Любовная сцена

Giulio Romano painted this small, frank scene of two lovers around 1525, most likely for Federico Gonzaga, the young Duke of Mantua, who kept a taste for pictures meant for private rooms rather than public walls. Romano had trained under Raphael in Rome and then built the duke a pleasure palace, and work like this was part of the same world of courtly, half-secret desire. A nude couple embraces on a great bed carved with mythological figures, while an older woman peers in from the edge, a witness who tips the mood toward something watched and not quite innocent. For most of its life the panel stayed out of sight, thought too indecent to hang. By the time it reached the Hermitage and was finally shown in the 1920s, centuries of poor storage had left their marks all over it.