Musique pour Eros et Psyché au Palais du Te à Mantoue

This article analyses the role of music in the Psyche Room in the Palazzo Te in Mantua. In 1526 Federico II Gonzaga commissioned the realisation of this cycle of frescoes from the famous painter Giulio Romano. The idea to represent the mythological theme of Eros and Psyche derived from a humanistic tradition, also attested in contemporary poems, literature, plays and paintings. In these frescoes, Giulio Romano and his workshop depicted music exploiting different procedures of illustration. In fact music is characterised as having many functions: it plays a real role in the myth; it evokes the diachronic time of the narration, giving uniformity to the tale; it is represented as modernization of the ancient paradigm. Moreover, in contrast to the contemporary tradition, the author of the iconographical project conferred a Dionysian connotation to the music of the wedding banquet, which could be related to the Ferrarese paintings on Bacchanals’s theme.