The house of Bertani

The artist’s home at number 8 of what is now Via Trieste still features the highly unusual facade constructed between 1554 and 1556.

It was built by and the home of the architect Giovanni Battista Bertani (Mantua 1516-1576), a director of the Fabbriche Ducali who designed the  apartments of Guglielmo Gonzaga in Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and the palatine basilica of Santa Barbara.

To the left and right of the entrance, the artist erected two isolated pilasters in the Ionic order. The one on the left was installed in the standard manner but the one on the right appears in section and illustrates, engraved in the marble, all the instructions required to create a column of the same size. Beneath the ground-floor windows are two epigraphs reciting passages from Vitruvius. This is a bizarre house and a lesson in architectural Mannerism.