Detail View: ADJUNCT MODULE D: WORLD ART: Palazzo del Te; Chamber of the Giants

Collection: 
ADJUNCT MODULE D: WORLD ART
Preferred Title: 
Palazzo del Te; Chamber of the Giants
Alternate Title: 
Palazzo Te; Camera dei Giganti
Image View: 
Center of ceiling with false dome and foreshortening; the Olympian gods among the clouds
Creator: 
Giulio Romano (Italian painter, 1499-1546)
Location: 
site: Palazzo del Te (Mantua, Lombardy, Italy)
Location Note: 
Viale Te, 13
GPS: 
+45.14737+10.78728
Date: 
1532-1535 (creation)
Cultural Context: 
Italian
Style Period: 
Mannerist (Renaissance-Baroque style); Sixteenth century
Work Type 1: 
fresco (painting)
Classification: 
Paintings
Material: 
pigment on plaster (fresco)
Technique: 
fresco painting (technique)
Subjects: 
allegory; decorative arts; literary or legendary; mythology (Classical); Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D.; false perspective; trompe l'oeill; foreshortening
Description: 
The room tells the story of the Fall of the Giants, taken from The Metamorphoses by the Latin poet Ovid. The huge and tumultuous images are part of the bold conception of a painting that denies the limits of architectural environment in such a way that the painting has no other spatial constraints but those generated by the pictorial illusion. Giulio Romano in fact conceals the cuts between the horizontal and vertical levels by smoothing the corners between walls, those between the walls and the ceiling and creating a floor, now lost, made up of a mosaic of painted river pebbles, at the bottom of the walls. The scene has the Olympian gods swirling down on the hapless Giants from above; Zeus destroys the Giants with thunderbolts. (Source: Palazzo Te [website]; http://www.palazzote.it)
Collection: 
Archivision Adjunct Module D: World Art
Identifier: 
1A1-RG-PT-I-SG-E07
Rights: 
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.