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A love that burns: Eroticism, torment and identity at the Palazzo Te
Author(s) -
Maurer Maria F.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
renaissance studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1477-4658
pISSN - 0269-1213
DOI - 10.1111/rest.12151
Subject(s) - eroticism , subjectivity , identity (music) , pleasure , art , scholarship , literature , masculinity , novella , construct (python library) , human sexuality , aesthetics , philosophy , sociology , gender studies , psychology , law , epistemology , neuroscience , political science , computer science , programming language
This essay re‐examines Giulio Romano's Palazzo Te (1525–36) in light of Renaissance attitudes towards eroticism and love. Contrary to a body of scholarship that interprets the building as a hedonistic pleasure palace intended to serve as a meeting place for Federico II Gonzaga and his mistress, I argue that Federico used the Palazzo Te to construct a masculine identity based on Petrarchan notions of love. Erotic and poetic images at the palace were intended to provoke discourse and facilitate masculine homosocial bonding, while the many allusions to Federico's burning desire for his mistress cast the Mantuan ruler as a man ennobled by his tormented love. I argue that Federico purposefully constructed an identity around concepts of tortured subjectivity and ardent love that were circulating in Mantua and abroad. Far from a private retreat, the Palazzo Te was employed by Federico to shape a public princely identity in which his love for his mistress was one means by which he projected his amatory self.