Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano | |
---|---|
Born | Giulio Pippi c. 1499 |
Died | 1 November 1546 | (aged 46–47)
Nationality | Italian |
Known for | painting, fresco, architecture |
Giulio Pippi (c. 1499 – 1 November 1546), known as Giulio Romano (
Biography
Giulio Pippi was born in
On Raphael's death, Michelangelo attempted to take over completion of the commission for the Raphael Rooms at the Vatican, but along with Perino del Vaga, Giulio was able to keep it, as they had the drawings for much of the uncompleted work that was being executed under the supervision of Raphael.
From 1522 he was courted by
His masterpiece of architecture and fresco painting in Mantua is the suburban
In Renaissance tradition, many works by Giulio were only temporary. According to Vasari:
When
Charles V came to Mantua, Romano, by the duke's order, made many fine arches, scenes for comedies and other things, in which he had no peer, no one being like him for masquerades, and making curious costumes for jousts, feasts, tournaments, which excited great wonder in the emperor and in all present. For the city of Mantua at various times he designed temples, chapels, houses, gardens, facades, and was so fond of decorating them that, by his industry, he rendered dry, healthy and pleasant places previously miry, full of stagnant water, and almost uninhabitable.[5]
He traveled to France in the first half of the sixteenth century and brought concepts of the Italian style to the French court of Francis I.
Giulio designed tapestries as well. It also is rumored that he contributed to a collection of drawings upon which an album entitled, I Modi, was engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi. All of those original drawings are said to have been destroyed because the content was no longer considered socially acceptable.
Giulio Romano has the distinction of being the only Renaissance artist to be mentioned by William Shakespeare. In Act V, Scene II of The Winter's Tale, the statue of Queen Hermione that was described as coming to life during the play was identified by the bard as having been sculpted by "that rare Italian master, Julio Romano".
He died in Mantua in 1546.
Architecture
On the whole, Giulio Romano was more influential as an architect than as a painter and his works had an enormous impact on Italian Mannerist architecture. He learned architecture the same way he learned painting, as an increasingly trusted assistant to Raphael, who was appointed the papal architect in 1514 and his early works are very much in Raphael's style. The project for the Villa Madama outside Rome, built by the future Medici Pope Clement VII was given to Giulio on Raphael's death. It already shows his taste for playful surprises within the style of Renaissance classical architecture. Planned on a huge scale, it was incomplete by the Sack of Rome, and never finished.[7]
The
His last building in Rome, the Palazzo Maccarani Stati (started 1522–23), was a considerable contrast, being a palazzo in the city centre, with shops on the ground floor, and a massive, imposing feel. The rustication and exaggerated size of keystones that were to be so prominent in his later buildings in Mantua, are already present on the ground floor, which dispenses with any classical order, but the two upper floors have increasingly shallow orders in pilasters, somewhat in the manner of the Villa Lante.[9]
His first building in Mantua has remained his most famous work in architecture. The Palazzo del Te was a pleasure palace outside the city that was begun around 1524 and completed a decade later. Here Giulio was able, because of the function of the building, to indulge to the full his playful inventiveness.
Selected paintings and drawings
- Deesis with Saint Paul and Saint Catherine - Parma
- The Stoning of St. Stephen (Santo Stefano, Genoa): "Giulio never did a finer work than this," said Vasari. Domenico del Barbiere engraved the subject, so that it influenced designers who never saw the original in Genoa.
- Adoration of the Magi (Louvre)
- Fire in the Borgo, fresco (Raphael Rooms in Vatican City)
- Emblematic Figures, pen and brown ink and wash over graphite (Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco)
- Portrait of a Young Woman, after a design by Raphael, and later modified by Raphael (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
- The Battle of the Milvian Bridge
- The Triumph of Titus and Vespasian
- Portrait of Doña Isabel de Requesens y Enriquez de Cardona-Anglesola
- National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples, 1522–23)
- Noli me tangere, Prado Museum, Madrid[10]
- Adoration of the Shepherds in collaboration with Giovanni Francesco Penni, Prado Museum, Madrid [11]
-
Madonna & Child, c. 1523
-
Margherita Paleologo (1510–66)
-
Donna alla toeletta, 1520
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Adoration of the Shepherds
-
Portrait of Doña Isabel de Requesens (with the possible intervention of Raphael)
-
St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness
Notes
- ^ The French version of his name is sometimes incorrectly left untranslated into English documents.
References
- ^ "Giulio Romano". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
- ISBN 9780191605482.
- ^ Tomba di Baldassare Castiglione, Cultura Italia, Un Patrimonio Da Esplorare.
- ^
In his first edition of The Lives of the Artists, published in 1550, Giorgio Vasari includes an epithet mentioning Giulio as a sculptor (“Videbat Jupiter corpora sculpta pictaque spirare”—“Jupiter saw sculpted and painted bodies breathe”); see http://bepi1949.altervista.org/vasari/vasari141.htm; see also, Karl Elze, Essays on Shakespeare, pp. 287-289 (1873)(https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=r54NAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA287).
- ^
Vasari, Vite
- ^ Buss, Robert William. The Almanack of the Fine Arts. George Rowney and Company. p. 103.
- ^ Talvacchia
- ^ Talvacchia
- ^ Talvacchia
- ^ "Noli me tangere - Colección". Museo Nacional del Prado. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
- ^ "Adoración de los pastores - Colección". Museo Nacional del Prado. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
Bibliography
- Talvacchia, Bette, "Giulio Romano." Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed March 30, 2016, subscription required
External links
Media related to Giulio Romano at Wikimedia Commons
- Vita[1] by Giorgio Vasari, who describes his meeting with Giulio:
- "At this time Giorgio Vasari a great friend of Giulio, though they only knew each other by report and by letters, passed through Mantua on his way to Venice to see him and his works. On meeting, they recognised each other as though they had met a thousand times before. Giulio was so delighted that he spent four days in showing Vasari all his works, especially the plans of ancient buildings at Rome, Naples, Pozzuolo, Campagna, and all the other principal antiquities designed partly by him and partly by others. Then, opening a great cupboard, he showed him plans of all the buildings erected from his designs in Mantua, Rome and all Lombardy, so beautiful that I do not believe that more original, fanciful or convenient buildings exist."
- The engravings of Giorgio Ghisi, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Giulio Romano (see index)
- Rossetti, William Michael (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). pp. 52–54.