ABSTRACT
Giulio Romano’s frescoes in the Sala dei Giganti of the Palazzo Te have received much attention from visitors and scholars at least since Charles V’s tours of the building in 1530 – before they were begun, when he might have seen the cartoons – and 1532 – while they were in progress, with essentially just the ceiling complete – and Giorgio Vasari’s visit in 1541 – approximately five years after their completion. Vasari, who had the privilege of visiting the room with the artist – five years before Giulio’s death – provides invaluable information about the pains Giulio took within the room to sustain their remarkable illusionism. Certain assumptions about the way in which artists and architects are presumed to collaborate have tended to structure the ways in which frescoes are generally interpreted in the context of their architectural framework; but Vasari’s information from the artist/architect himself about the precautions taken here to prepare the room for the paintings challenge the normal assumptions about the integration of the arts. 7.1 The Winds from the north-east and north-west corners of the Sala dei Giganti https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203967140/c5139050-be3f-49c3-bbff-3c917e8484ee/content/fig7_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
