Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The Palazzo del Capitano and Magna Domus form the core of the Palazzo Ducale , an enormous complex that was once the largest palace in Europe (Tues-Sun 8.45am-7.15pm; June-Sept Sat until 11pm; L12,000/¬6.20). At its height it covered 34,000 square metres, had a population of over a thousand, and when it was sacked by the Habsburgs in 1630 eighty carriages were needed to carry the two thousand works of art contained in its five hundred rooms. Only a proportion of these rooms are open to visitors, and to see them you have to take a guided tour that takes you through to the Sala dei Specchi and then allows you to wander freely through the grounds and the Castello di San Giorgio. The tours are conducted in Italian only and are evenhandedly indiscriminate; save your energy for the rooms that deserve it. At the time of Luigi’s coup of 1328, the Gonzagas were a family of wealthy local peasants, living outside the city on vast estates with an army of retainers. On seizing power Luigi immediately nominated himself Captain of the People - an event pictured in one of the first paintings you’ll see on your tour - and the role quickly became a hereditary one, eventually growing in grandeur to that of marquis. During this time the Gonzagas did their best to make Mantua into a city which was a suitable reflection of their increasing influence, commissioning sought-after Renaissance artists like Mantegna to depict them in their finery. Lodovico II’s grandson, Francesco II, further swelled the Gonzagan coffers by hiring himself out as a mercenary for various other Italian city-states - money his wife, Isabella d’Este, spent amassing a prestigious collection of paintings, sculpture and objets d’art. Under Isabella’s son, Federico II, Gonzaga fortunes reached their height; his marriage to the heiress of the duchy of Monferrato procured a ducal title for the family, while he continued the policy of self-glorification by commissioning an out-of-town villa for himself and his mistress. Federico’s descendants were for the most part less colourful characters, one notable exception being Vincenzo I, whose debauchery and corruption provided the inspiration for Verdi’s licentious duke in Rigoletto . After Vincenzo’s death, the now bankrupt court was forced to sell many of the family treasures to England’s King Charles I (many of the works are still in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum) just three years before it was sacked by the Habsburgs.

The first rooms of the palace are the least impressive. There is a thirteenth-century sculpture of a seated Virgil, a painting from 1494 by Domenico Morone showing the Expulsion of the Bonatosi from the square outside, and, perhaps most interestingly, the fragments of a half-finished fresco by Pisanello, discovered in 1969 behind two layers of plaster and thought to depict either an episode from an Arthurian romance or the (idealized) military exploits of the first marquis, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. Whatever its subject, it’s a powerful piece of work, charged with energy, in which faces, costumes and landscape are minutely observed.

Further on, through the Sala dello Zodiaco, whose late sixteenth-century ceiling is spangled with stars and constellations, is the Salone dei Fiume (”Room of the Rivers”), in which Baroque trompe l’oeil goes over the top to create a mock garden complete with painted creepers and two ghastly fountains surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites. The Sala dei Specchi (”Hall of the Mirrors”) has a notice outside signed by Monteverdi, who worked as court musician to Vincenzo I and gave frequent concerts of new works - notably the world’s first modern opera, L’Orfeo , written in 1607. Vincenzo also employed Rubens, whose Adoration of the Magi in the Salone degli Arcieri , next door, shows the Gonzaga family of 1604, including Vincenzo with his handlebar moustache. The picture was originally part of a triptych, but Emperor troops carried off two-thirds of it after briefly occupying the town in 1797 and chopped the remaining third into saleable chunks of portraiture. Although most have been traced, and some returned to the palazzo, there are still a few gaps. Around the room is a curious frieze of horses, glimpsed behind curtains.

The Castello di San Giorgio contains the palace’s principal treasure, however: Mantegna’s frescoes of the Gonzaga family - among the painter’s most famous works, splendidly restored in the so-called Camera degli Sposi and depicting the Marquis Lodovico and his wife Barbara with their family. They’re naturalistic pieces of work, giving a vivid impression of real people, of the relationships between them and of the tensions surrounding something that is happening, or about to happen. In the main one Lodovico discusses a letter with a courtier while his wife looks on; their youngest daughter leans on her mother’s lap, about to bite into an apple, while an older son and daughter (possibly Barbarina) look towards the door, where an ambassador from another court is being welcomed - lending some credence to the theory that negotiations are about to take place for Barbarina’s marriage. The other fresco, The Meeting , takes place out of doors against a landscape of weird rock formations and an imaginary city with the Gonzagan arms above the gate. Divided into three sections by imitation pilasters, it shows Gonzagan retainers with dogs and a horse in attending on Lodovico, who is welcoming his son Francesco back from Rome, where he had just become the first Gonzaga to be prefabricated a cardinal. In the background are the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III and the King of Denmark - a selection which apparently annoyed the Duke of Milan, who was incensed that the “two most wretched men in the world” had been included while he had been omitted. Lodovico’s excuse was that he would have included the duke had he not objected so strongly to Mantegna’s uncompromising portrait style. If you have time before the guide sweeps you out, have a look at the ceiling, another nice piece of trompe l’oeil, in which two women, peering down from a balustrade, have balanced a tub of plants on a pole and appear to be on the verge of letting it tumble into the room - an illusionism that was to be crucial in the development of the Gonzaga’s next resident artist of any note, Giulio Romano, whose Palazzo Te should not be missed.

Finally, the private apartments of Isabella d’Este , on the ground floor, are sometimes on view. Though they once housed works by Michelangelo, Mantegna and Perugino, only the unmoveable decorations remain - inlaid cupboards and intricately carved ceilings and doors. A ruthless employer, Isabella would threaten her artists and craftsmen with the dungeon if she thought they were working too slowly, and had no compunction about bullying Mantegna on his death-bed to give her a piece of sculpture she particularly coveted. She was more deferential to Leonardo da Vinci, however, who did two drawings of her but ignored her suggestion that one be converted into a portrait of Christ. Isabella also collected dwarfs, whose job it was to cheer her up while her husband was away fighting. For centuries it was assumed that the suite of miniature rooms beyond Isabella’s apartments was built for the dwarfs; in fact it’s a scaled-down version of the St John Lateran basilica in Rome, built for Vincenzo.

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