Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431, near Vicenza, Italy – September 13, 1506,
Mantua) was an Italian Renaissance artist from Florence, whose work
included paintings, engravings, and frescoes.
Biography
Mantegna was born in Isola di Cartura, close to Vicenza in the Republic of
Venice, second son of a carpenter, Biagio. At the age of eleven he had
started as the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter.
Squarcione, whose original vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a
remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art, and a faculty for acting. Like his
famous compatriot Petrarca, Squarcione was something of a fanatic for
ancient Rome: he travelled in Italy, and perhaps Greece, collecting
antique statues, reliefs, vases, etc., forming a collection of such works,
making drawings from them himself, and throwing open his stores for others
to study from, and then undertaking works on commission for which his
pupils no less than himself were made available. As many as 137 painters
and pictorial students passed through his school, established towards 1440
and which became famous all over Italy. Mantegna was Squarcione's favorite
pupil. Squarcione taught Mantegna the Latin language and instructed him to
study fragments of Roman sculpture. He also preferred forced perspective.
Mantegna at the age of 17 separated himself from Squarcione. He later
claimed that Squarcione had profited from his work without paying the
rights. Padua was attractive for artists coming not only from the Veneto
but also from Toscana: such as Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi and Donatello.
Mantegna's early career was shaped indeed by impressions of Florentine
works.
His first work, now lost, was an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia
in 1448. The same year Mantegna was called, together with Nicolò Pizolo,
to work with a large group of painters entrusted with the decoration of
the Ovetari Chapel in the abside of the church of Eremitani. After a
series of coincidences, Mantegna finished most of the work alone. This
work was almost lost in the 1944 bombings of Padua. The most dramatic work
of the fresco cycle was the work set in the worm's eye view perspective,
St. James Led to His Execution. The sketch of this fresco survived and is
the earliest known preliminary sketch which still exists to compare to the
corresponding fresco. Despite the authentic look of the monument, it is
not a copy of any known Roman structure. Mantegna also adopted the wet
drapery patterns of the Romans, who derived the form from the Greek
invention, for the clothing of his figures, although the tense figures and
interactions are derived from Donatello. The drawing shows proof that nude
figures were used in the conception of works during the Early Renaissance.
In the preliminary sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to
a more average viewpoint however. This worm's eye perspective, creating an
effectively large and prominent setting, is also seen in his work The Holy
Trinity with the Virgin, St. John, and Two Donors. Ansuino, who
collaborated with Mantegna in the Ovetari Chapel, brought his style in the
Forlì school of painting.
As the youth progressed in his studies, he came under the influence of
Jacopo Bellini, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni and Gentile,
and of a daughter Nicolosia; and in 1453 Jacopo gave Nicolosia to Mantegna
in marriage.
Among the other early Mantegna frescoes are the two saints over the
entrance porch of the church of Sant'Antonio in Padua, 1452, and an
altar-piece of St Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, now
in the Brera Gallery in Milan (1453). It is probable, however, that before
this time some of the pupils of Squarcione, including Mantegna, had
already begun that series of frescoes in the chapel of S. Cristoforo, in
the church of Sant'Agostino degli Eremitani, now considered his
masterpiece. The now censorious Squarcione carped about the earlier works
of this series, illustrating the life of St James; he said the figures
were like men of stone, and had better have been colored stone-color at
once.
Andrea seems to have been influenced by his old preceptors strictures; and
the later subjects, from the legend of St Christopher, combine with his
other excellences more of natural character and vivacity. Trained as he
had been to the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, and
openly avowing that he considered the antique superior to nature as being
more eclectic in form, he now and always affected precision of outline,
dignity of idea and of figure, and he thus tended towards rigidity, and to
an austere wholeness rather than gracious sensitiveness of expression. His
draperies are tight and closely folded, being studied (it is said) from
models draped in paper and woven fabrics gummed. Figures slim, muscular
and bony, action impetuous but of arrested energy, tawny landscape, gritty
with littering pebbles, mark the athletic hauteur of his style. He never
changed, the manner which he had adopted in Padua; his coloring, at first
neutral and undecided, strengthened and matured. There is throughout his
works more balancing of color than fineness of tone. One of his great aims
was optical illusion, carried out by a mastery of perspective which,
though not always impeccably correct, nor absolutely superior in principle
to the highest contemporary point of attainment, was worked out by himself
with strenuous labor, and an effect of actuality astonishing in those
times.
Successful and admired though he was there, Mantegna left his native Padua
at an early age, and never resettled there again; the hostility of
Squarcione has been assigned as the cause. He spent the rest of his life
in Verona, Mantua and Rome; it has not been confirmed that he also stayed
in Venice and Florence. In Verona around 1459, he painted, a grand
altarpiece for the church of San Zeno Maggiore, a Madonna and angels, with
four saints on each side.
Work in Mantua
The Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua had for some time been pressing
Mantegna to enter his service; and the following year, 1460 Mantegna was
appointed court artist. He resided at first from time to time at Goito,
but, from December 1466 onwards, he moved with his family in Mantua
itself. His engagement was for a salary of 75 lire a month, a sum so large
for that period as to mark conspicuously the high regard in which his art
was held. He was in fact the first painter of any eminence ever domiciled
in Mantua.
His Mantuan masterpiece were painted in the apartment of the Castle of the
city, today known as Camera degli Sposi ("Chambers of the
married"): a series of full compositions in fresco including various
portraits of the Gonzaga family and some figures of genii.
The Chamber's decoration was finished presumably in 1474. The ten years
that followed were not happy ones for Mantegna and Mantua: his character
grow irritable, his son Bernardino died, as well as the marquis Ludovico,
his wife Barbara and his successor Federico (who had declared Mantegna
cavaliere", "knight" ). Only with the election of Francesco
II of Gonzaga the artistic commissions in Mantua began again. He built a
stately house in the area of the church of San Sebastiano, and adorned it
with a multitude of paintings. The house can be still seen today, although
the pictures have perished. In this period he began to collect some
ancient Roma busts (which were donated to Lorenzo de Medici when the
Florentine leader visited Mantua in 1483), painted some architectonical
and decorational fragments, and finished the intense St. Sebastian now in
the Louvre.
In 1488 Mantegna was called by Pope Innocent VIII to paint frescos in a
chapel Belvedere in the Vatican. This series of frescos, including a noted
Baptism of Christ, was destroyed by Pius VI in 1780. The pope treated
Mantegna with less liberality than he had been used to at the Mantuan
court; but all things considered their connection, which ceased in 1500,
was not unsatisfactory to either party. Mantegna also met the famous
Turkish hostage Jem and studied with attention the ancient monuments, but
his impression of the city was a disappointing one as a whole. Returned to
Mantua in 1490, he embraced again his more literary and bitter vision of
the antiquity, and entered in strong connection with the new marquise, the
acculturated and intelligent Isabella d'Este.
In what was now his city he went on with the nine tempera pictures of the
Triumph of Caesar, which he had probably begun before his leaving for
Rome, and which he finished around 1492. These superbly invented and
designed compositions, gorgeous with all splendour of subject-matter and
accessory, and with the classical learning and enthusiasm of one of the
master-spirits of the age, have always been accounted of the first rank
among Mantegnas works. Considered Mantegna's finest work, they were sold
in 1628 along with the bulk of the Mantuan art treasures, and were not, as
is commonly said, plundered in the sack of Mantua in 1630. They are now
greatly damaged by patchy repaintings.
In spite of declining health, Mantegna continued to be active. Other works
of this period include the Madonna of the Caves, the St. Sebastian and the
famous Lamentation over the Dead Christ, probably painted for his personal
funerary chapel. Another work of Mantegna's later years was the so-called
Madonna della Vittoria, now in the Louvre. It was painted in tempera about
1495, in commemoration of the Battle of Fornovo, whose disputable outcome
Francesco Gonzaga was eager to show as an Italian League victory; the
church which originally housed the picture was built from Mantegnas own
design. The Madonna is here depicted with various saints, the archangel
Michael and St. Maurice holding her mantle, which is extended over the
kneeling Francesco Gonzaga, amid a profusion of rich festooning and other
accessory. Though not in all respects of his highest order of execution,
this counts among the most obviously beautiful and attractive of Mantegnas
works from which the qualities of beauty and attraction are often
excluded, in the stringent pursuit of those other excellences more germane
to his severe genius, tense energy passing into haggard passion.
Since 1497 Mantegna was commissioned by Isabella d'Este to translate the
mythological themes written by the court poet Paride Ceresara into
paintings for her private apartment (studiolo) in the Palazzo Ducale.
These paintings were dispersed in the following years: one of the, the
legend of the God Comus, was left unfinished by Mantegna and completed by
his successor as court painter in Mantua, Lorenzo Costa.
After the death of his wife, Mantegna became at an advanced age the father
of a natural son, Giovanni Andrea; and at the last, although he continued
launching out into various expenses and schemes, he had serious
tribulations, such as the banishment from Mantua of his son Francesco, who
had incurred the marquis' displeasure. Perhaps the aged master and
connoisseur regarded as barely less trying the hard necessity of parting
with a beloved antique bust of Faustina.
Very soon after this transaction he died in Mantua, on September 13, 1506.
In 1516 a handsome monument was set up to him by his sons in the church of
Sant'Andrea, where he had painted the altar-piece of the mortuary chapel.
The dome is decorated by Correggio.
Engravings
Mantegna was no less eminent as an engraver, though his history in that
respect is somewhat obscure, partly because he never signed or dated any
of his plates, unless in one single disputed instance of 1472. The account
which has come down to us is that Mantegna began engraving in Rome,
prompted by the engravings produced by the Florentine Baccio Baldini after
Sandro Botticelli; nor is there anything positive to invalidate this
account, except the consideration that it would consign all the numerous
and elaborate engravings made by Mantegna to the last sixteen or seventeen
years of his life, which seems a scanty space for them, and besides the
earlier engravings indicate an earlier period of his artistic style. It
has been suggested that he began engraving while still in Padua, under the
tuition of a distinguished goldsmith, Niccolò. He engraved about fifty
plates, according to the usual reckoning; some thirty of them are mostly
accounted indisputableoften large, full of figures, and highly studied.
Some recent connoisseurs, however, ask us to restrict to seven the number
of his genuine extant engravingswhich appears unreasonable. Among the
principal examples are Roman Triumphs, a Bacchanal Festival, Hercules and
Antaeus, Marine Gods, Judith with the Head of Holophernes, the Deposition
from the Cross, the Entombment, the Resurrection, the Man of Sorrows, the
Virgin in a Grotto. Mantegna has sometimes been credited with the
important invention of engraving with the bonn on copper. This claim
cannot be sustained on a comparisOn of dates, but at any rate he
introduced the art into upper Italy. Several of his engravings are
supposed to be executed on some metal less hard than cqpper. The technique
of himself and his followers is characterized by the strongly marked forms
of the design, and by the oblique formal hatchings of the shadows. The
prints are frequently to be found in two states, or editions. In the first
state the prints have been taken off with the roller, or even by
handpressing, and they are weak in tint; in the second state the printing
press has been used, and the ink is stronger.
Assessment and legacy
Giorgio Vasari eulogizes Mantegna, although pointing out his somehow
litigious character. He had been fond with his fellow-pupils at Padua: and
for two of them, Dario da Trevigi and Marco Zoppo, he retained a steady
friendship. Mantegna became very expensive in his habits, fell at times
into difficulties, and had to urge his valid claims upon the marquis'
attention.
In solid antique taste, Mantegna distanced all contemporary competition.
Though substantially related to the 15th century, the influence of
Mantegna on the style and tendency of his age was very marked over Italian
art generally. Giovanni Bellini, in his earlier works, obviously followed
the lead of his brother-in-law Andrea. Albrecht Dürer was influenced by
his style during his two trips in Italy. Leonardo da Vinci took from
Mantegna the use of decorations with festoons and fruit.
Mantegna's main legacy in considered the introduction of spatial
illusionism, both in frescoes and in sacra conversazione paintings: his
tradition of ceiling decoration was followed for almost three centuries.
Starting from the faint cupola of the Camera degli Sposi, Correggio
brought on his master and collaborator's research in perspective
constructions, producing eventually a mastwerwork like the dome of
Cathedral of Parma.
Major works
The Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1415-1453) - Tempera on canvas
transferred from wood, 40 x 55,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Crucifixion (1457-1459) - Wood, 67 x 93 cm, Louvre, Paris
Agony in the Garden (c. 1459) - Tempera on wood, 63 x 80 cm, National
Gallery, London
Portrait of Cardinal Lodovico Trevisano, (c. 1459-1469) - Tempera on wood,
44 x 33 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
San Luca Altarpiece (1453) - Panel, 177 x 230 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera,
Milan
Death of the Virgin (c. 1461) - Panel, 54 x 42 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
Portrait of a Man (c. 1460) - Wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Presentation at the Temple (c. 1460-1466) - Tempera on wood, 67 x 86 cm,
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Madonna with Sleeping Child (c.1465-1470) - Oil on canvas, 43x32 cm,
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
St. George (c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 66 x 32 cm, Gallerie
dell'Accademia, Venice
Altarpiece of San Zeno (1457-1460) - Panel, 480 x 450 cm, San Zeno, Verona
St. Sebastian (c. 1457-1459)- Wood, 68 x 30 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna
St. Sebastian - Panel, 255 x 140 cm, Louvre, Paris
Portrait of Carlo de Medici (c. 1467) - Tempera on panel, 40.6 x 29.5 cm,
Uffizi, Florence
The Madonna of the Cherubim (c. 1485) - Panel, 88 x 70 cm, Pinacoteca di
Brera, Milan
Triumph of Caesar (c. 1486) - Hampton Court Palace, England
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c. 1490) - Tempera on canvas, 68 x
81 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Madonna of the Caves (1489-1490)) - Uffizi, Florence
St. Sebastian (1490) - Ca' d'Oro, Venice
Madonna della Vittoria (1495) - Oil on canvas, 285 x 168 cm, Louvre, Paris
Holy Family (c. 1495-1500) - Tempera on canvas, 75.5 x 61.5 cm, The
Dresden Gallery, Dresden
Judith and Holofernes (1495) - Egg-tempera on wood, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C.
Minerva Chases the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (c. 1502)- Oil on
canvas, 160x192 cm, Louvre, Paris
Parnassus (Mars and Venus) (1497) - Canvas, 160 x 192 cm, Louvre, Paris
See also Ovetari Chapel and Camera degli Sposi of Mantua.
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