Andrea Mantegna

Italian artist

• Born: c. 1431
• Birthplace: Isola di Cartura, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: September 13, 1506
• Place of death: Mantua (now in Italy)

Mantegna contributed to the growth of Renaissance art in northern Italy and created an individual style that shows his powers of invention, directness of presentation, illusionism, and detailed realism. He was a transmitter of the Florentine Renaissance to his northern Italian contemporaries and was an artistic interpreter of antiquity for his own and succeeding generations.

Early Life

Andrea Mantegna (ahn-DRAY-ah mahn-TEHN-yah) was born near Padua in northern Italy. His probable birth date of around 1431 is based on an inscription, preserved in early documents, from a lost altarpiece of 1448 executed for the Church of Santa Sofia in Padua. It lists his age as seventeen when the project reached completion.

Little is known of Mantegna’s life before he reached the age of ten. At that time, his father, Biagio, a carpenter, gave him up for adoption to the painter Francesco Squarcione, who appears to have acted as adoptive father to several talented boys. In addition to his activities as a painter, collector, and dealer, Squarcione trained his young charges while providing them with a home and the necessities of life. Once their schooling was complete, the master contracted with wealthy patrons for the services of his young protégés.

Mantegna served his apprenticeship in the workshop of his adoptive father from 1442 to 1448. During the 1440’s in Padua, Squarcione’s bottega functioned as an exchange for ideas and methods among important artists and craftsmen. In this ambience, Mantegna was introduced to the best talents and the latest artistic developments of the time. The superior genius of Donatello, the Florentine sculptor, provided a focus for Paduan art from 1443 to 1453. Donatello’s works must have been a major topic of conversation among artists and patrons who frequented Squarcione’s workshop.

Other Florentine artists influenced Mantegna’s development through the agency of Squarcione’s bottega. In 1447, the master and his apprentices moved to Venice and resided there for several months. Paolo Uccello, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Andrea del Castagno had preceded them by the period of a decade or more, and at different times. These artists had all left the mark of the Florentine Renaissance on the city of canals and lagoons. It should also be noted that Lippi had executed in Padua works that Mantegna would already have seen. Elements peculiar to the individual styles of these artists were transmitted to Mantegna at that formative period in his career.

The atmosphere of Squarcione’s shop, with its constant activity and opportunity for dialogue, provided Mantegna with all the conditions necessary for his accelerated development as a painter. Squarcione’s own approach to painting appears to have had minimal impact on Mantegna. The importance, however, of Donatello and the new Florentine art in the formation of Mantegna’s style is universally recognized and may be clearly distinguished in the young artist’s paintings of the 1450’s. In addition to providing Mantegna with an entrée into the contemporary art circles, Squarcione instilled in his adopted son a love of antiquity. The influence of classical art and literature appears constantly in Mantegna’s earliest and latest work.

Mantegna’s early training came to a close in 1448. In January, the young man sued Squarcione over the terms of his adoption and what he considered to be insufficient compensation for his six years as an apprentice. The two men reached a compromise that enabled Mantegna to declare his independence and to take control of his own finances. It seems extraordinary that Mantegna was able to do this at the tender age of seventeen, unless he had made significant contributions as a member of Squarcione’s bottega, thereby establishing his reputation as a painter of great potential.

Life’s Work

Mantegna received his first major independent commission in May, 1448. The plan for decoration of the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua included provisions for an altar and frescoes with scenes from the lives of Saints James and Christopher, who were patron saints of the church. At the outset, Mantegna shared this work with several other artists. For several reasons, including the death of two participants and withdrawal from the project by the others, Mantegna was left with a large number of scenes to finish by himself. The three standing figures of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint Christopher in the vault of the chapel’s apse were probably the earliest frescoes that Mantegna completed. If this is true, they were done while Niccolò Pizzolo, a Paduan painter who initially shared Mantegna’s half of the commission, was still alive.

Modern scholarship supports the conclusion that Pizzolo may have had an even stronger influence on Mantegna’s artistic formation than Squarcione. As Mantegna’s older associate in the Ovetari venture, Pizzolo may have cemented the connection between the younger artist and the new Florentine art. Mantegna’s three saints do not have the strong sculptural quality of Pizzolo’s adjacent figures, but the draperies are carefully studied and the poses are harmonious and symmetrically balanced in the new manner.

Saint James Baptizing Hermogenes and Saint James Before Herod Agrippa are the first completely mature works by Mantegna in the Ovetari Chapel. The painter’s thorough knowledge of Leon Battista Alberti’s perspective system, published in De pictura (1435; Of Painting , 1726), is visible in the precisely measured perspective grid of each fresco as well as in the common vanishing point employed for these two adjacent scenes. The classical derivation of the architectural settings and the sculptural decorations in these works reveal Mantegna’s growing love of the antique. Although there is no direct proof, the soldier standing in the right foreground of Saint James Before Herod Agrippa is often identified as a self-portrait. The sharp angular features and the distinct frown fit written descriptions of Mantegna’s serious and often severe demeanor.

Two other scenes, Saint James Led to Execution and Martyrdom of Saint James , are impressive in their continued exploration of perspective and figural relationships. Their position on the wall places the lower edge of each composition approximately at eye level, making the figures and architecture appear to move down the picture plane as they recede in the picture space. Several of the figures in the foreground seem to violate the picture plane and project into the viewer’s space. By this time, such effects were common in Florentine painting but still quite unusual in northern Italian art. The sculptural, stony quality of Mantegna’s figures was very likely a result of his love of ancient sculpture and an appreciation for the work of Donatello. This sculpturesque quality combined with the northern Italian penchant for detailed realism are two of the major components of Mantegna’s mature style. During the nine years the painter worked in the Ovetari Chapel, from 1448 to 1457, his formation as a major Renaissance artist occurred.

Between 1457 and 1459, Mantegna was occupied with the commission for a major altarpiece for the Church of San Zeno in Verona. The main part of this polyptych consists of three panels that depict a Madonna Enthroned with Saints . The carved and gilded wooden frame with its arched pediment and entablature form a temple format using the Corinthian order. Its design and the general placement of the figures in the painting are thought to reflect the original disposition, now much changed, of the principal elements in Donatello’s altar for Sant’ Antonio. Mantegna visually attached the columns of the frame to piers in the painting and continued the illusion by creating a square loggia that encompasses the Madonna, the Christ Child, and the saints, while defining the perspective space of the picture. A “classical” frieze of cherubs, clearly Mantegna’s own invention, surrounds the level above the piers. The spatially conceived garland of fruit painted at the front of the picture, the crisp detail, and the bright colors show Mantegna at his best. The San Zeno altarpiece sets the tone for a whole group of works of this category in northern Italian art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

By 1459, Mantegna had accepted the invitation of the Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, to become his court painter. As one of the first Renaissance artists officially attached to a princely court, Mantegna found himself painting altarpieces, frescoing churches, decorating palaces, and even designing costumes and entertainments for lavish court pageants. The frescoes of the Camera degli Sposi (chamber of the bride and groom) in the Gonzaga Palace were painted between 1465 and 1474, and are considered to be major works in Mantegna’s mature style. He covered the walls and ceiling of the square chamber with scenes from the life of the Gonzaga family. The left wall contains a depiction of the meeting between Ludovico Gonzaga and his son, Cardinal Francesco. The Gonzaga court is shown on the right wall, and the ceiling fresco takes the form of a circular architectural opening, the eye, or oculus, of a dome. The intermediate zone, which ties the lower scenes to the oculus, consists of illusionistically painted transverse arches that crisscross a flattened domical ceiling and encompass wreathed medallions containing the busts of Roman emperors. Although there is a wealth of classical allusion juxtaposed with scenes from the life of the Gonzaga family, the exact meaning and relationship of the parts have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The overall design and meticulous detail of the chamber reveal Mantegna’s genius as a decorator and his skill with trompe l’oeil effects. The oculus in particular is a tour de force of perspective and foreshortening and, when viewed from the proper vantage point beneath, surprises and amuses the viewer with the artist’s expertise and gentle sense of humor.

Mantegna continued in the service of the Gonzagas after Ludovico’s death in 1478, first for Federico and then for Francesco. Francesco presented Mantegna to Pope Innocent VIII in June, 1488, and this trip to Rome gave Mantegna the opportunity to study the classical antiquities of the Eternal City. In addition, he was commissioned by the pope to paint a small chapel in the Vatican. On his return from Rome in 1491, a change occurred in Mantegna’s style. The paintings of his late period, such as the Madonna of the Victory (1495), are almost overrefined. Linear elements increase in complexity and tend to rob figures and objects of their three-dimensional form. The brilliance of the earlier works is exchanged for softer tones. While still the works of a great painter, the later productions lack the force and vitality of his youth, and instead evoke an idyllic mood of quiet and gentleness.

The Triumph of Caesar (begun c. 1486) was the last great series created by Mantegna. These enormous canvases painted in tempera are 108 by 108 inches (274 by 274 centimeters) and represent a theme based on Petrarch’s description of a triumphal procession. Clearly inspired by Mantegna’s trip to Rome, these works are the masterpieces of his late style. They are carefully planned and executed to provide a continuity of atmosphere from one canvas to the next as the procession unfolds. They are also so precisely detailed that they present an unparalleled feeling of truth to nature. Yet, in all their complexity of line, foreshortening, and changes in scale, designed to portray the noise and clamor of such an event, they exude the same curious quietness and serenity that mark many of Mantegna’s late works.

A letter from Mantegna’s son to Francesco Gonzaga tells of the artist’s death at seven in the evening on Sunday, September 13, 1506. Although Mantegna suffered from recurring ill health and financial problems toward the end of his life, he remained an active and innovative figure in northern Italian art to the end.

Significance

Andrea Mantegna stands forth as a major figure in the history of Renaissance art. For his northern contemporaries, he functioned as an important interpreter of the new Florentine art. He was among the very few artists working in Padua, Venice, or the other princely states of the north who was intellectually prepared to understand and absorb the full meaning and potential of the art of Paolo Uccello, Fra Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Castagno, and Donatello.

Mantegna’s coherent and consistent vision of the physical world, fostered by his Florentine contacts, became the standard to which his contemporaries conformed. His passion for perspective devices and foreshortening was also born of this connection. Mantegna combined his knowledge of the new Florentine experiments with the native northern Italian tradition of detailed realism and created a style that guided his own generation and the next into a full-fledged Renaissance.

Mantegna was also the principal interpreter of antiquity for his generation. His constant use of classical references, real or invented, resulted in the synthesis of ancient and contemporary forms and ideas central to any definition of the Italian Renaissance. Mantegna had the courage to use his artistic genius to the fullest, to give free rein to his intellectual curiosity about the distant past, and to use his talent to explore the latest contemporary developments in art. He was truly and completely of his time and deserves to be remembered as a major contributor to the northern Italian Renaissance.

Bibliography

Ames-Lewis, Francis, and Anka Bednarek, eds. Mantegna and Fifteenth-Century Court Culture: Lectures Delivered in Connection with the Andrea Mantegna Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1992. London: Department of History of Art, Birkbeck College, 1993. Anthology of essays detailing the influence of court culture on Mantegna’s life and art. Includes forty-four pages of photographic plates, bibliography, and index.

Camesasca, Ettore. Mantegna. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. A well-illustrated survey that contains a discussion of all the major works of the artist and includes reference to the most recent primary evidence that sheds light on the artist’s career and production. Presents summaries of many of the scholarly arguments relative to questions about Mantegna’s work in an attempt to arrive at a consensus concerning perennial problems in the artist’s oeuvre. Includes excellent color reproductions and a good general bibliography.

Carr, Dawson W. Andrea Mantegna: The “Adoration of the Magi.” Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997. Thorough analysis of Mantegna’s masterpiece, detailing the artist’s life in Padua at the time he created it, the formal innovations of the painting, and the modern-day difficulties of preserving the work. Includes illustrations and bibliographic references.

Fiocco, Giuseppe. The Frescoes of Mantegna in the Eremitani Church, Padua. Introduction by Terisio Pignatti. New York: Phaidon Press, 1978. This definitive study of the Ovetari frescoes was first published in 1947, after the destruction of the chapel by stray bombs during World War II. Updated by Pignatti to include all the more recent research, which includes new documentation that confirms Fiocco’s original assertions about Mantegna’s part in the frescoes and the influences at work on him.

Hartt, Frederick. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 5th ed. New York: H. N. Abrams, 2003. The most recent comprehensive survey of Italian Renaissance art, including painting, sculpture, and architecture. Written for the general reader and copiously illustrated with black-and-white and color illustrations.

Kristeller, Paul. Andrea Mantegna. London: Longmans, Green, 1901. The earliest definitive monograph on Mantegna, marked by a scholarly and thorough use of all available documentary evidence related to the life and work of the artist. This monograph is a valuable and comprehensive study that will reward the serious reader with many insights about Mantegna’s contributions to Renaissance painting.

Lincoln, Evelyn. The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Study of the careers of Mantegna and two other printmakers, Domenico Beccafumi and Diana Mantuana. Details the lifestyle and vocation of Renaissance printmakers, as well as the culture in which they flourished. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, index.

Mantegna, Andrea. All the Paintings of Mantegna. Text by Renata Cipriani. Translated by Paul Colacicchi. 2 vols. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964. Illustrates in black and white all the known and attributed works of the artist. Contains a general essay on Mantegna’s life and work, biographical notes and dates, a brief catalog of works, selected criticism, and a selected bibliography. Good as a quick reference.

Pächt, Otto. Venetian Painting in the Fifteenth Century: Jacopo, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and Andrea Mantegna. Edited by Margareta Vyoral-Tschapka and Michael Pächt. Translated by Fiona Elliott. London: Harvey Miller, 2003. Extended study of the Bellini family, including in-law Mantegna. Focuses on Mantegna’s distinctively fifteenth century use of perspective to construct depth and space. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, index.