Mantua, Ducal Palace, Gallery of the Months:
the Third Northern Span

This third span is the last of the original Giulio Romano's loggia. In the centre of the span there is a niche with a background painted with fake marble and a shell-shaped basin, containing an ancient sculpture recently placed here. The female torso rests on a high pedestal, decorated on the front with a relief depicting a sacrifice scene with four figures. The stucco cornice located approximately two-thirds of the height of the span divides the field into two sectors. In the upper part there is the arch that frames the basin of the niche and which is flanked by two winged stucco figures in high relief: on the left a young man among vine branches (September), on the right an old man on a fruit tree, perhaps an apple tree (October). The top of the arch is decorated with a stucco relief roundel depicting Victory writing on a shield, resting on the trunk of a palm tree to which a prisoner is tied; the two small lunettes at the ends host reliefs that reiterate the theme of military victory, as they depict prisons among trophies of arms. The interior of the arch is decorated with grotesques on a white background. In the lower part of the span, and precisely in the upper left lunette, a pair of putti can be seen carrying a probable sword sheath; in the upper right lunette a second pair of putti carries a helmet; the two lower lunettes host a (female?) figure with a semi-reclining cupid. At the base of the niche there are three panels with golden stucco frames bordered by small festoons and vegetal spirals: the two lateral ones host the images of two swans, the central one a small rodent. The imitation marble plinth reproduces the decoration of the pedestal of the nearby pilaster. The relief of the north wall of the Giulio Romano’s loggia created by Andreasi (ca. 1567) testifies that in the niche of this span there was a "Venus pudica" which had previously belonged to Giulio Romano and was later lost.