Ducal Palace

General description

Official seat and centre of public and administrative life in the state of Sabbioneta, the Ducal palace or “palazzo grande” dominates the Piazza Ducale.

Building work was carried out between 1560 and 1561 after a serious fire had destroyed the building that was previously on the site.

The palace developed over four levels: lower ground floor, ground floor, the first floor and mezzanine floor, which was used as a residence by the duke Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna.

The lower part of the facade has a bossed portico with five arched openings and is above street level. The high entrance steps are in white marble. A cornice, with five openings on it, separates the upper from the lower section.

The windows are edged with marble and have alternating triangular and arched gables above them. The ducal inscription: “VESP. D. G. DVX SABLON. I” (Vespasiano by the grace of God, first Duke of Sabbioneta) is inscribed on the architraves.

Above the windows, the ledges now hold copies of the five wooden busts kept inside the palace.

During the sixteenth century there were marble busts of Roman emperors in their place.

To the right of the entrance staircase, on the square, at one time there was a marble base on which there was a bronze statue of the duke, a valuable sculpture by Leone Leoni, of Arezzo, now to be found at the centre of the monument marking the death of Vespasiano in the “Chiesa dell’Incoronata”.

Above the parapet of the balcony there were two bronze columns which can now be found in the entrance hall.

The columns supported a small bronze cupola making a small loggia. At the corners, above the scrolled marble coats of arms, two lamps were put up in 1582.

The upper section of the facade was painted in 1584 by Bernardino Campi and Michelangelo Veronese. It is still just possible to make out traces of the original frescoes. The building is dominated by a terrace or “loggia”.

Room of Diana

Heavily decorated with frescoes, like all the rooms in the eastern part of the palace, this room could be considered the most important on this wing of the building.

In the panel in the middle of the pavilion roof there are traces of a painting which shows Venus and Adonis, even if tradition suggests that the subject is Diana and Endymion, hence the name of the room.

The rest of the ceiling decoration is in the grotesque style, a type of decoration that was very fashionable in the sixteenth century.

There are hunting scenes alternating with images of Olympian gods in the lunettes.

All the decoration, including the grotesques, have been attributed to the Mantuan Giulio Rubone, a pupil of Giulio Romano.

Chamber of arrows

This is the entrance hall to the Room of the Duke of Alba or Room of Gold. In the middle of the golden wood ceiling there is the ducal coat of arms surrounded by the collar of the Golden Fleece.

The enamel and gilding are original and very valuable. Beside the Golden Fleece there is the heraldic symbol of the winged lightning bolt.

In the Sixteenth century this small room also held a fireplace on which was placed an antique marble sculpture of Augustus.

Room of the Duke of Alba or Room of Gold

At one time dedicated to Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo Duke of Alba, it now houses an imposing pink marble fireplace from Verona, supported by lions.

The architrave has the ducal inscription “VESP. D. G. DUX. SABLON .I.”, which means “Vespasiano by the grace of God first Duke of Sabbioneta”.

In the alcove above the chimney hood there used to be a bronze bust of the duke of Alba, cast by Leone Leoni of Arezzo.

The gilded wooden ceiling is made up of decorated and carved panels.

The door within the short wall once led to the Room of Horses, the largest space in the palace, destoyed by fire at the beginning of the nineteenth century and where now there is a courtyard in its place.

Here there used to be the ten equestrian statues of the Cavalcade, some of which are now kept in the Room of Eagles on the first floor of the palace.

Room of Eagles

This large room today houses what is left of the Cavalcade, the series of wooden equestrian statues sculpted in 1587 to celebrate, in typical Hapsburg style, the military strengths of the Gonzaga family.

The ten statues that originally made up the Cavalcade were situated in the Room of Horses, a large space at the rear of the palace, damaged beyond repair by a massive fire at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The flames completely destroyed some statues while others were seriously damaged. In the middle of the room, standing proud, there is the statue of the duke Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna wearing armour with his staff of command and the collar of the noble order of the Golden Fleece.

The other characters are father Luigi known as Rodomonte, wearing on his armour the papal insignia (recognisable by the two crossed keys), great grandfather Gian Francesco, first lord of the fiefdom of Sabbioneta and Ludovico, third captain of the people, belonging to the main family line of the Gonzagas of Mantua.

At the back of the room, on high plinths, there are the five busts that were recovered from the statues damaged by the fire.

A frescoed frieze with great eagles carrying festoons of flowers and fruit runs all the way round the walls of the room. Gonzaga family coats of arms hang from the eagles’ necks.

In Napoleonic times the coats of arms were removed and replaced by the capital letters which spell out the phrase “VIVA LA REPVBLICA”.

Emperors’ room

This is the most important space in the palace. The beautiful ceiling is divided up into nine large spaces and was sculpted in 1561 then painted and gilded the following year.

In the four large corner panels there are the same number of painted wooden coats of arms: the Gonzaga-Colonna quartered coat-of-arms characterised by the initials V(espasiano) and G(onzaga) at the sides and the Spanish Aragona family coat-of arms, marked by the initials A(nna) and A(ragona), the family of the prince’s second wife.

In the middle there is one coat-of arms linking them all, which is the Gonzaga-Colonna-Aragona. In the painted frieze, which has a plant theme, there are vases and amphora, interrupted by ledges that, up until 1773, held marble busts of emperors.

In the twelve panels in the spaces between the shelves there were the same number of portraits of roman emperors painted by Bernardino Campi copying famous Titian models, now kept in the Dressing room of Caesars in the Ducal Palace in Mantua.

The eight ancient busts and the twelve paintings are now kept in Mantua, in the Gonzaga palace. At one time the walls were covered in leather panels in Spanish style.

Ancestors’ room

This long room which looks out onto the elegant balcony which overlooks the square and was once part of a closed loggia, used to be known as the “room of the podium”.

It is not known who painted the stuccoes and frescoes that decorate the room, although at one time they were attributed to the painter and sculptor Alberto Cavalli.

What is known for certain is that Vespasiano in 1556 sent his representative Muzio Capilupi to Mantua to obtain portraits of the important members of the Gonzaga family.

Although he was still young, Vespasiano already had a profound sense of admiration for the glory of ancestors. Following the ancient habit of placing portraits of ancestors in the atrium of the domus, Vespasiano had bas-relief portraits of his ancestors placed in this room.

The procession of famous characters begins with Luigi Corradi da Gonzaga (from the window, the first on the long right-hand side wall), who on 16 August 1328 took power in Mantua so beginning the rule of the family over the town, and ends with the portraits of Vespasiano himself (from the window, the first on the left- hand side wall), of his second wife Anna of Aragon and his son Luigi (to the sides of the window, on the small wall), as a child. Above the window there is the phrase in gold capital letters “VESP. GONZ. COL. GENTILIBVS SVIS” (Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna with his ancestors). The ceiling is decorated in grotesque style while an elaborate stucco rope divides it up into different sections. In the middle section there is a painting of Phoebus on his sun-chariot, while the two oval shapes at the edges portray Mercury and Mars. There are six beautiful paintings of Flemish scenes at the base of the ceiling itself.

Elephants’ room

This is a large space opposite the square probably used for the most important civil and legal debates, which has an important frieze showing a curious procession of elephants. In this scene the neck of each of the animals, tied by a chain, is held by a human hand, symbolising reason holding back the forces of nature in order to recreate the order that is guaranteed by justice.

At the centre of the frieze, on the short wall on the side of the square, there is the allegory of Justice, a female figure bearing a sword and scales. In the painted trabeation above the window there is the motto “VI SVPERVM” (by the might of the Gods). At one time on the walls there were portraits of some Venetian doges, the Emperor Carlo V and Isabella Gonzaga Carafa, Vespasiano’s daughter and heir.

Lions’ room

The elaborate wooden ceiling of this room has at its centre two heraldic beasts supporting the ducal coat of arms.

The coat of arms puts the date of the ceiling around 1577. It is the first of a series of four ceilings carved by local carpenters in Lebanese cedar, a precious wood which is difficult to work with but which will remain intact over time because being perfumed it is not easily attacked by wood-eating insects.

The ceilings are richly decorated in the mannerist style and are very similar to the Decorated style used in Spanish gold work.

Room of Seaports

On the long walls there can be seen traces of the two frescoes imitating tapestries, showing views of the city. Only two panels can be seen today with views of Genoa on the left and Constantinople on the right. In 1561 the room was actually part of a corridor, the Gallery of the towns, which was about 24 metres in length and encompassed the next rooms, running along two sides of the internal courtyard. It therefore had the function of a preliminary corridor where

Vespasiano Gonzaga had temporarily arranged for the body of his collection of archaeological pieces to be housed, awaiting the building of the corridor in the castle square. During the 1580’s the Gallery of the towns was partitioned off and new rooms were created with their elaborate cedar ceilings.

Room of octagons

A room which owes its name to the octagonal shape of the lacunae which make up the precious wooden ceiling, it is also attractive because of the beautiful open cone-shaped gables which hang down towards the onlooker.

This room held the Duke’s Great library, a collection of manuscripts and printed volumes, mostly on the subjects of military architecture, geometry and mathematics. Following the death of the Duke the library was transferred to a room in the corner of the convent of the Servants of Maria and remained there up until the suppression of Napoleonic times.

Today the contents of the library have been lost.