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Mantegna Andrea
Italian version
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Mantegna Andrea
(Isola di Carturo (PD) 1431 - Mantova 1506)
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Andrea
Mantegna was one of the foremost north Italian painters of the 15th
century. A master of perspective and foreshortening, he made important
contributions to the compositional techniques of Renaissance painting.
Born (probably at Isola di Carturo, between Vicenza and Padua) in 1431,
Mantegna became the apprentice and adopted son of the painter Francesco
Squarcione of Padua. He developed a passionate interest in classical
antiquity. The influence of both ancient Roman sculpture and the
contemporary sculptor Donatello are clearly evident in Mantegna's
rendering of the human figure. His human forms were distinguished for
their solidity, expressiveness, and anatomical correctness.
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Mantegna's principal works in Padua were religious. His first great
success was a series of frescoes on the lives of St. James and St.
Christopher in the Ovetari Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani (1456;
badly damaged in World War II). In 1459 Mantegna went to Mantua to
become court painter to the ruling Gonzaga family and accordingly turned
from religious to secular and allegorical subjects. His masterpiece was
a series of frescoes (1465-74) for the Camera degli Sposi (“bridal
chamber”) of the Palazzo Ducale. In these works, he carried the art of
illusionistic perspective to new limits. His figures depicting the court
were not simply applied to the wall like flat portraits but appeared to
be taking part in realistic scenes, as if the walls had disappeared. The
illusion is carried over onto the ceiling, which appears to be open to
the sky, with servants, a peacock, and cherubs leaning over a railing.
This was the prototype of illusionistic ceiling painting and was to
become an important element of baroque and rococo art. Mantegna's later
works varied in quality. His largest undertaking, a fresco series on the
Triumphs of Caesar (1489, Hampton Court Palace, England), displays a
rather dry classicism, but Parnassus (1497, Musée du Louvre, Paris), an
allegorical painting commissioned by Isabelle d'Este, is his freshest,
most animated work. His work never ceased to be innovative.
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In Madonna of Victory (1495, Musée du Louvre), he
introduced a new compositional arrangement, based on diagonals, which
was later to be exploited by Correggio, while his Dead Christ (1506,
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) was a tour de force of foreshortening that
pointed ahead to the style of 16th-century Mannerism. One of the key
artistic figures of the second half of the 15th century, Mantegna was
the dominant influence on north Italian painting for 50 years. It was
also through him that German artists, notably Albrecht Dürer, were made
aware of the artistic discoveries of the Italian Renaissance. He died in
Mantua on September 13, 1506.
Special thanks to the Microsoft
Corporation for permission to use following biographical information
from Microsoft® Encarta '97
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