William Michael Rossetti

“ As many as one hundred and thirty-seven painters and pictorial students passed through his school, established towards 1440, which became famous all over Italy. Mantegna was, as he deserved to be, Squarcione’s favourite pupil. Squarcione adopted him as his son, and purposed making him the heir of his fortune. Andrea was only seventeen when he painted, in the church of S. Sofia in Padua, a Madonna picture of exceptional and recognized excellence. ”

“ The influence of Mantegna on the style and tendency of his age was very marked, and extended not only to his own flourishing Mantuan school, but over Italian art generally. His vigorous perspectives and trenchant foreshortenings pioneered the way to other artists: in solid antique taste, and the power of reviving the aspect of a remote age with some approach to system and consistency, he distanced all contemporary competition. ”

“ It’s 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 S. Agostino degli Eremitani, by which the great painter’s reputation was fully confirmed, and which remain to this day conspicuous among his finest achievements. [1] The now censorious Squarcione found much to carp at in 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 coloured stone-colour at once. ”

“ Successful and admired though he was in Padua, Mantegna left his native city at an early age, and never afterwards resettled there; the hostility of Squarcione has been assigned as the cause. The rest of his life was passed in Verona, Mantua and Rome—chiefly Mantua ”