On 1 April 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V arrived at the Palazzo Te, located on an island just outside the boundaries of Renaissance Mantua (Fig. 1). Upon entering the Camera di Psiche ‘he stood completely awestruck, and there he remained for more than half an hour contemplating it and praising everything immensely’. As he moved around the room, the unfolding story of Psyche on the ceiling and the images of mythological lovers and sensuous banquets on the wall invited Charles to take up varying positions and identities. A fresco of Jupiter and Olympia depicting the pair mid-coitus allowed the Emperor to see himself as the robust and virile King of the gods, and as Philip of Macedon, whose illicit gaze cost him his sight. Charles could even identify with Olympia, who grasps the fictive frame of the painting, penetrating the picture plane and entering into the physical space of the room (Pl. 1). Charles was triumphant, condemned, and sexualized.

This book examines the dynamic relationships between gender, space, and experience at the Renaissance court, using the Palazzo Te as a case study to analyze interactions between buildings and their inhabitants. It is my contention that the built environment is an active agent in the construction and performance of gendered and sexual identities. The Palazzo Te is thus a place composed of constantly shifting physical and signifying surfaces that provoke the production and negotiation of gender identities. Rather than a monolithic monument with a unified iconography and stable interpretive framework, the Palazzo Te is open, polyvalent, and, at times, troubling.