In
addition to what is included in the previous
route, this itinerary takes the visitor to the
Caste. From the Moors’ Corridor you step
down in
the Santa Barbara Corridor, facing the palatine
church built by Giovan Battista Bertani
(1562-1572). At the far end of the corridor,
turning left and descending the so-called Enea
Stairway, you enter the San Giorgio Castle, where,
in the North-East tower of the first floor, is the
famous Brides’ Room (Camera Picta) where Andrea
Mantegna, between 1465 and 1474, painted “the
most beautiful chamber of the world”. As acting on a stage, the Gonzaga family is
represented on the two main walls, and the trompe
l’oeil illusion continues up to the centre of
the vault, depicting a sort of well from which
women and children lean.
Descending
back to the ground floor of the Castle, through
the Enea Stairway we get to the New Court Apartment;
the largest possible visit itinerary includes also this
part of the Palace, which begins with the Manto
Room, entrance of the Large Castle Apartment
created by Guglielmo Gonzaga. In this large room
are paintings representing the mythical birth of
the city, attributed to Lorenzo Costa the Young;
from a door in the opposite corner the visitor may
enter the Troy Apartment, built and decorated by
Giulio Romano and his workshop for duke Federico
II between 1536 and 1539.
The
most important rooms of this apartment are the
Caesars’ Room, where once were 11 canvases
painted by Titian (antique copies are now exposed)
, and the Troy Room, frescoed with subjects taken
from the Iliad, an allegory of Federico II’s
power and of his alliance with Charles V. From the
Marbles’ Gallery, once an open lodge facing the
Exhibition Lawn and the Rustica palace, the
visitor reaches the Exhibition Gallery, where at
duke Vincenzo’s time were exposed the most
important art works of the Gonzaga collections. In
the gallery, created by the architect Francesco
Dattari and accomplished by Anton Maria Viani,
were also Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar (now at
Hampton Court) and Federico II’s portrait by
Titian (Madrid, Prado). After Vincenzo II sold
the most part of the collections, and a tremendous looting
by Imperial troops
(1630), the Palace remained almost empty for many
years, till Charles II refilled the paintings
gallery with purchases directed by the artist
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, known as the
Grechetto. The Metamorphoses Gallery is made of
four different rooms, with vaults decorated with
stuccoes by Anton Maria Viani and representations
of Ovidio’s Metamorphoses. The gallery faces a
vast Garden and the itinerary, passing close to
the Santa Barbara palatine church, ends up in the
Moor’s Corridor, thus rejoining the first route.
