At home with the Gonzagas

摘要

The next time you wander through the national gallery of any world capital, spare a thought for the Gonzaga dynasty, for they began the princely pursuit we now call art collecting. It was they who built the world's first picture gallery, indeed its first museum, to show off their family treasures at the ducal palace in Mantua. Beginning with Lodovico in the mid-15th century, six generations of Gonzagas acquired the greatest art of their age. Artists and admirers flocked to their court until the last duke, a bankrupt, sold the best of his collection to Charles I of England. What the British monarch left behind was destroyed or dispersed when Spanish imperial troops sacked the city two years later, in 1630. All that remained was a legend and a looted palace.