Rethinking Triumph: Giulio Romano between Rome, Jerusalem Mantua and the Louvre.

Between 1536 and 1540, the gabinetto dei Cesari in the Gonzaga Ducal Palace of Mantua was decorated through an exceptional collaboration between Titian and the workshop of Giulio Romano. Conceived as a unified decorative ensemble, the room brought together Titian’s now-lost series of eleven painted portraits of Roman emperors with an elaborate framework of stucco reliefs, small statues, equestrian images, and painted storie designed under Giulio Romano’s direction. This ensemble constituted a carefully articulated visual and intellectual programme, one of the most ambitious princely interiors of the Italian Renaissance. Drawing on ancient sculpture, triumphal imagery, numismatic models, and classical texts, the gabinetto offered a meditation on imperial lineage, historical exemplarity, and the political uses of antiquity within the Gonzaga court. This study day takes as its point of departure Giulio Romano’s Triumph of Vespasian and Titus (Louvre), examining how the painting functioned within this collaborative project and how its imagery engages with ancient models, most notably the Arch of Titus, the Judaea Capta coinage, and the narrative of Josephus Flavius, while also foregrounding the figure of the enslaved woman, personifying Judaea, as a central visual and conceptual motif of the triumph. Taken together, the ensemble constitutes a multi-layered visual framework that brings archaeological remains, classical literature, and pictorial invention into dialogue, articulated by two of the most influential artists of sixteenth-century Italy.

Cymbalista Center Auditorium, Tel Aviv University.
The lectures will be held in English.
Free and open to the public, subject to capacity

Program
14:30–14:40 Greetings
Prof. Milette Shamir, Vice President, Tel Aviv University

14:40–15:10 Sefy Hendler (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) | From Triumph to Catastrophe: Giulio Romano, Raphael and the Fate of Roman Victory

15:10–15:40 Tamar Herzig (ERC Project FemSMed -Tel Aviv University) | Judaea Capta and Captive Jewish Women in the Sixteenth Century

15:40–16:00 Break and refreshments

16:00–16:30 Guy Stiebel (Tel Aviv University) | Manifestations of Power and Potency: Aspects of the Realia of the Roman Triumph

16:30–17:00 Haim Gitler (Israel Museum) | Flavian Ambivalence: The Dual Approach Toward War and Peace – The Numismatic Evidence

17:00–17:45 Vincent Delieuvin (Louvre Museum) | Giulio Romano’s Triumph of Titus and Vespasian. From Mantua to Paris. The Coveted Legacy of Imperial Rome (Keynote)

Organized by Guy Stiebel and Sefy Hendler