Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna
Portrait House of Husbands (Mantua, Palazzo Ducale )
Birth	1431 Isola di Carturo , Republic of Venice
Deaths	13 September 1506 Mantua
Activity (s)	Painting
Master	Francesco Squarcione
Artistic movement	Renaissance
Influenced by	Filippo Lippi , Paolo Uccello , Donatello
Influenced	Giovanni Bellini
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Andrea Mantegna - Mantua , 13 September 1506 ) is an Italian painter of the Renaissance that broke definitively with the Gothic style in the middle of the ^fifteenth century without departing from this attitude throughout his life.

Summary 1 Biography 2 His life in Mantua 3 The writer 4 Place de Mantegna and heritage 5 Works 6 Notes, references and sources 6.1 Bibliography 6.2 Article Related 6.3 External Links

/ / Biography

Mantegna, second son of a poor carpenter named Biagio, a native of Isola di Carturo, was born near Vicenza in the Republic of Venice. At the age of ten he was apprenticed and was adopted in 1442 by Francesco Squarcione , head of a major workshop in Padua. Mantegna is his favorite disciple. Squarcione teaches him Latin and gave him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. He is a master of perspective.

In 1445, Mantegna is part of the brotherhood of painters in Padua as the son of Squarcione, but, at the age of 17, he left Squarcione. Later, he affirms that his former master had used his work without pay at the appropriate level. Padua attracts artists from Veneto and Tuscany, but also the early works of Mantegna are marked by Florentine painters such as Paolo Uccello , Fra Filippo Lippi and Donatello

His first work, now lost, is an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia ( 1448 ). The same year he was called with Niccol Pizzolo and two Venetian painters, Vivarini Antonio and Giovanni d'Alemagna , working on the decoration by the frescoes of the chapel Ovetari in the apse of the church of the Hermits. A series of events that ends Mantegna single largest part of the work (which was almost completely destroyed in the bombings of Padua in 1944 ). The most spectacular part of the cycle shown in the fresco is one where we saw the bottom in perspective, St. Jacques led to execution. The sketch of this fresco survived. It is the preliminary work on a mural older who came to us and we can look at the final work. Despite the authentic appearance of this monument, it is a copy of any known Roman structure. To dress up his characters, Mantegna also adopted the model of cloth wet Romans, which itself comes from a Greek invention, although the strained attitudes and interactions are inspired by Donatello. The diagram clearly shows that the nude figures are used in the design works from the early Renaissance. In the preparatory sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to a point of view means. The perspective from below, allowing implementation largest and most effective is also found in the altarpiece Trivulzio. Ansuino, which works with Mantegna for the Chapel of Ovetari, brought his style in the Forl school of painting.

While the young man progresses in his studies, he was influenced by Jacopo Bellini , father of celebrated painters Giovanni and Gentile , whose daughter and wife Nicolosia Mantegna in 1453.

Other young Mantegna frescoes are the two saints that overcome the porch of the church of Sant'Antonio in Padua ( 1452 ) and an altarpiece showing St Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan ( 1453 ). It is likely, however, that before that time some students Squarcione, including Mantegna, had already begun the series of frescoes in the chapel of San Cristoforo's Church of the Hermits of St. Augustine, now regarded as his masterpiece work. Squarcione, now raised to criticize, find fault with the early achievements of this series illustrating the life of St. Jacques, he claims that the characters look like men of stone, and would have been better to give them color stone.

Andrea seems to have been influenced by the old precepts of his masters in the subject later, the legend of St. Christopher , he combines with his other qualities more natural character and vivacity. Accustomed as he is studying the marbles and the severity of the antique, and openly acknowledging the ancient works he considers to be superior to nature, it strives to present to the accuracy of the line at the dignity of idea and character, what makes him tend toward rigidity and austerity to integrate rather than to a kind of sensitivity expression. His drapery folds are powerful and strong, being studied (they say) on models draped in paper and fabric pasted. Thin characters, while all muscles and bones, an impetuous action but the energy, a landscape of tawny color, made of sand and where dragging rollers , which now raises his style and gives it a majestic athletic.

He never changed the way he had adopted in Padua; staining, early neutral and indecisive, strengthens and matures. There is in all his work more balance in the colors of subtlety in tone. One of his major goals is the optical illusion, based on the mastery of perspective, and it succeeds on its own, through hard work, even if at this point it does not reach perfection and if no more than absolutely not what we do better then. But the illusion of reality is astounding.

Despite its success and admiration which it is subject, Mantegna left his early home Padua and never returned. It was seen as the result of hostile Squarcione. He spent the rest of his life in Verona , at Mantua and Rome , could not establish whether he also lived in Venice and Florence. In Verona, about 1459, he painted an altarpiece for the church of San Zeno Maggiore, a Madonna and musician angels, with four saints on each side, and panels of the predella on the Life of Christ.

His life in Mantua

In recent years, the Marquis Louis III Gonzaga , Marquis of Mantua Mantegna to press into his service, so the following year, in 1460, he is appointed court artist. At first he lies from time to time to Goito , but from December 1466 , he moved with his family in Mantua itself. He receives a salary of 75 lire per month, a considerable sum for the time and which clearly indicates the high esteem in which it takes its art. It is in fact the first painter of all those who were domiciled in Mantua.

His masterpiece made in this town is painted in the Castello San Giorgio is part of the Ducal Palace in the city, a series of frescoes today known as Camera degli Sposi ( House Husband ): a series of Compositions comprising only frescoes in one piece and showing different representations of the Gonzaga family in their daily lives.

The decor of the room is probably completed in 1474. The ten years following are not happy nor for Mantegna Mantua : his character becomes irritable, his son dies Bernardino, and also the Marquis Louis III in 1478, his wife Barbara in 1481 and his successor Frederick ^I the Hunchback in 1484 (who had Mantegna knight). It is only with the advent of Francis II that orders for Mantua artistic resume. He built a large house near the church of San Sebastiano, and adorned with many paintings. You can still see this house today, but the paintings have disappeared. At that time, he began to gather a few busts of ancient Rome (which were given to Lorenzo de Medici, when the Florentine leader visited Mantua in 1483 ), painted and decorative architectural fragments, and Saint Sebastian finished his impressive, now visible in the Louvre.

In 1488 Mantegna was called by Pope Innocent VIII to decorate with frescoes the viewpoint of a chapel at the Vatican. This series of frescoes, including a remarkable baptism of Christ will be destroyed by Pius VI in 1780. The pope treated Mantegna less generously than it was at the court of Mantua, but all in all, their agreement, which ceases in 1500 , was no disadvantage to either party. Mantegna also met the famous Turkish hostage Jem and carefully studied the ancient monuments, but it leaves the impression that the city is on the whole disappointing. Returned to Mantua in 1490 , he resumed his vision more forcefully and more bitter literary antiquity, and binds tightly with the new marquee, Isabella d'Este , cultured and intelligent.

In what is now his city, he continued his work with the nine paintings has tempera triumph of Julius Caesar , he probably started before his departure for Rome, and it ends around 1492. These compositions, superbly invented and produced, radiating the splendor of the main subject and accessories, with classical training and the enthusiasm of one of the greatest minds of his time, have always been at the forefront among works by Mantegna. Considered his most accomplished work, they are sold in 1628 with most of the art treasures of Mantua, and they will not, as is commonly said, stolen during the sack of Mantua in 1630, but today, they remain extremely damaged by clumsy refreshments.

Despite declining health, Mantegna is active. Among other works in the same period we find the Madonna's career , Saint Sebastian and the famous Lamentation over the Dead Christ , he probably painted for his personal funerary chapel. Another work of Mantegna recent years is called the Madonna of Victory , now in the Louvre. It is painted in tempera about 1495, in commemoration of the Battle of Fornovo whose outcome is debatable, but wanted to show that Francis II as a victory for the Italian league, the church which originally hosted this table was constructed plans even after Mantegna.

The Madonna is represented here along with several saints, the archangel St. Michael and St. George that he hold his coat, under which the extension takes Francis II kneeling in a rich profusion of garlands and other ornaments. Regardless of its perfection in execution, this work has clearly among the finest and most engaging works by Mantegna, where the qualities of beauty and attractiveness are often excluded in favor of the vigorous prosecution of those other ideals most appropriate his genius serious: the tension of energy expressed in a frantic passion.

From 1497 Mantegna was commissioned by Isabella d'Este , Mantua mistress since 1490, transforming the mythological themes sung by the court poet Paride Ceresara in paintings for his private apartment ( studiolo ) at San Giorgio castle. These paintings are scattered over the following years: one of them, The Legend of God Comus, was left unfinished by Mantegna and completed by Lorenzo Costa , who succeeded him as court painter in Mantua. His relations with the Marquise are difficult, the latter attempting to renew the style of the court by appealing to other artists. The Marquis is still defending him and orders a Virgin to victory.

After the death of his wife, Mantegna was at an advanced age a natural son, Giovanni Andrea, and towards the end, although it continues to engage in all kinds of expenditure, is in serious trouble, as the exile of Mantua of his son Francesco, who had incurred the wrath of the Marquis. It is possible that the old master, enlightened connoisseur, was regarded as hardly less tragic the hard necessity of parting with an antique bust of Faustina he loved.

Shortly after this sale, he died in Mantua on 13 September 1506. In 1516 , a magnificent monument is placed in his honor by his son in the church of Sant'Andrea, where he painted the altarpiece of the mortuary chapel. The dome was decorated by Correggio.

The burner

Mantegna was no less conspicuous as a writer, albeit a rather difficult to study, partly because he never signed or dated any of his plates, except once, in 1472, and fact is disputed. One hypothesis is that he never handled the burin but only supplied the drawings .

The list that we received shows that Mantegna began engraving in Rome, prompted to do so by the engravings had made the Florentine Baccio Baldini by Sandro Botticelli , we can not object to this list if it is it dates back the prints that Mantegna made numerous and elaborate, of sixteen or seventeen years of his life, which seems very little time, not to mention that the oldest carvings reminiscent of the beginnings of his artistic style. It was suggested that he started to burn while still at Padua, receiving instruction from a goldsmith distinguished, Niccol. He engraved about fifty plates, according to the usual account, some thirty of them are generally regarded as indisputable, they are often large, filled with remarkable characters and studied. Some experts, however, have recently sought to limit to seven the number of authentic engravings, which seems unreasonable. Among the main examples are cited Roman triumphs, party orgy, Hercules and Antaeus , the sea gods, Judith with the Head of Holofernes , the Deposition from the Cross, the Entombment, the Resurrection, the Man of Sorrows the Virgin in a cave. Mantegna was sometimes credited with the invention of the important copper engraving burin. This assignment is difficult to sustain if one takes into account the dates, but in any case it was he who introduced this technique in northern Italy. It is assumed that several of his engravings were performed using a metal less hard than copper. His own technique and that of his students are characterized by strongly marked forms of drawing, and the slanting oblique shape to mark the shadows. Tests are often found in two different editions. In the first case the tests were conducted with a roller, or even by hand pressure, and are weakly stained, in the second case we used the press and the ink is more pronounced.

Piazza Mantegna and heritage

Giorgio Vasari , in his book The Quick , praised Mantegna, despite some reservations about the man. It went very well with his classmates when he learned the trade at Padua and retains strong ties of friendship with two of them: Dario da Trevigi and Marco Zoppo. Mantegna takes habits which sometimes causes him financial difficulties and must sometimes assert his rights against the marquis.

By the soundness of his taste for antiquity, Mantegna surpasses all his contemporaries. Though confined mainly to the XV ^century , the influence of Mantegna is very clear on the style and trends of all Italian art of his time. It is evident on the early works of Giovanni Bellini , his brother. Albrecht Drer was influenced by his style during his two trips to Italy. Leonardo da Vinci took from Mantegna the decorations with festoons and fruit.

It is considered that the main contribution of Mantegna is the introduction of spatial illusionism, both in frescoes and in the paintings of Sacra Conversazione: its influence in the decoration of the ceilings was continued for almost three centuries. From the ceiling trompe-l'oeil of the House of Husbands, Correggio has developed the research that had been his master and his collaborator in the development of perspectives, resulting in the masterpiece that is the dome of the cathedral of Parma.

Marcel Proust, there are several references in his In Search of Lost Time.

The painter has been relatively little exposure, that of Mantua in 1961 , those of New York and London in 1992 , many in Italy in 2006 to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of his death (at which Giovanni Agosti publish a reference book on Mantegna) and Paris in 2008 , although many of his works have known museums (National Gallery in London, Brera and Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, the Louvre Museum in Paris , the Prado Museum in Madrid ...).

Works

Mantegna used a technique of soaking the egg ( tempera ) or glue to bind the pigments, while the oil painting was practiced . The dating of his works is often unclear.

• Frescoes in the chapel Ovetari in the apse of the church of the hermit of Padua (destroyed by bombing in 1944 but two frescoes displaced by the conflict).
• Saint Marc (1447-1448), casein tempera, Stdel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
• Saint Jerome in the desert (1448-1451), Art Museum of So Paulo , Brazil
• The Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1415-1453), tempera on canvas transferred from wood, 40 cm x 55.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York
• Crucifixion (1457-1459), Central part of the predella of the altarpiece of San Zeno , 67 cm x 93 cm on wood, Muse du Louvre , Paris
• Agony in the Garden (c. 1459), tempera on wood, 63 cm x 80 cm, National Gallery, London
• Christ in the Garden and the Resurrection (1459), left and right parts of the predella of the altarpiece of San Zeno , tempera on wood, Museum Tours.
• Portrait of Cardinal Lodovico Trevisano, (c. 1459-1469), tempera on wood, 44 cm x 33 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• Altarpiece of St. Luke (1453), panel, 177 cm x 230 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera , Milan
  • including the Sainte-Justine, wood from 118 cx 42 cm
• The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Ludwig of Toulouse (c. 1455), wood 69.4 cm x 44.5 cm Paris, Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris
• Death of the Virgin (c. 1461), panel, 54 cm x 42 cm, Prado Museum , Madrid
  • and the upper part of Christ receiving the soul of the Virgin, Pinacoteca Nazionale of Ferrara (as evidenced by Roberto Longhi )
• St. Bernardino of Siena and two angels, 385 cm x 220 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Portrait of a Man (c. 1460), wood, National Gallery of Art , Washington
• Portrait of a Man (between 1450 and 1460) on wood 32.3 cm x 28.8 cm, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan
• Presentation in the Temple (c. 1460-1466), tempera on wood, 67 cm x 86 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• Madonna with Sleeping Child (ca. 1465-1470), oil on canvas, 43 cm x 32 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• House of Husbands (1465-1474), Castello di San Giorgio in the complex of the ducal palace of Mantua
• St Georges (circa 1460), tempera on panel, 66 cm x 32 cm, Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice
• San Zeno Altarpiece (1457-1460), altarpiece polyptych, 480 cm x 450 cm, San Zeno Basilica, Verona
  • predella panels of the scattered, original in France, in Paris and Tours
• St Sebastian (c. 1457-1459), wood, 68 cm x 30 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• San Sebastian , panel, 255 cm x 140 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Uffizi Triptych : Adoration of the Magi, Ascension (c. 1460) and circumcision (c. 1464-1470), tempera on panel, 86 cm x 42.5 cm, Uffizi , Florence (tables originally created for the chapel of San Giorgio castle with Death of the Virgin)
• Portrait of Charles de Medici (c. 1467), tempera on panel, 40.6 cm x 29.5 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Virgin and Child (c. 1475), tempera on canvas, 42 cm x 32 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (????), tempera on canvas, 139 cm x 116.5 cm, National Gallery, London
• The Virgin of the Cherubim (c. 1485), panel, 88 cm x 70 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera , Milan
• The Triumphs of Caesar (c. 1486), Hampton Court Palace, England
• Lamentation over the Dead Christ (c. 1490), tempera on canvas, 68 cm x 81 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Madonna's career (1489-1490), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
• San Sebastian (1490), Ca d'Oro, Venice
• Virgin and Child (1490s), oil on wood 45 cm x 36 cm, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan
• Our Lady of Victory (1495), tempera, 280 cm x 166 cm, Muse du Louvre, Paris
• Holy Family (c. 1495-1500), tempera on canvas, 75.5 cm x 61.5 cm, the Dresden Gallery.
• Judith and Holofernes (1495), egg tempera on wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• Minerva Banishing the Vices of the Garden of Virtue (c. 1502), oil on canvas, 160 cm x 192 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Parnassus (Mars and Venus) (1497), canvas, 160 cm x 192 cm, Louvre, Paris
• Trivulzio Altarpiece (1497), canvas 287 cm x 214 cm, Castello Sforzesco , Milan
• The Descent into Limbo , 38.8 cm x 42.3 cm .
• Ecce Homo (1500), tempera and gold on canvas on panel, Muse Jacquemart-Andr , Paris
• Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels (1500), tempera on wood, 78 cm x 48 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
• The Holy Family with the family of the Baptist (1504-1506), casein tempera and gold on canvas 40 cm x 169 cm, Chapelle Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Basilica di Sant'Andrea, Mantua
• The Baptism of Christ (1504), casein tempera on canvas 176 cm x 230 cm, Chapelle Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Basilica di Sant'Andrea, Mantua
• Grisaille background marble Chiquet trompe-l'oeil in glue tempera on canvas, National Gallery, London :
  • Samson and Delilah (1500)
  • The Vestal Tuccia with a sieve (a symbol of chastity), (1495-1506)
  • Woman drinking (1495-1506)
  • The introduction of the cult of Cybele in Rome (1505-1506), of 73.5 cm by 268 cm, commissioned by the Venetian Francesco Cornaro , preserved at the National Gallery , London