The Sacrifice

Abstract

Girolamo completes his sentence in mid-1559, and the family moves into the bishop’s castle in Ceneda, and then on to the castle at Villalta. Giulia furnishes each residence, as well as Palazzo Torriani in Udine, with trappings and furniture suitable to the family’s noble status. Giovanni da Udine embellishes the ceiling of a studiolo in the Castello di Colloredo with grotteschi decoration. While the Della Torre stay out of trouble, their Colloredo relatives keep the blood feud alive. After bearing two more daughters, Ginevra and Elena, Giulia is pregnant again and prophesies her own death. She dies in Ceneda in spring 1562 shortly after giving birth to Giulia II, her tenth child, ‘renewing the major part of the ancestors and herself’. The bloodline was secure. Francesco Sansovino honours Giulia in 1565 with the first freestanding female biography of an ordinary woman to appear in print in Renaissance Italy.