Fall of the Giants

In 1530 the emperor Charles V came to Mantua and made his host Federico Gonzaga a duke. He came back in 1532, and this is the room he was shown. Giulio Romano, trained in Raphael's workshop in Rome and brought north to build and decorate the Palazzo Te, painted it with no corners and no frames, so the thunderbolts of the gods bring a mountain down on the giants all round the visitor and right to the floor. The giants had attacked heaven. Most of the actual brushwork was done between about 1532 and 1534 by Rinaldo Mantovano, a local painter working to Giulio's designs. Vasari, who stood in the room, wrote that a fire in the fireplace made the painted city look as if it were burning.