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

This span is part of the original Giulio Romano’s loggia (1538-1539), but it has undergone substantial additions following the transformation of the loggia into a gallery. As evidenced by theAndreasi's relief (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 apparatus that frames the window (fake marble slant and sides with vegetal spirals and monochrome figurines at the ends, with fake marble plinth) belong to the decorative phase of the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century (1595 -1612 ca.). The Andreasi relief also highlights that close to the two pilasters, on small brackets, rested the busts of the emperors Lucius Elius Verus (left) and Lucius Verus Commodus (then passed to England in 1627 and disappeared). As in the lunettes above the doors on the opposite wall, 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 Victories with attributes; on the outside, the segments between the arch and the pilasters house two high reliefs in stucco depicting winged youths, the first with a saddlebag (May), the second with ears of wheat (June). 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 recognize a Charity and a probable Abundance, in the four external panels two seated cherubs with weapons, a merman and a two-tailed mermaid.