GIULIO ROMANO
(b. ca. 1499, Roma, d. 1546, Mantova)

View of the Sala di Troia

1538-39
Fresco
Sala di Troia, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Giulio Romano violates the accepted rules of perspective in his ceiling fresco for the Sala di Troia in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua: it lies well above the viewers' eye level, but nonetheless presents them with a view of the terrain on which the action takes place. It is a concept that would surely have been unthinkable even a few years earlier, and it was only taken up again to any significant extent during the Baroque period.