Mantua Ducatus

Jansson’s map of the Duchy of Mantua with an elaborate decorative title at top right with the family crest and a Rococo styled scale at lower right.

The Duchy of Mantua was a duchy in Lombardy, Northern Italy. Its first duke was Federico II Gonzaga, member of the House of Gonzaga that ruled Mantua since 1328. The Duchy’s historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy. Mantua also had one of the most splendid courts of Italy and Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. As many as eight hundred persons, including writers, artists, musicians, and even a troop of commedia dell’arte actors, enjoyed Gonzaga patronage in the early seventeenth century. In that time, the Gonzagas were patrons of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens. The duchy also played a key role in the development of opera; Claudio Monteverdi lived there from about 1590 to 1612, and his Orfeo (1607) and other works were first presented there.[3] In 1625 Ferdinando Gonzaga founded the University of Mantua, where Jesuits taught humanities and philosophy, while laymen taught law and medicine. However, in order to pay for their splendid court, the Gonzaga family sold some of its assets, in 1627 Vincenzo Gonzaga sold the family collection of Renaissance paintings, including works of Titian, Andrea Mantegna, Correggio and Raphael to Charles I of England. In 1708, after the death of Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, the last heir of the Gonzaga family, the Duchy ceased its existence.

From Johannes Janssonius and Henricus Hondius, Atlas Novus.

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