MANTUA.- Nature appears by turns fertile, violent, mysterious, collectible and even mechanical in a new exhibition that opened this weekend at Palazzo Te, bringing together works by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and other leading figures of Renaissance art.

Inventing Nature. Leonardo, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio, which opened September 26 and runs through January 10, 2027, takes over the monumental rooms of Giulio Romano’s celebrated Mantuan palace as the culminating exhibition of its 500th-anniversary year.

Curated by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, the exhibition looks at how people in the 16th century tried to understand the natural world at a moment when art, science, collecting and technology were becoming increasingly intertwined. Rather than treating nature simply as landscape or decoration, the show presents it as something Renaissance artists and thinkers sought to study, imitate, classify, control—and sometimes fear.

That idea acquires particular force inside Palazzo Te itself. Giulio Romano filled the palace with images in which bodies, animals, plants and architecture seem constantly on the verge of transformation. In the famous Chamber of the Giants, the distinction between painted architecture and catastrophic natural force almost disappears as the Titans are crushed beneath a collapsing world.

The exhibition builds on that setting through seven sections—Creating, Destroying, Sensing, Reproducing, Knowing, Astonishing and Animating—each examining a different way in which Renaissance culture approached nature.

Among the most striking encounters comes in the section devoted to destruction, where Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings Storm and Landslide, on loan from the Royal Collection, present nature as an uncontrollable force. Nearby, Jacopo Bassano’s The Flood of the Colmeda and a monumental tapestry based on a design from Raphael’s workshop extend that sense of instability before visitors enter the Chamber of the Giants itself.

Elsewhere, nature becomes an object of close observation. Bronzes by Andrea Riccio, ceramics associated with Bernard Palissy and experimental silver casts attributed to Wenzel Jamnitzer reproduce lizards, crabs and plants with an almost scientific fidelity. These objects blur the line between natural specimen and work of art, reflecting an age in which artists and naturalists frequently shared methods of looking.





The desire to classify the living world comes into sharper focus in a section devoted to knowledge and collecting. Drawings of plants and animals are joined by Vincenzo Campi’s The Fishmonger, a still life by the Master of Hartford, Bartolomeo Passerotti’s Portrait of a Botanist and Ferrante Imperato’s Historia naturale. Together they evoke the intellectual world of figures such as Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose vast collections attempted to organize nature through images, specimens and books.

The courtly appetite for surprise reaches its peak in the Hall of the Captains. Caravaggio’s Self-Portrait as Bacchus shares the exhibition with Arcimboldo’s The Vegetable Gardener and The Cook, works in which fruits, vegetables, utensils and human identity become deliberately unstable. Around them, a reconstructed Wunderkammer gathers rare and exotic materials—including ostrich eggs, coconuts, nautilus shells and narwhal tusks—recalling the Renaissance fascination with objects that seemed to test the limits of what nature could produce.

The exhibition also considers the period’s fascination with movement and artificial life. Its final section brings together elaborate automata made for European courts, including clocks and mechanical figures designed to reproduce the appearance or movement of people and animals. Seen from the present, the objects offer an unexpectedly early glimpse of ambitions that would much later find expression in robotics.

Contemporary art enters the historical narrative as well. Works by Christiane Löhr appear in the opening section, creating a connection between Renaissance attempts to represent the generative power of nature and present-day artistic approaches to organic structures and materials.

For Stefano Baia Curioni, director of Fondazione Palazzo Te, the exhibition continues a broader investigation into ideas embedded in the palace itself. After examining metamorphosis in earlier programming, the institution has turned to the Renaissance construction of nature as something distinct from humanity—something marvelous, measurable and potentially conquerable.

The theme also reaches beyond the galleries. Fondazione Palazzo Te is accompanying the exhibition with educational activities, performances and collaborations with cultural organizations across Mantua, linking the historical material to contemporary questions surrounding environmental care.

That contemporary resonance runs quietly through the exhibition. The Renaissance confidence that nature could be observed, collected, copied and mastered now appears alongside a modern awareness of environmental fragility. Palazzo Te’s painted storms, strange creatures, botanical studies and ingenious machines therefore become more than documents of historical curiosity. Together, they reveal how many of the ways people continue to think about the natural world were already taking shape five centuries ago.

The exhibition design by AMDL CIRCLE and Michele De Lucchi uses small metal structures and fine textiles intended to sit discreetly within Giulio Romano’s frescoed rooms. A catalogue published by Marsilio accompanies the exhibition.

Inventing Nature. Leonardo, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio remains on view at Palazzo Te in Mantua through January 10, 2027. rel