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| Roman Empire Dancing Maenad and Satyr 2nd century AD marble relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Amazonomachy AD 150-200 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Amazonomachy (detail) AD 150-200 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Sack of Troy AD 150 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Sack of Troy (detail) AD 150 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Sack of Troy (detail) AD 150 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Sack of Troy (detail) AD 150 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Sack of Troy (detail) AD 150 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
"When Giulio [Romano] came to Mantua from Rome [in 1524] he brought his collection of ancient statuary and promptly offered several pieces to Federico [Gonzaga]. The marquis returned this most polite gesture, giving the artist a few of his own classical statues. . . . Federico revealed himself as an impassioned and unscrupulous collector [of antique sculpture]. During the Sack of Rome in 1527, the marquis wrote to the mercenary captain Fabrizio Maramaldo, with some sense of irony, that his Villa di Marmirolo and Palazzo Te "want to decorate themselves with ancient things, either heads or legs or busts or whole statues, whether in metal or in marble, and because they know that Rome is falling prey to you, they would like through your generosity those things which neither you nor your soldiers value." Ten years later it seems that Federico had so fully achieved this goal that the sculptor Alfonso Lombardi noted, in May 1536, that the duke had "half a small Rome of antiquities in Mantua."
– from The Art of Mantua: Power and Patronage in the Renaissance by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, translated by A. Lawrence Jenkens (Getty, 2008)
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| Roman Empire Story of Medea AD 150-200 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Story of Medea (detail) AD 150-200 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Story of Medea (detail) AD 150-200 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Venus and Adonis AD 190 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Venus and Adonis (detail) AD 190 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |
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| Roman Empire Venus and Adonis (detail) AD 190 marble sarcophagus relief Palazzo Ducale, Mantua |