Giulio Romano

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(b Rome, ?1499; d Mantua, 1 Nov 1546). Italian painter and architect. He was trained by Raphael, who became his friend and protector, and he developed into an artist of consequence in the third decade of the 16th century. His authority derived from his artistic lineage, attunement to the needs of courtly patrons and a style that blended modern sensibilities with the forms of Classical art. His greatest achievements were the monumental fresco programmes and architectural projects that he conceived and oversaw. Giulio's contemporaries particularly praised the facility and inventiveness of his drawing, a view upheld by 20th-century writers. Most of his career was spent in Mantua, as court artist for Federico II Gonzaga, 5th Marchese and 1st Duke of Mantua (reg 1530-40). The Palazzo del Te, designed for Federico, is a tour de force of Mannerist architecture and decoration. Giulio's Mantuan workshop was modelled on the organizational structure of Raphael's; it did not, however, generate the sort of independent and highly skilled artist that Giulio himself exemplified.

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Italian architect, he was one of the major figures of the late Renaissance. Called Giulio Pippi or Giuliano Giannuzzi, he was born in Rome, became the pupil of Raphael, and trained amidst the High Renaissance reverence for Classical antiquities. He completed Raphael's Villa Lante al Gianicolo, Rome (1523), and designed the Palazzo Maccarani, Piazza Sant'Eustachio, Rome (c.1520–4), where his originality was demonstrated in the ambiguous capital-less pilasters and the windows that rest uneasily on a string-course. His bending of the rules of Classical propriety led him to extremes, and he became one of the most interesting Mannerist architects, especially after he settled in Mantua (1524), where he worked for Prince (later Duke Federigo II) Gonzaga (1519–40).

His extraordinary Palazzo del Tè (1525–32), Mantua, one of the first Mannerist buildings, is a single-storey building around a courtyard. The vestibule of the main entrance mixes elements from the Basilica of Maxentius, Rome, and a plan taken from Giocondo's edition of Vitruvius (1511). In the courtyard finely finished ashlar is contrasted with deliberately ‘unfinished’ work, and on two elevations some of the triglyphs are designed to appear to ‘drop’ from the entablature, giving a feeling of instability, probably suggested to the architect by Roman ruins in which the frieze had broken up: such a ruin (the Basilica Aemilia in the Forum Romanum) had been drawn by Sangallo. The garden-front is composed of overlaid serlianas and the garden itself is enclosed, terminating in a semicircular pilastered colonnade. The plan is a clever mixture of an Antique villa and Raphael's Villa Madama (itself influenced by Roman thermae).

As a result of his success with the Palazzo del Tè, Giulio was ennobled and presented with a house in Mantua, on the façade of which (1538–44) he reworked the themes of the House of Raphael (Palazzo Caprini) by Bramante. His Cortile della Mostra (or Cavallerizza) in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (1538–9), employs tortured, engaged, irregular spiral columns on pedestals carried on chunky rusticated consoles, while the rusticated façades have arches that are not quite semicircles, nor are they segments of circles. It is a distortion of themes from Bramante's House of Raphael and the Colosseum, with allusions to the Solomonic columns in San Pietro, Rome. Such preoccupations with Antiquity and with the gravitas of the great Bramante suggest that, far from acting with a disregard for Classicism, as some have sug-gested, Giulio was scholarly and witty, drawing on many sources to give his buildings authority.

He prepared designs for the market-square in Vicenza from 1542: the Palazzo Thiene, Vicenza, with its overt quotations from Ancient Rome, may owe more to him than to Palladio, who completed it. He restored the Abbey of San Benedetto al Polirone, near Mantua (1540–6), and remodelled the Cathedral, Mantua (1544–6), with double aisles incorporating massive Corinthian columns. The Residenz (Seat of the Court), Landshut, Bavaria (begun 1536), was influenced by his architecture, but was not by him. He was also a famous painter: his frescoes in the Vatican (Stanza dell'Incendio di Borgo of 1514–17) and at Mantua helped to make him celebrated in his lifetime.

Bibliography

• Ferrari & Belluzzi(1992)
• C.Fr et al. (1989)
• Giulio Romano (1991)
• Hartt (1958)
• Heydenreich (1996)
• Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxx/4 (Dec. 1974), 267–93
• T.Kaufmann (1995)
• Lotz (1977)
• Pettena (ed.) (1981)
• Verheyen (1977)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Giulio Romano (engraving of self-portrait).

Giulio Romano (c. 1499 – November 1, 1546) was an Italian painter and architect. A prominent pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism. Giulio's drawings have long been treasured by collectors; contemporary prints of them engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi were a significant contribution to the spread of 16th-century Italian style throughout Europe.

Biography

The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche, fresco in Palazzo del Te, Mantua.

Giulio Romano was born in Rome. In his native city, as a young assistant in Raphael's studio, he worked on the frescos in the Vatican loggias to designs by Raphael and in Raphael's Stanze in the Vatican painted a group of figures in the Fire in the Borgo (L'incendio di Borgo) fresco. He also collaborated on the decoration of the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina. After the death of Raphael in 1520, he helped complete the Vatican frescoes of the life of Constantine as well as Raphael's Coronation of the Virgin and the Transfiguration in the Vatican. In Rome, Giulio decorated the Villa Madama for Cardinal Giuliano de' Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The crowded Giulio Romano frescoes lack the stately and serene simplicity of his master.

In the Palazzo Te, Mantua

After the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the death of Leo X, artistic patronage in Rome slackened. Vasari tells how Baldassare Castiglione was delegated by Federico Gonzaga to procure Giulio to execute paintings and architectural and engineering projects for the duchy of Mantua. His masterpiece of architecture and fresco painting in that city is the suburban Palazzo Te, with its famous illusionistic frescos (c. 1525–1535). He also helped rebuild the ducal palace in Mantua, reconstructed the cathedral, and designed the nearby Church of San Benedetto. Sections of Mantua that had been flood-prone were refurbished under Giulio's direction, and the duke's patronage and friendship never faltered: Giulio's annual income amounted to more than 1000 ducats. His studio became a popular school of art.

In Renaissance tradition, many works of Giulio's were only temporary:

"When Charles V came to Mantua, Giulio, by the duke's order, made many fine arches, scenes for comedies and other things, in which he had no peer, no one being like him for masquerades, and making curious costumes for jousts, feasts, tournaments, which excited great wonder in the emperor and in all present. For the city of Mantua at various times he designed temples, chapels, houses, gardens, facades, and was so fond of decorating them that, by his industry, he rendered dry, healthy and pleasant places previously miry, full of stagnant water,and almost uninhabitable."

– Vasari, Vite

He traveled to France in the first half of the 16th century and brought concepts of the Italian style to the French court of Francis I. Giulio also designed tapestries and the erotic album I Modi which was expertly engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, a project that landed Raimondi in jail in Rome. In 1546, just as he was appointed architect to St. Peter's, Giulio Romano died. Giulio Romano has the distinction of being the only Renaissance artist to be mentioned by William Shakespeare. In Act V, Scene II of The Winter's Tale Queen Hermione's statue is by "that rare Italian master, Julio Romano", although Giulio was not a sculptor.

Selected paintings and drawings

Madonna & Child, c. 1523

• The Stoning of St. Stephen (Santo Stefano, Genoa): "Giulio never did a finer work than this," said Vasari. Domenico del Barbiere engraved the subject, so that it influenced designers who never saw the original in Genoa.
• Adoration of the Magi (Louvre).
• Fire in the Borgo, fresco (Raphael Rooms in Vatican City).
• Emblematic Figures, pen and brown ink and wash over graphite (Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco).
• The Battle of the Milvian Bridge (Giulio Romano)
• The Triumph of Titus and Vespasian

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giulio Romano

• Vita[1] by Giorgio Vasari, who describes his meeting with Giulio:

" At this time Giorgio Vasari a great friend of Giulio, though they only knew each other by report and by letters, passed through Mantua on his way to Venice to see him and his works. On meeting, they recognised each other as though they had met a thousand times before. Giulio was so delighted that he spent four days in showing Vasari all his works, especially the plans of ancient buildings at Rome, Naples, Pozzuolo, Campagna, and all the other principal antiquities designed partly by him and partly by others. Then, opening a great cupboard, he showed him plans of all the buildings erected from his designs in Mantua, Rome and all Lombardy, so beautiful that I do not believe that more original, fanciful or convenient buildings exist."

"Giulio Romano" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.

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