Andrea Mantegna

“ Andrea Mantegna, the greatest master of the Paduan School, has a commanding name in art history, so much so that many writers describe the epoch of painting (from 1450 to 1500 and a little onwards) , of which he was one of the chief representatives, as the Mantegnesque period. "No painter more remarkable for originality than Mantegna ever lived. Whoever has learned to relish this great master will never overlook a scrap by him; for while his works sometimes show a certain austerity and harshness, they have always a force and will which belong to no one else" (Layard) . ”

“ Are these goddesses and nymphs immortal women such as the ancients conceived, or are they not rather fantastic fairies or nixen, Titanias and Undines, incorporeal daughters of dew and gossamer and mist?
In Sandro Botticelli the teachings of the statue are forgotten or distorted when the artist takes up his palette and brushes; in his far greater contemporary, Andrea Mantegna, the ever-present antique chills and arrests the vitality of the modern. ”

“ Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua. He was the son of a farmer. His early history, according to tradition, is very similar to that of Giotto. Just as Cimabue adopted Giotto, Squarcione, a painter who had travelled in Italy and Greece, and made a great collection of antiques, from which he taught in a famous school of painters, adopted Andrea Mantegna at the early age of ten years. It was long believed that Mantegna, in the end, forfeited the favour of his master by marrying Nicolosa Bellini, the sister of Gentile and Gian Bellini, whose father was the great rival of Squarcione ”

“ Andrea Mantegna had his home at Mantua, except when he was called to Rome to paint for the Pope, Innocent VIII. An anecdote is told by Mrs Jameson of this commission. It seems the Pope's payments were irregular; and one day when he visited his painter at work, and his Holiness asked the meaning of a certain allegorical female figure in the design, Andrea answered, with somewhat audacious point, that he was trying to represent Patience. ”

“ Mantegna then returned to Mantua, and went on with a series of works—the nine tempera-pictures, each of them 9 ft. square, of the “Triumph of Caesar”—which he had probably begun before his leaving for Rome, and which are now in Hampton Court. 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 Mantegna’s works. ”

“ Andrea Mantegna, the great painter and engraver, who made the final step in the development of pictorial art in Italy, was a shepherd's son, like Giotto, born about one hundred years after Giotto's death. Similar conditions and a similar bent of genius produced different results in different centuries. Between Giotto and Mantegna the times had changed; men lived differently, thought differently and saw differently. ”

“ Born at a time of exceptional intellectual and æsthetic activity, when Italian humanism was nearing its fullest development, and the art of painting, after a protracted struggle with mechanical difficulties, had at last obtained an almost complete mastery over its media, with a real grasp of the long-neglected science of perspective, Andrea Mantegna may justly be said to have been a true representative of the early Renaissance in Italy, an [Pg 10] earnest combatant in the arduous struggle for liberty of thought and expression in which so many of his gifted fellow-countrymen were engaged. ”

“ In their work the liberty of the modern mind finds its first and noblest expression. They deal with familiar and time-honoured Christian motives reverently; but they use them at the same time for the exhibition of pure human beauty. Pagan influences yield them spirit-stirring inspiration; yet the antique models of style, which proved no less embarrassing to their successors than Saul's armour was to David, weigh lightly, like a magician's breast-plate, upon their heroic strength.
Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua in 1431. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Andrea Mantegna, a man of much energy and fancy, entered young into the service of the Gonzaga lords of Mantua, receiving from them a salary of thirty pounds a year and a piece of land, on which the painter built a house, and painted it within and without—the latter one of the first examples of artistic waste, followed later by Tintoret and Veronese, regardless of the fact that painting could not survive in the open air of Northern Italy. ”

“ In his eagerness to proclaim the beauty and power of the human body in vigorous action, he far outstrips his powers of expression, yet his muscular exaggerations need not materially lessen our enjoyment of this powerful, expressive print. In Andrea Mantegna, we reach the central figure of this early period of Italian engraving. In him are combined the humanist’s devotion to classical art and the fiery energy of a man of action, filled with his art, rugged, stern, taking from47 nature and antiquity the forms of artistic expression. ”

“ With his fellow-pupils at Padua he had been affectionate; and for two of them, Dario da Trevigi and Marco Zoppo, he retained a steady friendship. That he had a high opinion of himself was natural, for no artist of his epoch could produce more manifest vouchers of marked and progressive attainment. He became very expensive in his habits, fell at times into difficulties, and had to urge his valid claims upon the marquis’s attention. After his return to Mantua from Rome his prosperity was at its height, until the death of his wife. ”

“ Of some of his works what Vasari adds is no doubt true—that they recall the idea of stone rather than of living flesh. But Mantegna studied nature closely too; for, as Goethe said of his pictures, "the study of the antique gives form, and nature adds appropriate movement and the health of life." Mantegna died at Mantua and was buried in a chapel of the Church of Sant' Andrea. The expenses incurred by him in founding and decorating this family chapel had added seriously to his embarrassments. "Over his grave was placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and perfect in execution. ”

“ His story was that “Mantegna, upon his arrival in Mantua, made him splendid offers, and treated him with great friendliness. Actuated by feelings of compassion, however, towards his old friend, Zoan Andrea, a painter in Mantua, from whom prints (stampe) , drawings, and medals had been stolen, and wishing to help in the restoration of the plates, he had worked with his friend for four months. As soon as this came to Mantegna’s knowledge he proceeded to threats, and one evening Ardizone and Zoan Andrea had been assaulted by ten or more armed men and left for dead in the square.” ”

“ The central composition of a triptych, now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, belonging to Mantegna’s second period of art development. Supposed to have been painted for the chapel of the Castello at Mantua about 1464.
That Andrea early showed remarkable talent is proved by his having been made, when he was but ten years old, a member of the Guild of Paduan Artists, to which belonged all the leading painters, sculptors, and craftsmen of the city, and association with them must have done much to aid his art-development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Santa Maria in Organo, Andrea Mantegna painted the picture of the high altar for the monks of Monte Oliveto, an exceedingly beautiful thing; and in like manner he executed that for the altar of San Zeno. ”

“ Andrea Mantegna, (born 1431; died 1506) , was a native of Vicenza and probably of humble origin. When a mere child he became the pupil and adopted son of the noted painter and instructor, Francesco Squarcione of Padua, and was soon enrolled in the painters’ guild of that city. In 1449 he began painting for the d'Este at Ferrara, and between 1453 and 1459 he married Niccolosa, a daughter of Squarcione’s rival Giacopo Bellini, and sister of the more famous brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. ”

“ We are informed by the Latin Editor of Albert Durer's book on the Symmetry of the Human Body, that during his stay at Venice he was requested by Andrea Mantegna, who had conceived a high opinion of his execution and certainty of hand, to pay him a visit at Mantoua, for the express purpose of giving him an idea of that form, of which he himself had had a glimpse from the contemplation of the Antique. ”

“ Paolo was summoned to Padua by Donato, when the latter was working there, and at the entrance of the house of the Vitali he painted some giants in terra-verde, which, as I have found in a Latin letter written by Girolamo Campagnola to Messer Leonico Tomeo, the philosopher, are so beautiful that Andrea Mantegna held them in very great account. ”

“ This huge church would not be particularly remarkable if it were not for its fine frescoes adjoining the right transept. The best of these are by Andrea Mantegna, a great Paduan master of the end of the fifteenth century, celebrated for his “lifelike” work. But the interest attached to these frescoes sinks into insignificance when compared with those by Giotto in the Arena chapel close to the church of the Eremitani, the importance of which can scarcely be overrated. ”

“ Revolutions so uninterrupted, aggravated by accidental devastations of floods and fire, may account for the want of earlier monuments of art in Mantoua and its districts, than the remains from the epoch of Mathilda. [155] A want perhaps more to be regretted by the antiquary [363] than the historian of art, whose real epoch begins with the patronage of Lodovico Gonzaga and the appearance of Andrea Mantegna. [156]
This native of Padova [157] was the adopted son and pupil of Squarcione, in whose school he acquired that taste for the antique which marks his works at every period of his practice ”

“ Between Cardinal Francesco and Andrea a very strong friendship was soon formed, which may possibly have had something to do with the pressing invitations Mantegna now began to receive from the father of the young prelate Lodovico, the reigning Marquis of Mantua, who worthily maintained the great traditions of his ancestors, under whose auspices the ancient fortress that was to become so inseparably associated with the memory of the Paduan master was enlarged and strengthened, and the Grand Cathedral with the noble Renaissance Church of S. Andrea were built. ”

“ A second version of the Mater Amabilis, representing the Virgin and Child full-length, but without accessories, has been also very beautifully treated. She is usually seated in a landscape, and frequently within the mystical enclosure (Hortus clausus) , which is sometimes in the German pictures a mere palisade of stakes or boughs.
Andrea Mantegna, though a fantastic painter, had generally some meaning in his fancies. There is a fine picture of his in which the Virgin and Child are seated in a landscape, and in the background is a stone-quarry, where a number of figures are seen busily at work ”

“ We perceive, then, that these excellent masters carefully enquired into the various properties of natural objects, and imitated the life with studious care. As to this work of Mantegna, to say all in one word, it could not possibly be superior or more perfectly executed, wherefore if the marquis esteemed our artist before, lie valued and lionoured him much more highly ever after. ”

“ This painter was originally brought up as a goldsmith, and was one of the assistants of Lorenzo Ghiberti in preparing the first pair of the celebrated gates of the Baptistery. It is doubtful with whom he learnt to paint. He introduced new enthusiasms and interests into the art, as explained below in the notes on this picture. The majority of his works have perished. He was employed principally in Florence, where frescoes by him may be seen in one of the cloisters of S. Maria Novella. At Padua he also executed some works which are said by Vasari to have been greatly admired by Andrea Mantegna. ”

“ 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. ”