Alegoria da imortalidade

Giulio Romano had been running the building and decoration of the Gonzaga court in Mantua since 1524, the year he left Rome and Raphael's workshop for a steady salary from a prince. This painting dates from about 1540, near the end of that long service. It is assembled out of signs a court audience was expected to unpick: a phoenix in the flames for rebirth, a snake with its tail in its mouth for time without end, a sphinx holding the chains of fate, a golden sphere for the world. Working such pictures out was a game played among educated courtiers, and the answers were not written down, which is why what the whole arrangement adds up to is still argued over. The museum in Detroit bought it in 1966 and titles it simply an allegory of immortality.