Ghigo Roli photographer

The Camera Picta, today better known as the Camera degli Sposi, houses the famous cycle of frescoes by Andrea Mantegna that celebrates the Gonzaga dynasty. The cycle unfolds on the four walls and on the vault of this room without interruption. Mantegna masterfully eliminates any impression of narrowness in this room, which is almost cubic and only eight metres on each side. He does so with the famous oculus painted on the ceiling that opens towards the sky, and he does so by dividing the space illusionistically by imagining an external loggia, or pavilion, delimited by painted columns, between which are stretched fake drapes that allow the sky to be seen in the lunettes. And he does so again by painting open and luminous landscapes, largely imaginary but containing precise references to reality. The ingenious modernity of this operation is thus manifested in dissolving the internal space - with all its noble characters - dilating it and projecting it towards the outside.