La “Gigantomachie” d’Ovide dans les exégèses et dans les productions artistiques au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance

Relying on a rich iconographic tradition, both classical and biblical, Giulio Romano portrayed in the Chamber of the Giants (Sala dei Giganti) of the Palazzo Te in Mantua the fall of the Giants who attempted to assault the Olympus. This grandiosely conceived scene also includes many little monkeys, some of which are covered with blood – as they were born out of the Giants’ blood (in line with some allegorical interpretations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses) – while some others are mocking the Giants themselves. The connection between Giants and monkeys is by no means traditional : apart from a scholium to Vergil concerning the isle of Ischia in the so-called Servus Danielis (still unknown, though, in the early sixteenth-century), it is attested by at least one of the scholia recentiora to Juvenal and, most significantly, in Lycophron’s Alexandra, which John Tzetzes’s scholia had contributed to rescue form oblivion. The paper argues that the iconographic program behind Giulio Romano’s frescoes may be understood as a conflation of these two distinct traditions, at least with reference to the role and representation of the monkeys.