An extremely old Etruscan, Roman and Medieval city, Mantua throve and grew under the House of Gonzaga (XIV-XVII cent.), as one of the most elegant Renaissance courts in Italy, an exemplary city built on subsequent layers and adapted to Renaissance standards. Built by Vespasiano Gonzaga, Sabbioneta is instead a planned city, a city designed to the standard of the “ideal city”. Planned according to Humanistic values, both cities influenced urban planning, architecture and art in the rest of Europe and all over the world.
[expand title=”Mantua: the development”]
After the Etruscans, the Gauls, the Romans and the Goths, in the XII century Mantua was ruled by the House of Canossa, then became a free Comune. The Bonacolsi became the Lords of Mantua in 1273, soon overthrown by the House of Gonzaga, one of Italy’s most famous and long-lived Renaissance families, in 1328. The city’s development is measured by its architectural and monumental buildings and the sequence of its three circles of walls (Roman age, Middle Ages, and Renaissance). The sophisticated taste of the House of Gonzaga brought to Mantua great artists, architects, city planners and painters, such as Andrea Mantegna, Leon Battista Alberti and Giulio Romano, who reshaped the city and changed its roads and buildings. Ludovico II took residence in the Castle of St George, where Mantegna frescoed the famous Bridal Chamber, his greatest masterpiece. The buildings that in the 16th century made up the stately Ducal Palace, a veritable “city-shaped royal palace”, one of the largest in Europe, sprung all around it. In 1472, the restoration of the Basilica di Sant’Andrea kick-started the Renovatio Urbis whereby the city spilled out of its third circle of walls. The Temple of St Sebastian, St Sebastian’s Palace and Palazzo Te, a magnificent suburban villa used for leisure and entertaining, were erected at the opposite end of the so-called Percorso del Principe (The Prince’s Route).[/expand]
[expand title=”Sabbioneta: the new city, the ideal city”]
Sabbioneta was entirely designed by its ruler, Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna, who inherited it in 1544. A weird character, a learned and inquisitive man, from 1555 till his death Vespasiano worked at his city, taking inspiration from Imperial Rome. In just 35 years, an urban area, cleverly laid out and rationally built, surrounded by walls, fine palaces and gardens, came up where only a fortress and an old settlement used to be. This kind of city, the result of a deliberate intention instead of a slow change cemented through the centuries, is known as urbs condita. Sticking to the utopian Renaissance ideals of order and rationality, symmetry and neatness, Vespasiano designed a city with a sprinkling of a defensive strategy: surrounded by a star-shaped ramparted circle of walls, with a Roman-inspired chequerboard layout, Sabbioneta is a perfect and rare combination of idealism and pragmatism. The Duke did not just design the city plan, he also took care of its architecture and ornamentation. In the painted cycles of the buildings and halls, through allegories and mythological subjects, he materialised his role as a Princeps, a philosopher-ruler who gave a new cultural life to and defended his city.[/expand]
[expand title=”Connections between Mantua and Sabbioneta”]
A descendant of Ludovico II, Vespasiano belongs to one of the cadet branches of the House of Gonzaga. The frescoes in the Bridal Chamber of the Ducal Palace in Mantua portray the most important family members. The undisputed star is Ludovico II, but Federico II (Ludovico’s first son) and his third son Gianfrancesco, Vespasiano’s ancestor, who inherited the lands of Sabbioneta, Gazzuolo, Bozzolo, San Martino, Viadana, Rivarolo, Dosolo and Isola Dovarese, are there too. The cadet branches of the family promoted cultural development in their kingdoms too; the area was dotted with towns that eventually grew into small capitals and all of them have porticoes, a central square with the family’s Palace opening on to it, and defensive walls. Sabbioneta, created from scratch by Vespasiano Gonzaga, is quite a different matter. Mantua and Sabbioneta share the same aesthetic and cultural standards of the Renaissance that the family identified with. To fulfil the humanistic ideals of perfection and formal neatness, Mantua, the first layers of which dated back to the III century BC, was extended, and new residential buildings, elegant houses, squares and new roads were added to the older areas. Conversely, Sabbioneta was built in forty years based on a design that Vespasiano had worked at until 1591, the year he died. Taken together, they make up a unicum that still epitomises all the building and philosophical skills and theories of the Italian Renaissance.[/expand]