Palazzo del Te

Template:Short description Template:Multiple issues Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox Historic building Template:Lang (Template:IPA),<ref name="DOP">Template:DOP</ref> or simply Template:Lang, is a palace in the suburbs of Mantua, Italy. It is an example of the mannerist style of architecture, and the acknowledged masterpiece of Giulio Romano.

Name

The palace is mostly referred to by English-speaking writers, especially art historians, as Template:Lang. In Italian, the name is now commonly shortened to Template:Lang.

It was originally named after Template:Lang, the suburb where it was built.<ref name="DOP"/><ref name="Vasari">Template:Cite book</ref> The toponym is most likely derived from Lombard Template:Lang or Template:Lang, referring to a "linden grove" that once grew in the area, or alternatively from Latin Template:Lang "hut".<ref name="name">Template:Cite web</ref> Art historian Giorgio Vasari spelled the name Template:Lang, based on the now archaic Italian-language name of the letter T.<ref name="Vasari"/>

History

Template:Lang was constructed 1524–34 for Federico II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, as a palace of leisure. The site chosen was that of the family stables which he had built at Template:Lang, on the edge of the marshes just outside Mantua's city walls, as early as in 1502.<ref name="name"/>

Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, was commissioned to design the building. The shell of the palazzo, erected within eighteen months, is basically a square house containing a cloistered courtyard. A formal garden complemented the house, enclosed by colonnaded outbuildings ending in a semicircular colonnade known as the Exedra or Template:Lang.

Once the shell of the building was completed, for ten years a team of plasterers, carvers, and fresco painters laboured until barely a surface in any of the loggias or salons remained undecorated. Under Romano's direction, local decorative painters such as Benedetto Pagni and Rinaldo Mantovano worked extensively on the frescos.

In July 1630, during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31), Mantua and the palace were sacked over three days by an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries. The remaining populace fell victim to one of the worst plagues in history that the invaders had brought with them. The Palazzo was looted from top to bottom and remained an empty shell with nymphs, gods, goddesses, and giants adorning the walls of the empty, echoing rooms.

Description

Like the Villa Farnesina in Rome, the suburban location allowed for a mixing of both palace and villa architecture. The four exterior façades have flat pilasters against rusticated walls, the fenestration indicating that the Template:Lang is the ground floor, with a secondary floor above. The East façade differs from the other three by having Palladian motifs on its pilaster and an open loggia at its centre rather than an arch to the courtyard. The facades are not so symmetrical as they appear and the spans between the columns are irregular. The centers of the North and South facades are pierced by two-storey arches without portico or pediment, simply a covered way leading to the interior courtyard.

Few windows overlook the inner courtyard ("Template:Lang"); the colonnaded walls are decorated on all sides by deep niches and blind windows, and the intervening surfaces are spattered by Template:Lang (broken and blemished plaster) giving life and depth to the surfaces.

The frescoes are the most remarkable feature of the Palazzo. The subjects range from Olympian banquets in the Template:Lang ("Hall of Psyche") and stylised horses in the Template:Lang ("Hall of the Horses") to the most unusual of all — giants and grotesques wreaking havoc, fury, and ruin around the walls of the Template:Lang ("Hall of the Giants"). These magnificent rooms, once furnished to complement the ducal court of the Gonzaga family, saw many of the most illustrious figures of their era entertained, such as the Emperor Charles V, who, when visiting in 1530, elevated his host Federico II of Gonzaga from Marquess to Duke of Mantua.

One of the most evocative parts of the lost era of the palazzo is the Template:Lang ("Lodge of the Grotto"), a small suite of intimate rooms arranged around a grotto and Template:Lang (covered balcony) where courtiers once bathed in the small cascade that splashed over the pebbles and shells encrusted in the floor and walls.

Part of the Palazzo today houses the Template:Lang (Civic Museum of Palazzo del Te), endowed by the publisher Arnoldo Mondadori. It contains a collection of Mesopotamian art.Template:Clear