620 Chapter 22 ITALY,1500 TO 160022-53Giulio Romano,interior courtyard facade of the Palazzo del Tè, Mantua, Italy, 1525–1535.
The Mannerist divergences from architectural convention, for example, the slipping triglyphs, are so pronounced in the Palazzo del Tè that they
constitute a parody of Bramante’s classical style.Architecture
Mannerist architects used classical architectural elements in a highly
personal and unorthodox manner, rejecting the balance, order, and
stability that were the hallmarks of the High Renaissance style with the
specific aim of revealing the contrived nature of architectural design.
GIULIO ROMANOApplying that anticlassical principle was
the goal ofGiulio Romano(ca. 1499–1546) when he designed the
Palazzo del Tè (FIG. 22-53) in Mantua and, with it, formulated
almost the entire architectural vocabulary of Mannerism. Giulio
became Raphael’s chief assistant in decorating the Vatican stanze.
After Raphael’s premature death in 1520, Giulio served as his master’s
artistic executor, completing Raphael’s unfinished frescoes and panel
paintings. In 1524, he went to Mantua, where he found a patron in
Duke Federigo Gonzaga (r. 1530–1540), for whom Giulio built and
decorated the Palazzo del Tè between 1525 and 1535. Gonzaga in-
tended the Palazzo del Tè to serve as both suburban summer palace
and stud farm for the duke’s famous stables. Originally planned as a
relatively modest country villa, Giulio’s building so pleased his patron
that Gonzaga soon commissioned the architect to enlarge the struc-
ture. In a second building campaign, Giulio expanded the villa to a
palatial scale by adding three wings, which he placed around a square
central court. This once-paved court, which functions both as a pas-
sage and as the focal point of the design, has a nearly urban character.
Its surrounding buildings form a self-enclosed unit with a large gar-
den, flanked by a stable, attached to it on the east side.
Giulio exhibited his Mannerist style in the facades that face the
palace’s interior courtyard (FIG. 22-53), where the divergences from
architectural convention are quite pronounced. Indeed, they consti-tute an enormous parody of Bramante’s classical style, thereby an-
nouncing the artifice of the palace design. In a building laden with
structural surprises and contradictions, the design of these facades is
the most unconventional of all. The keystones(central voussoirs), for
example, either have not fully settled or seem to be slipping from
the arches—and, more eccentric still, Giulio even placed voussoirs in
the pediments over the rectangular niches, where no arches exist.
The massive Tuscan columns that flank these niches carry incongru-
ously narrow architraves.That these architraves break midway be-
tween the columns stresses their apparent structural insufficiency,
and they seem unable to support the weight of the triglyphsof the
Doric friezeabove (see “Doric and Ionic Orders,” Chapter 5, page
110, or page xxviii in Volume II), which threaten to crash down on
the head of anyone foolish enough to stand below them. To be sure,
appreciating Giulio’s witticism requires a highly sophisticated audi-
ence, and recognizing some quite subtle departures from the norm
presupposes a thorough familiarity with the established rules of
classical architecture. It speaks well for the duke’s sophistication that
he accepted Giulio’s form of architectural inventiveness.LAURENTIAN LIBRARYAlthough he personifies the High
Renaissance artist, Michelangelo, like Giulio Romano, also experi-
mented with architectural designs that flouted most of the classical
rules of order and stability. Michelangelo’s restless genius is on dis-
play in the vestibule (FIG. 22-54) he designed for the Medici library
adjoining the Florentine church of San Lorenzo. The Laurentian Li-
brary had two contrasting spaces that Michelangelo had to unite: the
long horizontal of the library proper and the vertical of the vesti-
bule. The need to place the vestibule windows up high (at the level of22-53AGIULIO
ROMANO, Fall
of the Giants,
1530–1532.