Giulio Romano (Roma 1499 c- Mantova 1546)

Giulio Romano was one of the most important, versatile, and influential artists of the Italian late Renaissance style known as Mannerism.  As the primary protégé of Raphael, he inherited his master's studio at the papal court following Raphael's death in 1520 and initially continued to work in Raphael's Roman High Renaissance style. But as his personal style matured, he became one of the great 16th-century Mannerist  painters and architects.  An artistic impresario in the service of Duke Federico Gonzaga in Mantua, Giulio built and decorated the Palazzo Te, one of the key monuments of Mannerism.  His renown in the sixteenth-century was such that he was the only Italian Renaissance artist to be mentioned by Shakespeare, who called him "that rare Italian master."

Giulio Romano was famed in his time as a virtuoso designer and draftsman.  In 1568 his biographer Giorgio Vasari praised the speed with which Giulio realized his ideas in drawings, writing that he "was always happier expressing his ideas in drawing than in painting, obtaining more vivacity, vigor, and expression."  Most of Giulio's paintings are in Italy, but this prolific draughtsman left preparatory drawings for a wide range of projects, including the famous erotic series of prints, I modi.

Mars and Venus bathing "Sala di Psiche", Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy (Giulio Romano 1527-1530.)

Wedding Banquet: Sala di Psiche (Giulio Romano 1527-1530.)

Sala dei Giganti, Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy (Giulio Romano 1540 c.)

Laocoonte (1536). Mantova, Palazzo Ducale, Sala di Troia 

Due Amanti (Two Lovers). Giulio Romano 1523-1524 Heremitage (San Petersburg)

Donna allo Specchio (Woman at the Mirror) (1523-1524) Moscow, Puskin museum

I Modi (Roma 1520 c) (The Sixteen Pleasures)

In the early 1520s, Giulio made sixteen drawings of couples in various sexual positions. Known as I modi (the positions), the drawings were first circulated privately and then made into engravings that were distributed publicly. Only then did authorities begin to consider I modi obscene and threatening, going so far as to jail the engraver. Modeled in part on classical sources, Giulio's drawings themselves became a model for erotica throughout the sixteenth century, first legitimized with a cover of ancient mythology, then later transformed into strange anatomical figures of the female body.