GIULIO ROMANO, or GIULIO PIPPI (c. 1492-1546), the head of the Roman school of painting in succession to Raphael. This prolific painter, modeller, architect and engineer receives his common appellation from the place of his birth--Rome, in the Macello de' Corbi. His name in full was Giulio di Pietro de Filippo de' Giannuzzi--Giannuzzi being the true family name, and Pippi (which has practically superseded Giannuzzi) being an abbreviation from the name of his grandfather Filippo. The date of Giulio's birth is a little uncertain. Vasari (who knew him personally) speaks of him as fifty-four years old at the date of his death, 1st November 1546; thus he would have been born in 1492. Other accounts assign 1498 as the date of birth. This would make Giulio young indeed in the early and in such case most precocious stages of his artistic career, and would show him as dying, after an infinity of hard work, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.
Giulio must at all events have been quite youthful when he first became the pupil of Raphael, and at Raphael's death in 1520 he was at the utmost twenty-eight years of age. Raphael had loved him as a son, and had employed him in some leading works, especially in the Loggie of the Vatican; the series there popularly termed "Raphael's Bible" is done in large measure by Giulio,--as for instance the subjects of the "Creation of Adam and Eve," "Noah's Ark," and "Moses in the Bulrushes." In the saloon of the "Incendio del Borgo," also, the figures of "Benefactors of the Church" (Charlemagne, &c.) are Giulio's handiwork. It would appear that in subjects of this kind Raphael simply furnished the design, and committed the execution of it to some assistant, such as Giulio,--taking heed, however, to bring it up, by final retouching, to his own standard of style and type. Giulio at a later date followed out exactly the same plan; so that in both instances inferiorities of method, in the general blocking-out and even in the details of the work, are not to be precisely charged upon the _caposcuola_. Amid the multitude of Raphael's pupils, Giulio was eminent in pursuing his style, and showed universal aptitude; he did, among other things, a large amount of architectural planning for his chief. Raphael bequeathed to Giulio, and to his fellow-pupil Gianfrancesco Penni ("Il Fattore"), his implements and works of art; and upon them it devolved to bring to completion the vast fresco-work of the "Hall of Constantine" in the Vatican--consisting, along with much minor matter, of the four large subjects, the "Battle of Constantine," the "Apparition of the Cross," the "Baptism of Constantine" and the "Donation of Rome to the Pope." The two former compositions were executed by Pippi, the two latter by Penni. The whole of this onerous undertaking was completed within a period of only three years,--which is the more remarkable as, during some part of the interval since Raphael's decease, the Fleming, Adrian VI., had been pope, and his anti-aesthetic pontificate had left art and artists almost in a state of inanition. Clement VII. had now, however, succeeded to the popedom. By this time Giulio was regarded as the first painter in Rome; but his Roman career was fated to have no further sequel.