 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Ajax defending the Body of Patroclus 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Aeneas rescued by Apollo from Diomedes 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Diomedes in his Chariot 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Diomedes imploring the Assistance of Athena 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Juno, Jupiter, Venus and Ganymede on Olympus 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
"The scenes painted on its ceilings and walls [the Sala di Troia in Mantua's Palazzo Ducale] narrate the Greek victory over the Trojans as it is recounted in The Iliad. The battle itself rages across the ceiling: desperate horses and warriors lie on their backs while victorious heroes, sometimes assisted by partisan gods, stand over them. The scene is painted as a continuum interrupted only by trees painted to conceal the angular corners of the room. The paintings on the walls narrate individual stories from the war, and they are isolated in giant fictive frames. These scenes, painted by Giulio's students, include The Construction of the Trojan Horse, Laocoön and His Sons Attacked by Serpents, Hecuba's Dream, and The Death of Ajax. The iconography of the painted decoration in the Sala di Troia was worked out by Bernardino Lampridio, a humanist especially well-versed in Greek studies who was visiting Mantua from Padua in 1536. After painstaking comparisons between images and texts, Bette Talvacchia has brilliantly identified the exact edition of commentaries on Homer that, along with less well-known texts like Hyginus's Fabulae, the erudite Lampridio used to illustrate the Trojan War. The room was originally decorated all the way down to the floor pavement with military trophies and faux marble, and as a whole it alludes to the military virtues of Federico Gonzaga. The pro-Greek formulation of the iconography was perhaps intended as homage to his wife, Margherita Paleologo, who descended from the last dynasty to rule the Byzantine Empire before it collapsed in 1453. A letter of May 1538 vividly describes the frantic pace of work on Federico's apartments and on the Sala di Troia in particular. It also touches on Giulio's own frenetic activity since he "had so much to do . . . in drawing and overseeing so many men whose livelihood depended on him that he had no time to urge them on except to look in on them once a day."
– from The Art of Mantua: Power and Patronage in the Renaissance by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, translated by A. Lawrence Jenkens (Getty, 2008)
The three assistants responsible for the actual painting of the scenes in the Sala di Troia after Giulio Romano's designs have been identified in other sources as Fermo Ghisoni, or Guisoni (1505-1575), Luca Scaletti, also called Luca da Faenza (fl. 1530-38), and Rinaldo Mantovano (fl. 1527-1539).
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Vulcan forging the Armour of Achilles 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Thetis arming Achilles 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Hecuba's Dream 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop The Death of Ajax (incinerated by Athena) 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop The Construction of the Trojan Horse 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop Laocoön and his Sons attacked by Serpents 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop The Judgment of Paris 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop The Abduction of Helen 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
 |
| Giulio Romano and workshop The Abduction of Helen (detail of Boat) 1536-40 fresco Sala di Troia Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |