CAMERA PICTA

The Camera Picta in Castello San Giorgio, Mantova, was described in 1475, when Mantegna had just finished painting it, as ‘the most beautiful room in the world.’ 536 years later, it still is, despite damage and losses over time. The 8-meter square, 7-meter high space was decorated to suit its form, with the existing, off-centre doors, fireplace and window worked around. The only window, above, must have had a real curtain continuing the painted one; in the court scene, below, the chairs of Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga and his wife Barbara Brandenburg, and their sons, courtiers, favourite dog Rubino and one of their dwarves, all stand on a carpeted floor just above the real, carved and gilded, chimneypiece; while the beautiful cherubs holding the inscribed bronze plaque stand on the real doorframe. The ideal architecture is all painted, making an open, vaulted pavilion with gilded stucco ceiling and columns, on one of which the artist’s face appears, above right.

These two pictures, above left, show the vaulted ceiling of trompe l’oeil gold mosaic, its eight roundels of Caesars held up by putti. In the open arches hang swags of fruit and flowers; in the side ones, bronze oscilli hang, as they did in Roman gardens, each modelled with one of the Gonzaga emblems. Recent restoration has made the sky very blue below the curtain-rail but left it blackened above, which ruins the open and light effect; I have cheekily corrected this in these pictures. The curtains, which are pulled back on these two walls, are drawn on the others, against which the Marchese’s bed – this was a kind of state bedroom, in which he slept and received guests – must have stood. The central oculus, open to the sky, has playful putti, one about to drop an apple on us, and a precariously balanced lemon bush in its pot: visual fun, light comic relief from the seriousness of the many classical allusions. Below, details of the ideal city with the Gonzaga arms over its gate, and the slightly over-restored cherubs, with butterfly wings, holding the plaque, on which Mantegna dedicated to his patrons ‘this slight work’ of ten years’ making, near his portrait on the faux stucco pilaster.