With Giulio Romano. The force of things , Palazzo Te reveals the prodigious talent as a designer of the artist who contributed so much to create the image of the Gonzagas , bringing back to the rooms of "his" Palazzo the extraordinary objects conceived to contribute to the creation of the "lifestyle" of the court of the lords of Renaissance Mantua. Last event of the 2022 exhibition season Mantua: the Art of Living , the exhibition is curated by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini and will be open from 8 October 2022 to 8 January 2023 .

The genius of Giulio Romano also in the realization of objects was well known since the past, so much so that Giorgio Vasari mentioned twice in his Lives the spectacular sideboard in the Hall of Cupid and Psyche in Palazzo Te, which he had the opportunity to see in 1541. The exhibition project by Giulio Romano takes its cue from this same belief. The power of things to celebrate Giulio Romano 's creative energy as a designer of high-end objects, capable of animating the court space. Made of precious materials and decorated with forms in which classical motifs, Gonzaga feats and natural elements were integrated, weapons, vases, jugs, plates, and even salt shakers and knives were an expression of the refined taste of the Mantuan court and contributed in a decisive way to shape a image of absolute splendor in competition with the great European courts. In this sense, Giulio Romano's inexhaustible imagination played a decisive role in transforming Mantua into an outpost of sixteenth-century design.

Aware of the prestige deriving from this production, the Gonzagas were very careful in protecting what today we would call the copyright of Julian creations, coming to exercise almost exclusive control over his ideas. After the artist's death (and especially after the sale by his son Raffaello of his father's collection of drawings to Jacopo Strada, a Mantuan goldsmith who became an imperial antiquarian), the circulation of Julian's projects intensified, reaching a European scale: the echo of his imaginative solutions can in fact be felt in luxury objects produced at the court of Spain, Fontainebleau and Prague in the second half of the sixteenth century.