Façade and courtyard view

After the resolved Classical order and measured harmony of Bramante’s High Renaissance buildings, two main, though interwoven, directions of Mannerist development become apparent. One of these, emanating largely from Peruzzi, relied upon a detailed study of antique decorative motifs - grotesques, Classical gems, coins, and the like - which were used in a pictorial fashion to decorate the plane of the facade. This tendency was crystallized in Raphael’s Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila (destroyed) at Rome, where the regular logic of a Bramante fa�ade was abandoned in favour of complex, out-of-step rhythms and encrusted surface decorations of medallions and swags.

The second trend exploited the calculated breaking of rules, the taking of sophisticated liberties with Classical architectural vocabulary. Two very different buildings of the 1520s were responsible for initiating this taste, Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence and the Palazzo del T� by Giulio Romano in Mantua.

Giulio Romano was Raphael’s chief assistant from 1515 to his death in 1520. He is no less important as an architect and the two professions are spectacularly united in the Palazzo del T�, which he built and decorated for the Gonzaga in Mantua. The architecture, at once intensely witty and intensely serious, is based on a profound knowledge of antique precedent and High Renaissance practice.

View the ground plan of Palazzo del T�, Mantua.