Art: Between The Sistine, And Disney

Sistine, And Disney, The licentious genius of Mantua's Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano was so well known in his time that he is the only painter mentioned in any of Shakespeare's plays. Famous, and rather vulgar. If Raphael was the epitome of grace among artists of the High Renaissance and Michelangelo the paragon of sublimity, then Giulio was all licentious facility. So ran the judgment of our Victorian forebears, who could not quite forgive Raphael's best pupil for his indelicacy. An air of brilliant second- rateness still clings to his name. Those who can thrust their way through the crowds in Palazzo Te in Mantua and manage a long look at the...

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