For the four days we were in Mantova, I had no pressing deadlines, for a change. I could go off the grid. In fact, because we carried just one phone charger, there was one morning when I didn’t even have my phone on me, which was liberating, to say the least. I could be just another sightseeing mother. I was able to be present in more unusual ways, which was a gift, considering our child had, by now, accelerated his efforts towards walking independently. He would seize every opportunity to walk his own stroller or to take a couple of steps between points A and B. Our first stop was the Palazzo Te, a magnificent palace designed and deliciously detailed by Giulio Romano. We were slowed down because of our child’s desire to exit his stroller and participate in the worlds we were witnessing. Just before we arrived at the room of the giants, he wanted to feed. Unable to find a chair, I walked into the room and occupied the floor’s centre. It was mesmerising to see the patterns radiating outwards, reflecting the intense energy of the frescoes surrounding us—enormous beings collapsing against the weight of structures being destroyed around them, the omnipresent clouds reminding us of their height and their closeness to the sky. It was a dramatic room. The viewer is clearly meant to feel dwarfed by its scale. At the Ducal Palace, one frequently went through moments of perspective that made you rethink your own scale. The structure has over 500 rooms, I read later, as it connects a series of structures from different moments in their history. As you move from one room to the next, you lose sense of time, and you easily forget which section you’re in. You keep finding yourself closer and then further away from the surrounding lake.

It felt amazing to traipse through the rooms without overthinking. My brain couldn’t process too much text, so I stopped reading the descriptions, allowing my eyes to pause on whatever details felt significant at the time. One moment I won’t forget is the courtyard of the painter Andrea Mantegna’s home, because he had managed to encase a circle within a square followed by a square, reminding you of the painting he made at the Ducal Palace which is known as the Spousal Room. An exhibition in the rooms upstairs focussed on his sense of perspective and I enjoyed seeing his fascination with the geometry of lines. Later that evening over a risotto made in a classic Mantuan style, we cheered to the end of our final Italian sojourn for the moment. As summer sets in and the tourists populate the country, we will stay in place in South Tyrol. I thought back to the arena at Verona when our child had just begun crawling. On our way back to South Tyrol, in the train, he was already beginning to walk. I’m now the mother of a toddler.

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Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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