Duchy of Mantua

A small state that produced an art collection good enough to reshape another country's, and then sold it. The Gonzaga governed Mantua from 1328, raised to marquises and then dukes, and ran a court whose scale was entirely out of proportion to the territory - lakes around the city made it defensible and the family made careful marriages. Mantegna spent nearly fifty years as court painter and produced the Camera degli Sposi, whose illusionistic ceiling opens the room to the sky and effectively invents a genre. Giulio Romano built the Palazzo Te. Isabella d'Este, marchioness from 1490, assembled one of the most celebrated collections and correspondence networks of the Renaissance and governed the state in her husband's absence. Monteverdi wrote Orfeo for the court in 1607, among the first operas. Financial trouble then forced Duke Vincenzo II to sell much of the collection to Charles I of England in 1627 - which is how the Royal Collection acquired its Renaissance core. Imperial troops sacked the city three years later and it never recovered. Mantua is a World Heritage site. The duchy covered Mantua and, after 1536, Monferrato. The city is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes. Its population is around 50 thousand. The Gonzaga ruled for nearly four centuries. Verdi set Rigoletto at the ducal court. Mantua was sacked by imperial troops in 1630, an event that scattered the Gonzaga art collection across Europe, and the line ended in 1708. Austria absorbed the territory in 1708 and held it, with a French interruption, until 1866.

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