Shakespeare, Serlio, and Giulio Romano

The Winter’s Tale is the only play by Shakespeare to refer to a specific artist of the Renaissance, namely Giulio Romano (c.1499–1546), to whom the statue of Hermione is attributed. The reference is all the more puzzling because Giulio Romano was better known as a painter and architect than as a sculptor. This article surveys recent work that has addressed the question of how Shakespeare knew about Giulio Romano, and what significance the reference may have. It then suggests a possible source in Robert Peake’s translation of Sebastiano Serlio’s highly influential works on architecture, entered in the Stationers’ Register a few months after the first recorded performance of The Winter’s Tale. With their many illustrations and descriptions of theatres ancient and modern, these volumes are likely to have been of interest to Shakespeare. In the volume that discusses the classical orders of architecture, Giulio Romano is singled out for praise due to his ability to combine elements of nature and art, the rustic with the refined—a theme that is explicitly and repeatedly addressed in The Winter’s Tale.