Mantegna

Mantegna, ANDREA, Italian painter, born in or near Padua in 1431, was the favourite pupil and adopted son of that tailor Mæcenas of painters, Squarcione. By studying the antique collections gathered together by his patron, especially from the study of the sculpture, Mantegna became imbued with the spirit of ancient art, and all his works bear the impress of the severe dignity and precision of his models. Grace and beauty were not the ideals that he aimed at; some of his pictures are positively ugly. A precocious genius, Mantegna set up an independent atelier when only seventeen years of age. Amongst his earliest works, done at Padua, are frescoes of saints in the church of St Antony, an altarpiece for St Justina, and most of the frescoes of St Christopher, and some of those of St James, in the church of the Hermits. Having married the sister of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, he seems to have become estranged from Squarcione, and left Padua (1459). He painted an altarpiece, the 'Madonna and Angels,' for St Zeno's church at Verona, and was induced by Lodovico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, to settle in his city. There he remained, with the exception of a visit to Rome (1488-90) to paint a series of frescoes (now destroyed) for Pope Innocent VIII., until his death on 13th September 1506. His greatest works at Mantua were nine tempera pictures representing the 'Triumph of Cæsar' (his masterpiece), 'The Madonna of Victory with Gonzaga,' 'Parnassus,' 'Defeat of the Vices,' 'Triumph of Scipio,' and 'Madonna between St John the Baptist and St Magdalene.' Like Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna was something of a universal genius. He was an engraver and an architect, as well as a painter, and is said to have written poems and wielded the sculptor's chisel. He introduced into North Italy, though he can hardly have invented, the art of engraving with the burin on copper. His best plates bear the titles 'A Bacchanal Feast,' 'Descent from the Cross,' 'Entombment,' 'Resurrection,' 'Battle of the Titans,' and 'Roman Triumphs.' Mantegna's technical excellencies, his skilful foreshortening, masterly perspective, and austerity of form exercised a great influence upon subsequent Italian art.