(b Rome, ?1499; d Mantua, 1 Nov. 1546). Italian painter, architect, and designer. He was the only major Renaissance artist who was a native of Rome, but he worked mainly in Mantua. In his youth he was Raphael's chief pupil and assistant (although exactly what part he played in his workshop is uncertain) and later one of the outstanding figures of Mannerist art and architecture. It is not known when Giulio began working for Raphael, but it was probably in about 1515, when he was still very young; after the master's death in 1520 he became his main artistic executor, completing a number of his unfinished works, including the decorations of the Villa Madama. His independent works of this time include the Holy Family (c.1522) in S. Maria dell'Anima, Rome, and the design of some pornographic prints that caused such a scandal that their engraver Marcantonio Raimondi was imprisoned (their notoriety was sustained by the sonnets that the poet Pietro Aretino wrote inspired by them soon after their publication).

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


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