MANTEGNA, ANDREA (1431-1506), Italian painter of the Paduan school, the chief representative of the Early Renais sance in north Italy, was born at Isola di Carturo, near Vicenza, and at an early age went to Padua, where he entered the studio of Francesco Squarcione.
Mantegna was Squarcione's most brilliant pupil and was adopted as his son. At the age of ten he was entered in the guild of paint ers; at 17 he completed an altar-piece for the church of S. Lucia which established his fame. Reared among fragments of ancient art, in a town overshadowed by a famous university, where the study of the ancient world had become a cult, Mantegna grew up a devotee of antiquity. He had, moreover, the stimulus of seeing the work of Donatello and of Paolo Uccello in Padua, of Andrea Carstagno in Venice, and he learned the lessons which these great representatives of the Florentine school of form could teach. He mastered the newly discovered rules of perspective and he delighted in rendering foreshortened views of the human figure.
In 1454 Mantegna married Nicolasia, the daughter of Jacopo Bellini, the sister of Gentile and Giovanni. His connection with these great initiators of the pictorial tradition of Venice may have contributed to his estrangement from Squarcione. For Mantegna no longer cared to act as an executant of his master's commissions; and he fought and won his case before the tribunals of Padua. Between 1453 and 1459 he completed the cycle of paintings in the Ovetari chapel of S. Agostino degli Eremitani on which Niccolo Pizzolo of Padua, Bono of Ferrara, and Ansuino of Forli had been employed. The frescoes on the left wall repre senting the "Life of St. James" were executed by Mantegna; "The Martyrdom of St. Christopher," on the opposite wall, is also by him, but is sadly injured. This is his most important early work extant ; and by comparing the upper frescoes which were painted first with the later frescoes below we can trace the master's progress to maturity. Other works of this early period are the polyptych representing "St. Luke and other Saints," in the Brera at Milan, and "St. Euphemia," now in the museum at Naples, both dated 1454, and the frescoes of two saints over the entrance porch of the church of S. Antonio, in Padua, dated 1452.
Mantegna's fame spread rapidly beyond Padua and he received various commissions from Verona. He was asked to paint an altar-piece for the church of S. Zeno in that city. This work oc
cupied him from 1457 to 1459 and is one of his masterpieces. It is a triptych representing the "Madonna Enthroned" flanked by saints, with a tripartite predella underneath. The picture was carried off to France in 1797 with many other valuable works, and when restored to Verona in 1814 was found to have been deprived of the predella. Its central portion, representing "the Crucifixion," is in the Louvre; the two side portions, representing "the Agony in the Garden" and "the Resurrection," are in the museum at Tours. In 1460 Mantegna took service with the Gonzagas, whose court at Mantua was one of the most cultured in Italy. He was at first employed in their castle at Goito on work now destroyed. After a short stay in Florence in May 1466, he settled at Mantua, where he built himself a house. Unfortunately many of his works are no longer extant. A notable exception are the frescoes com pleted in 1474 in the State room called "Camera degli Sposi." On the walls are the lifelike portraits of the Gonzaga family, per haps the earliest portrait group of the Italian Renaissance, a powerful work with strongly defined personalities.
He rapidly rose in favour and esteem. In a letter dated July 1487 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga expressed the wish to have Mantegna with him during his stay in a resort near Bologna that they might enjoy and study a collection of antique bronzes and gems. Lorenzo it Magnifico visited him in his studio and admired his paintings and his antiques. In 1488 he was knighted and re paired to Rome with a recommendation to Pope Innocent VIII., who asked him to decorate a chapel in the Vatican ; but although the work was much admired the chapel was destroyed by Pius VI. in order to make room for the enlargement of the Vatican gallery. On his return to Mantua in 1490 Mantegna completed a series of nine tempera paintings which he had begun before his departure for the palace of San Sebastiano. The subject, "the Triumph of Caesar," afforded a welcome opportunity for displaying his admiration of the antique world. The triumphal car is preceded by a rhythmic procession of soldiers, prisoners, elephants, etc., carrying an infinite variety of trophies, including statuary, vases and arms of all kinds. It was considered by Vasari to be Man tegna's best work; it was acquired by Charles I. and is now at Hampton Court greatly damaged by repaintings.