Mantua, Ducal Palace, Gallery of the Months:
the First Southern Span

The span is part of the original Giulio Romano’s loggia (1538-1539), but has undergone substantial additions following the transformation of the room into a gallery, as evidenced by the relief by Andreasi (ca. 1567). Large windows occupied the entire internal space of the arch, which was then partly filled in to create smaller windows; therefore, the painted lunette with a circular niche and the decorative apparatus that frames the window belong to the decorative phase of the late sixteenth - early seventeenth century (ca. 1595-1612). The Andreasi relief also highlights that close to the right pilaster, on a small shelf, there was a bust of a Roman emperor (Lucius Elius Verus, which then was moved to England in 1627 and was finally lost). Here there is a circular niche in golden stucco designed as a background for a bust (today it houses a recently placed plaster head). It is flanked by two winged female figures with attributes (palm branch and fasces); on the outside, the segments between the arch and the pilasters house two stucco high reliefs depicting a cupid playing a horn (March) and a winged young man with a bouquet of flowers and a vegetal crown (April). The splay of the window has a fake marble decoration, varied at the two lower ends by the insertion of two monochrome figurines on a dark background. In the splay we can perhaps recognise two female divinities; in the four external panels there are two figures seated in the act of eating a fruit or similar, a Fortuna and a female figure riding a dolphin.