa of Austria by Felice Campi (1775) and three other portraits of Austrian dignitaries, Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg, Prince Joseph von Sperges and Count Karl von Firmian. The furnishing of these rooms and of the back rooms is the original one dating back to the end of the eigheenth century. There are tables and consoles in the Louis XVI style but also in the Empire style, therefore dating back to the turn of the century. In a room some canvases painted with herbs juices are displayed: curious imitation tapestries entirely made of vegetal substances. They date back to the eighteenth century and probably come from the Ducal Palace in Revere. The next rooms have their original eighteenth and nineteenth century furnishing: divans and stools, consoles, card-tables with folding legs, mirrors of Murano glass, but also paintings, including four by Giuseppe Zais, an artist from Agordo, representing Landscapes; four other Landscapes, tempera on paper, are by the Veronese artist Giuseppe Canella. Some marble tabletops were made around 1773 by cutting marble slabs kept in the palace’s storehouses. A similar work was done for the fireplaces: the sixteenth century ones were sometimes reworked and a more sober appearance was given to them, in line with the taste of the time .A large room houses a collection of paintings from the “Carlo Poma” Hospital in Mantua, including works of value: a Virgin Mary and Child with the Infant Saint John by Daniel van den Dyck, a Christ crowned with thorns by Lucrina Fetti (1629) and some paintings by Pietro Fabbri from Vicenza. Finally in the bathroom there is a marble tub probably transferred from Sabbioneta. Some precious marbles, moved from there, were used in various parts of the palace, in the small chamber next to the Sala di Amore e Psiche (Psyche’s Room), in the Kaffeehaus and probably in the Appartamento delle Imperatrici.

MUSEO DI PALAZZO DUCALE Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Mantova Trad. A. Corbellani, A. Mossini