Article: GONZAGA: THE DESPOTS OF MANTUA

A RENAISSANCE TAPESTRY. The Gonzaga of Mantua, by Kate

Simon. Harper & Row, 309 pp., $22.50

In Cole Porter's Italy, Mantua comes between Parma and Padua. Kate Simon's excellent popular history, however, properly locates the city -- dismissed by Cook's Guide of 1923 as "of no interest except for art and history" -- nearer the hub of European culture.

Ruled by the princely house of Gonzaga between the 14th and 18th centuries, Mantua radiated learning and power. Vittorino da Feltre founded there the first and one of the most enlightened schools of humanism. The master architect Leon Battista Alberti built two imposing, though incomplete churches, San Sebastiano, constructed on the ...

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