The Gonzaga Collection or Celeste Gallery (la Celeste Galeria) was the large collection of artworks commissioned and acquired by the House of Gonzaga in Mantua, Italy, exhibited for a time in the Palazzo Ducale, the Palazzo Te, the Palazzo San Sebastiano and other buildings in Mantua and elsewhere.
The Gonzagas were inspired by the wunderkammer style of collecting practised by the princes of Bavaria, with Isabella d'Este in particular creating a noted private 'studiolo'. They set an example for other European courts, particularly in their patronage of contemporary artists, whilst their collecting increased the international profile of Mantua, a relatively small state. It reached its peak under Vincenzo I Gonzaga and his son Ferdinando, before the family's decline led to major losses from the collection, such as the long negotiations from 1625 onwards with Charles I of Great Britain, mediated by two members of the Whitehall Group – the Flemish art dealer Daniel Nys and Nicholas Lanier, Master of the King's Music.[1][2] These culminated in 1627 with most of the Gonzaga collections being sent to London. This ensured their preservation, unlike the artworks still in Mantua when the city was sacked in 1630.
Its works are now split between museums and private collections across the world, as shown by the 2002–2003 exhibition Gonzaga. La Celeste Galeria. Il Museo dei Duchi di Mantova at the Palazzo Te and Palazzo Ducale, which included around ninety paintings from the total of approximately 2,000 originally in the collection. As well as paintings, the collection also included decorative work in gold and precious stones such as the Gonzaga Cameo along with natural history specimens or 'mirabilia'.
Council of the Gods, oil on canvas, 204×379cm, Prague, Castle Gallery
Aeneas prepares to lead the Trojan survivors into exile, 1602–1603, oil on canvas, 146×227cm, Fontainebleau, Musée National du Chateau (stored at the Louvre)
Raffaella Morselli (ed), La Celeste Galleria, Milan, Skira, 2002.
Lapenta, Stefania; Morselli, Raffaella (2006). La quadreria nell'elenco dei beni del 1626–1627. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana. ISBN88-8215-427-0.
Favaretto, Irene (2002). Arte antica e cultura antiquaria nelle collezioni venete al tempo della Serenissima (Riv. e corr.ed.). Roma: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider. ISBN8882652238.
Adelaide Murgia, I Gonzaga, Milan, Mondadori, 1972.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio, usually known as just Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the sixteenth century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Baroque art of the seventeenth century and the Rococo art of the eighteenth century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.
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Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, also known as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, as Parmigianino, was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma. His work is characterized by a "refined sensuality" and often elongation of forms and includes Vision of Saint Jerome (1527) and the iconic if somewhat anomalous Madonna with the Long Neck (1534), and he remains the best known artist of the first generation whose whole careers fall into the Mannerist period.
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