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66-400: The poems are generally considered to be incomplete fragments - although the reason for their incompleteness is disputed. As Hubbard explains, "some have explained it as a result of mechanical accident in the transmission, while others have thought the poems abbreviated by the poet himself to avoid giving offense to an ever more suspicious Nero". It is generally agreed that the poems post-date

132-427: A Golden Age , Fragment II is clearly indebted to Virgil's Fourth (and Fifth) Eclogues . However, Hubbard notes that "t he Einsiedeln poet avoids an overly close dependency and at times even goes out of his way to make clear his familiarity with Vergil's own sources ". In particular, Hubbard explores Fragment II's allusions to Theocritus ' encomium of Hieron (Theocritus Idyll 16) and to Aratus . Hubbard notes that

198-423: A coup d'état on the last Bonacolsi ruler, Rinaldo. Ludovico Gonzaga, who had been Podestà of Mantua since 1318, was duly elected Capitano del popolo . The Gonzagas built new walls with five gates and renovated the city in the 14th century; however, the political situation did not settle until the third ruler of Gonzaga, Ludovico III Gonzaga , who eliminated his relatives and centralised power to himself. During

264-480: A 15th-century copy of a 9th-century catalogue from Murbach ). The poem features three characters: Thamyras, Ladas and Midas. Thamyras asks Midas to judge a song contest between him and Ladas: Midas agrees. Ladas and Thamyras discuss whether the prize for the song contest should be a goat or a pipe, given by Faunus. Ladas says that he will win the prize, as he is minded to sing the praises of Caesar. Ladas sings first. He invokes and sings about Apollo , alluding to

330-441: A defensive water ring around the city, dried up at the end of the 18th century. The area and its environs are important not only in naturalistic terms, but also anthropologically and historically; research has highlighted a number of human settlements scattered between Barche di Solferino and Bande di Cavriana , Castellaro and Isolone del Mincio. These dated, without interruption, from Neolithic times (5th–4th millennium BC) to

396-465: A refrain after each one. In one song the singer complains that his girlfriend is marrying another man; in the second a woman performs a magic spell to get her lover back. Young Lycidas meets old Moeris on his way to town and learns that Moeris's master, the poet Menalcas, has been evicted from his small farm and nearly killed. They proceed to recall snatches of Menalcas's poetry, two translated from Theocritus and two relating to contemporary events. Lycidas

462-426: A second opening at the beginning of eclogue 6. The average length of each eclogue is 83 lines, and long and short poems alternate. Thus the 3rd eclogue in each half is the longest, while the 2nd and 4th are the shortest: Variety is also achieved by alternating dialogue eclogues (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) with monologues (2, 4, 6, 8, 10). Some scholars have also observed numerical coincidences, when each eclogue in poems 1–9

528-440: A singing competition. Menalcas accepts the challenge, offering some decorated cups as a prize, but Damoetas insists that the prize must be a calf, which is more valuable. A neighbour Palaemon agrees to judge the contest. The second half of the poem is the contest itself, ending with Palaemon pronouncing it a tie. The eclogue is mostly based on Theocritus's Idyll 5, but with elements added from other idylls. Eclogue 4 , also called

594-442: A triadic pattern. The following scheme comes from Steenkamp (2011): The tenth eclogue stands alone, summing up the whole collection. Numerous verbal echoes between the corresponding poems in each half reinforce the symmetry: for example, the phrase "Plant pears, Daphnis" in 9.50 echoes "Plant pears, Meliboeus" in 1.73. Eclogue 10 has verbal echoes with all the earlier poems. Thomas K. Hubbard (1998) has noted, "The first half of

660-546: Is a comune (municipality) in the Italian region of Lombardy , and capital of the province of the same name . In 2016, Mantua was designated as the "Italian Capital of Culture". In 2017, it was named as the "European Capital of Gastronomy", included in the Eastern Lombardy District (together with the cities of Bergamo , Brescia , and Cremona ). In 2008, Mantua's centro storico (old town) and

726-584: Is a fundamental interest of the shepherds in classical pastoral elegies, including the speaker in Milton 's " Lycidas ". This eclogue tells the story of how two boys, Chromis and Mnasyllos, and a Naiad persuaded Silenus to sing to them, and how he sang to them of the world's beginning, the Flood, the Golden Age, Prometheus, Hylas , Pasiphaë , Atalanta and Phaëthon 's sisters; after which he described how

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792-563: Is added to its pair: eclogues 2 + 8 = 3 + 7 = 181 lines, while eclogues 1 + 9 = 4 + 6 = 150/149 lines; 2 + 10 also = 150 lines. However, the significance of these findings is not clear. Similar numerical phenomena have been found in other authors. For example, in Tibullus book 2, poems 1 + 6 = 2 + 5 = 3 + 4 = 144 lines. A dialogue between Tityrus and Meliboeus. In the turmoil of the era Meliboeus has been forced off his land and faces an uncertain future. Tityrus recounts his journey to Rome and

858-434: Is anxious for a singing-match, while admitting that he is no match for two contemporary Roman poets whom he mentions by name, but Moeris pleads for forgetfulness and loss of voice. They walk on towards the city, postponing the competition until Menalcas arrives. In Eclogue 10, Virgil replaces Theocritus' Sicily and old bucolic hero, the impassioned oxherd Daphnis , with the impassioned voice of his contemporary Roman friend,

924-414: Is being quiet. Mystes explains that it is because he is worried. Mystes explains that the source of his worries is over-abundance ( satias ). Glyceranus invites Mystes to tell him more, under the shade of an elm tree. The remainder of the fragment consists of a monologue. Mystes describes a golden age - featuring a prosperous village, with worship, music, dancing and plentiful agricultural produce, without

990-593: Is nonetheless outstanding, with many of Mantua's patrician and ecclesiastical buildings being uniquely important examples of Italian architecture. By car, Mantova can be reached on the A4 (Milan-Venice) Highway up to Verona, then the A22 ( Brennero - Modena ) Highway. Alternatively, the city can be reached from Milan on the State Road 415 (Milan-Cremona) to Cremona and from there State Road 10 (Cremona-Mantova), or from Verona on

1056-465: Is noted for its significant role in the history of opera ; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the medieval and Renaissance cityscape. It is the city where the composer Monteverdi premiered his 1607 opera L'Orfeo and to where Romeo was banished in Shakespeare 's 1597 play Romeo and Juliet . It is the nearest town to the birthplace of

1122-440: Is persuaded, and sings a song he has made mourning the death of the fabled herdsman Daphnis. After praising the song, Menalcas responds by singing a song of equal length describing the reception of Daphnis in heaven as a god. Mopsus praises Menalcas in turn, and the two exchange gifts. Eclogue 5 articulates another significant pastoral theme, the shepherd-poet's concern with achieving worldly fame through poetry. Ensuring poetic fame

1188-550: Is south of Verona , east of Cremona , north-east of Parma , northwest of Ferrara , and west-southwest of Padua . Mantua was an island settlement which was first established about the year 2000 BC on the banks of River Mincio , which flows from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea . In the 6th century BC, Mantua was an Etruscan village which, in the Etruscan tradition, was re-founded by Ocnus . The name may derive from

1254-458: Is that it refers to the predicted child of the sister of Octavian , Octavia the Younger , who had married Mark Antony in 40 BC. The poem is dated to 40 BC by the reference to the consulship of Gaius Asinius Pollio , Virgil's patron at the time, to whom the eclogue is addressed. In later years, it was often assumed that the boy predicted in the poem was Christ. The connection is first made in

1320-653: The Bucolics , is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil . Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus , Virgil created a Roman version partly by offering a dramatic and mythic interpretation of revolutionary change at Rome in the turbulent period between roughly 44 and 38 BC. Virgil introduced political clamor largely absent from Theocritus' poems, called idylls ('little scenes' or 'vignettes'), even though erotic turbulence disturbs

1386-505: The Aeneid . In the surge of ambition, Virgil also predicts defeating the legendary poet Orpheus and his mother, the epic muse Calliope , as well as Pan , the inventor of the bucolic pipe, even in Pan's homeland of Arcadia , which Virgil will claim as his own at the climax of his book in the tenth eclogue. Identification of the fourth eclogue's child has proved elusive, but one common solution

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1452-577: The Bronze Age (2nd–1st millennium BC) and the Gallic phases (2nd–1st centuries BC), and ended with Roman residential settlements, which can be traced to the 3rd century AD. In 2017, Legambiente ranked Mantua as the best Italian city for quality of life and environment. Mantua lies in the east of the region of Lombardy , halfway between Milan and Venice , on the River Mincio . It

1518-497: The Eclogues of Virgil . Since their publication, the poems have usually been dated to Neronian times (AD 54-68) (more specifically, the first fragment is sometimes dated to AD 64 or 65) in which case, they clearly pre-date the Eclogues of Nemesianus and may, or may not, pre-date the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus . However, Stover argues that the poems were written during the (probably later) 4th century AD. The authorship of

1584-575: The Eurotas . The goatherd Meliboeus, a recurring character, soliloquizing remembers how he happened to be present at a great singing match between Corydon and Thyrsis. He then quotes from memory their actual songs (six rounds of matching quatrains) and recalls that Daphnis as judge declared Corydon the winner. This eclogue is based on pseudo-Theocritus Idyll VIII, though there the quatrains are not in hexameters but in elegiac couplets. Scholars argue about why Thyrsis loses. The reader may feel that despite

1650-708: The Frankish Empire . Partitions of the empire (due to the Franks' use of partible inheritance ) in the Treaties of Verdun and Prüm led to Mantua passing to Middle Francia in 843, then the Kingdom of Italy in 855. In 962 Italy was invaded by King Otto I of Germany , and Mantua thus became a vassal of the newly formed Holy Roman Empire . In the 11th century, Mantua became a possession of Boniface of Canossa , marquis of Tuscany . The last ruler of that family

1716-711: The Ghibellines , Pinamonte Bonacolsi took advantage of the chaotic situation to seize power of the podesteria in 1273. He was declared the Captain General of the People . The Bonacolsi family ruled Mantua for the next two generations and made it more prosperous and artistically beautiful. On 16 August 1328 Luigi Gonzaga, an official in Bonacolsi's podesteria, and his family staged a public revolt in Mantua and forced

1782-585: The Gonzaga-Nevers , a cadet French branch of the family. The War of the Mantuan Succession broke out, and in 1630 an Imperial army of 36,000 mercenaries under Matthias Gallas and Johann von Aldringen besieged and sacked Mantua, bringing the plague with them. Ferdinand Carlo IV , an inept ruler, whose only interest was in holding parties and theatrical shows, allied with France in the War of

1848-453: The Muses gave Gallus (a close personal friend of Virgil's) Hesiod 's reed pipe and commissioned him to write a didactic poem; after which he told of Scylla (whom Virgil identifies as both the sea monster and the daughter of Nisos who was transmuted into a seabird) and of Tereus and Philomela , and then we learn that he has in fact been singing a song composed by Apollo on the banks of

1914-659: The Oracle of Delphi , cosmology , the slaughter of the monster Python and Apollo’s musical skills. Next Thamyras sings. He invokes the Muses , and sings that the riches of Helicon and an Apollo are here. He also invokes Troy , and sings that its fall was all worth it. The meaning is unclear, but it is usually interpreted to mean that a new poem has been written about Troy (possibly by Caesar himself). Thamyras sings of how Homer crowns Caesar with his own crown and Mantua tears up its writings. The poem features two characters: Glyceranus and Mystes. Glyceranus asks Mystes why he

1980-538: The Oration of Constantine appended to the Life of Constantine by Eusebius of Caesarea (a reading to which Dante makes fleeting reference in his Purgatorio ). Some scholars have also noted similarities between the eclogue's prophetic themes and the words of Isaiah 11:6 : "a little child shall lead". In Eclogue 5, Menalcas, meeting the young goatherd Mopsus, flatters him and begs him to sing one of his songs. Mopsus

2046-559: The Turks . Under Ludovico and his heirs, the famous Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna worked in Mantua as court painter, producing some of his most outstanding works. The first Duke of Mantua was Federico II Gonzaga , who acquired the title from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. Federico commissioned Giulio Romano to build the famous Palazzo Te , on the periphery of the city, and profoundly improved

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2112-486: The "god" he met there who answered his plea and allowed him to remain on his land. He offers to let Meliboeus spend the night with him. This text has been viewed as reflecting the infamous land-confiscations after the return of Mark Antony and Octavian's joint forces from the Battle of Philippi of 42 BCE, in which Brutus and Cassius (the orchestrators of Caesar 's assassination in 44 BCE) were defeated. A monologue by

2178-406: The "idyllic" landscapes of Theocritus. Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but an eclogue , from the Greek ἐκλογή ('selection', 'extract'). The poems are populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and performing amoebaean singing in rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. Performed with great success on

2244-595: The Austrian Duchy of Mantua briefly united with the Duchy of Milan until 1791. On 4 June 1796 during the War of the First Coalition , Mantua was besieged by Napoleon Bonaparte 's French army. The first Austrian attempt to break the siege was successful and the siege was abandoned on 1 August. The Austrian army was defeated at the Battle of Castiglione on 5 August and left the area. The French resumed

2310-530: The Etruscan god Mantus . After being conquered by the Cenomani , a Gallic tribe, Mantua was subsequently fought between the first and second Punic wars against the Romans , who attributed its name to Manto , a daughter of Tiresias . This territory was later populated by veteran soldiers of Augustus . Mantua's most famous ancient citizen is the poet Virgil , or Publius Vergilius Maro ( Mantua me genuit ), who

2376-681: The Italian Renaissance, the Gonzaga family softened their despotic rule and further raised the level of culture and refinement in Mantua. Mantua became a significant center of Renaissance art and humanism. Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga had brought Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua in 1423 to open his famous humanist school, the Casa Giocosa. Isabella d'Este , Marchioness of Mantua, married Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua in 1490. When she moved to Mantua from Ferrara (she

2442-866: The Kingdom of Venetia (including the capital city, Venice ). Mantua reconnected with the region of Lombardy and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy . During World War II , in November 1943, Nazi Germany relocated the Stalag 337 prisoner-of-war camp from Leśna in German-occupied Poland to Mantua. The camp was dissolved in February 1944, and in April 1944 the Dulag 339 transit camp for British, Italian, American, French, Greek and Yugoslav POWs

2508-500: The Messianic Eclogue, imagines a golden age ushered in by the birth of a boy heralded as "great increase of Jove" ( magnum Iovis incrementum ). The poet makes this notional scion of Jove the occasion to predict his own metabasis up the scale in epos , rising from the humble bucolic to the lofty range of the heroic , potentially rivaling Homer : he thus signals his own ambition to make Roman epic that will culminate in

2574-700: The Roman classical poet Virgil , who is commemorated by a statue at the lakeside park "Piazza Virgiliana". Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes , created during the 12th century as the city's defence system. These lakes receive water from the River Mincio , a tributary of the River Po , which descends from Lake Garda . The three lakes are called Lago Superiore , Lago di Mezzo , and Lago Inferiore ("Upper", "Middle", and "Lower" Lakes, respectively). A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once served as

2640-418: The Roman stage, they feature a mix of visionary politics and eroticism that made Virgil a celebrity in his own lifetime. Like all of Virgil's works, the Eclogues are composed in dactylic hexameters . Several scholars have attempted to identify the organizational principles underpinning the construction of the book. Most commonly the structure has been seen to be symmetrical, turning around eclogue 5, with

2706-928: The Spanish Succession . After the French defeat, he took refuge in Venice and carried with him a thousand pictures. At his death in 1708, the Duke of Mantua was declared deposed and his family of Gonzaga lost Mantua forever in favour of the Habsburgs of Austria. Under Austrian rule, Mantua enjoyed a revival and during this period the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, the Scientific Theatre, and numerous palaces were built. In 1786, ten years before Napoleon Bonaparte 's campaign of Europe,

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2772-487: The State Road 62. Mantova railway station , opened in 1873, lies on the train routes of Milan - Codogno - Cremona -Mantua and Verona -Mantua- Modena . The station is a terminus for three regional lines, to Cremona and Milan , to Monselice , and to Verona Porta Nuova and Modena . Trenitalia operates a daily high-speed connection with Rome . The closest airport is Verona-Villafranca Airport. The direct shuttle bus service running to and from Mantova railway station

2838-400: The book has often been seen as a positive construction of a pastoral vision, whilst the second half dramatizes progressive alienation from that vision, as each poem of the first half is taken up and responded to in reverse order." However, the arrangement of the eclogues into three groups of three does not prevent the collection also being seen as divided at the same time into two halves, with

2904-406: The city. In the late 16th century, Claudio Monteverdi came to Mantua from his native Cremona. He worked for the court of Vincenzo I Gonzaga , first as a singer and violist, then as music director, marrying the court singer Claudia Cattaneo in 1599. In 1627, the direct line of the Gonzaga family came to an end with the vicious and weak Vincenzo II , and Mantua slowly declined under the new rulers,

2970-577: The course of River Mincio, creating what the Mantuans call "the four lakes" to reinforce the city's natural protection. Three of these lakes still remain today and the fourth one, which ran through the centre of town, was reclaimed during the 18th century. From 1215, the city was ruled under the podesteria of the Guelph poet-statesman Rambertino Buvalelli . During the struggle between the Guelphs and

3036-727: The elegiac poet Gaius Cornelius Gallus , imagined dying of love in Arcadia . Virgil transforms this remote, mountainous, and myth-ridden region of Greece, homeland of Pan, into the original and ideal place of pastoral song, thus founding a richly resonant tradition in western literature and the arts. This eclogue is the origin of the phrase omnia vincit amor ("love conquers all"). In English In Latin Other translations Other links Mantua Mantua ( / ˈ m æ n tj u ə / MAN -tew-ə ; Italian : Mantova [ˈmantova] ; Lombard and Latin : Mantua )

3102-496: The herdsman Corydon bemoaning his unrequited love for the handsome boy Alexis (the boss's darling) in the height of summer. The poem is adapted from the eleventh Idyll of Theocritus, in which the Cyclops Polyphemus laments the cruelty of the sea-nymph Galatea. Menalcas comes across a herdsman Damoetas, who is herding some animals on behalf of a friend. The two men exchange insults and then Damoetas challenges Menalcas to

3168-656: The insurrection in the County of Tyrol against Napoleon. After the brief period of French rule, Mantua returned to Austria in 1814, becoming one of the Quadrilatero fortress cities in northern Italy. Under the Congress of Vienna (1815) , Mantua became a province in the Austrian Empire's Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia . Agitation against Austria, however, culminated in a revolt which lasted from 1851 to 1855, but it

3234-628: The later lines of the Fragment recall Virgilian sources more closely, but in fantastical, hyperbolic terms (e.g. the description of lions submitting to the yoke - possibly an allusion to Daphnis' yoking of tigers in Virgil's Fifth Eclogue): concluding that " this rhetorical excess must in some sense be what Mystes meant in worrying about satias ". Eclogues The Eclogues ( / ˈ ɛ k l ɒ ɡ z / ; Latin : Eclogae [ˈɛklɔɡae̯] , lit.   ' selections ' ), also called

3300-472: The nearby comune of Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site . Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family between 1328 and 1708 made it one of the main artistic, cultural , and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and of Italy as a whole. It had one of the most splendid courts of Europe of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. Mantua

3366-496: The poems do exhibit a wide range of learning, as well as a certain imaginative energy and an independence that merit serious consideration in any account of the pastoral tradition " Hubbard notes that " both poems ratchet up the terms of the encomium to a virtual breaking point at which credibility ceases " and that, in each Fragment, such hyperbole is reached through references/allusions to Virgil and his poetry such that " By problematizing Vergil as hyperbolic and not fully believable,

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3432-428: The poems is unknown. It is even disputed whether the two fragments were written by the same poet. Some scholars have proposed Calpurnius Siculus, Lucan or Calpurnius Piso as possible authors, however such attributions have not gained wide acceptance. More recently, Stover has expressed the view that author is likely to be Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius (identifying the poems with the " Bucolicon Olibrii " referenced in

3498-440: The prologue of Bellum Civile ) and that, like Lucan's encomium, the extravagant praise of Nero may be construed ironically. Exploring the allusions to Lucan further, Hubbard argues that the real object of the poet's awe is Lucan's literary technique - and that therefore (read alongside the fragment's challenges to the primacy of Homer and Virgil) Lucan is elevated to the status of the poet's primary model. With its description of

3564-552: The siege on August 27 and accepted surrender of the city on 2 February 1797. The city was recaptured by the Austrians in the War of the Second Coalition after a siege lasting from 8 April to 28 July 1799. Later, the city again passed into Napoleon's control and became a part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. In 1810 Andreas Hofer was shot by Porta Giulia, a gate of the town at Borgo di Porto (Cittadella) for leading

3630-432: The texts problematize the praise of Nero and thus ultimately their own authenticity, bracketed within frames of ironic self-distancing ". Several scholars consider that Thamyras' song refers to a poem about Troy that was written by the emperor Nero (which he supposedly recited, whilst Rome itself burned) and that the fragment is therefore purporting to praise Nero's poetry over and above that of Homer and Virgil (who

3696-484: The threat of war and political crisis. He proceeds to tell of how crops grow from uncultivated land, the seas are not bothered by ships, tigers eat their young and lions submit to the yoke. He invokes the goddess Lucina . Watson refers to the " incompetence and obscurity of the writing " of the poems. However, Hubbard writes that " whilst no one would contend that the Einsiedeln poet was a great master of Latin verse,

3762-441: The very close parallelism of his quatrains with Corydon's, they are less musical and sometimes cruder in content. This eclogue is also known as Pharmaceutria ("Sorceress"). The poet reports the contrasting songs of two herdsmen whose music is as powerful as that of Orpheus. Both songs are dramatic (the character in the first being a man and in the second a woman), both have almost the same pattern of three-to-five-line stanzas, with

3828-521: Was a vociferous collector and such was her reputation that Niccolò da Corregio called her 'la prima donna del mondo'. Through a payment of 120,000 golden florins in 1433, Gianfrancesco I was appointed Marquis of Mantua by the Emperor Sigismund , whose niece Barbara of Brandenburg married his son, Ludovico. In 1459, Pope Pius II held the Council of Mantua to proclaim a crusade against

3894-597: Was born in Mantua ). Watson notes that "two competing shepherds praise the emperor...in terms so extravagant that critics are undecided whether to regard the poem as botched panegyric, or as ironic and derisive". In this regard, Duff and Duff consider that the reference in Thamyras' song to Mantua tearing its writings to shreds demonstrates gross sycophancy to Nero , whereas some scholars consider that both Ladas' and Thamyras' songs allude to Lucan's encomium to Nero (from

3960-795: Was born in the year 70 BC at a village near the city which is now known as Virgilio. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of Odoacer in 476 AD, Mantua was, along with the rest of Italy, conquered by the Ostrogoths . It was retaken by the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle of the 6th century following the Gothic war but was subsequently lost again to the Lombards . They were in turn conquered by Charlemagne in 774, thus incorporating Mantua into

4026-478: Was canceled on 1 January 2015. Public connection is now provided by the airport bus running to and from Verona Porta Nuova railway station, and the Verona-Mantova railway line. Local bus services, urbano (within the city area and suburbs) and interurbano (within the surrounding towns and villages) are provided by APAM. Since local government political reorganization in 1993, Mantua has been governed by

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4092-522: Was ceded to France, who transferred Lombardy to Piedmont-Sardinia in return for Nice and Savoy . Mantua, although a constituent province of Lombardy, still remained under the Austrian Empire along with Venetia. In 1866, Prussia-led North German Confederation sided with the newly established, Piedmont-led Kingdom of Italy against the Austrian Empire in the Third Italian War of Independence . The quick defeat of Austria led to its withdrawal of

4158-419: Was established in its place, and remained operational until April 1945. The Gonzagas protected the arts and culture, and were hosts to several important artists such as Leone Battista Alberti , Andrea Mantegna , Giulio Romano , Donatello , Peter Paul Rubens , Pisanello , Domenico Fetti , Luca Fancelli and Nicolò Sebregondi. Though many of the masterworks have been dispersed, the cultural value of Mantua

4224-748: Was finally suppressed by the Austrian army. One of the most famous episodes of the Italian Risorgimento took place in the valley of the Belfiore, where a group of rebels was hanged by the Austrians. At the Battle of Solferino ( Second Italian War of Independence ) in 1859, the House of Savoy 's Piedmont-Sardinia sided with the French Emperor Napoleon III against the Austrian Empire. Following Austria's defeat, Lombardy

4290-460: Was the countess Matilda of Canossa (d. 1115), who, according to legend, ordered the construction of the precious Rotonda di San Lorenzo (or St. Lawrence's Roundchurch) in 1082. The Rotonda still exists today and was renovated in 2013. After the death of Matilda of Canossa, Mantua became a free commune and strenuously defended itself from the influence of the Holy Roman Empire during the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1198, Alberto Pitentino altered

4356-482: Was the daughter of Duke Ercole the ruler of Ferrara ) she created her famous studiolo firstly in Castello di San Giorgio for which she commissioned paintings from Mantegna , Perugino and Lorenzo Costa . She later moved her studiolo to the Corte Vecchia and commissioned two paintings from Correggio to join the five from Castello di San Giorgio. It was unusual for a woman to have a studiolo in 15th century Italy given they were regarded as masculine spaces. Isabella

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