In the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin until July 18 you can see the painting “St. George” - one of the most famous masterpieces of the outstanding master of the Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna
In the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin until July 18 you can see the painting “St. George” - one of the most famous masterpieces of the outstanding master of the Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna.
The name and work of Mantegna are not as well known to the Russian audience as, for example, Sandro Botticelli or Leonardo da Vinci, but modern art historians call him one of the “geniuses who accomplished a sudden and radical revolution” in European art ( J. Argan), and Vasari wrote back in the 16th century that “there is not always a person who would be able to recognize, evaluate and reward someone’s talent in the same way as the talent of Andrea Mantegna was recognized” (it is not known for certain who exactly the biographer had in mind, but , as we will see below, such a person was not alone).
Andrea Mantegna was born in 1431 into the family of the carpenter Biagio, in the town of Isola di Cartura, between Padua and Vicencia. In 1441, ten-year-old Andrea was apprenticed to the Paduan artist Francesco Squarcione. Having replaced the craft of a tailor and embroiderer with the profession of a painter at the age of thirty (i.e., very mature at that time), Squarcione became a famous teacher, founded the Academy of Arts of Padua and its museum. A famous collector of antiquities, from his travels in Italy and Greece he brought casts of ancient sculptures, and they, apparently, also served as manuals for students, of whom Squarcione had more than a hundred people.
During his studies, Mantegna easily surpassed the rest of Squarcione's students and became so close to his teacher that he was adopted by him at the age of thirteen. According to Vasari, at the age of 14 Mantegna was already enrolled in the brotherhood of painters.
Squarcione's practical approach to teaching techniques as an artist, as well as his love of Greek antiquity (represented in his time exclusively by reliefs and sculpture), largely determined the young Mantegna's view of art and creativity in general.
“Andrea has always been of the opinion that good antique statues are more perfect and have more beautiful forms than we see in nature... In addition to all this, the statues seemed to him more complete and more accurate in the rendering of muscles, veins, veins and other details, which nature does not so clearly reveal" (Vasari); At the same time, in his early work, Mantegna was guided, in addition to ancient sculpture, by the frescoes of Andea del Castagno in Venice, the paintings of Paolo Uccello and Filippo Lippi and the altar of Donatello in Padua. He even knew Filippo Lippi and Donatello and met them more than once in Padua.
In 1448, 17-year-old Mantegna left Squarcione's workshop and, as an independent master, began painting the Ovetari Chapel in Padua (heavily damaged during the Second World War). For almost six centuries, the frescoes of the Ovetari Chapel are considered one of Mantegna's best and largest works, which traces his growth as an artist: from scene to scene, his skill in constructing space and the perspective reduction of figures and volumes in it is increasingly noticeable.
The interaction of form and space, the volume placed in it, their image (construction) on a plane - canvas, board or wall - occupied Mantegna throughout his life. Perhaps this interest led him to what we would call graphics today, but which in the 15th century did not yet have its own name, but was most likely defined as tone drawing: he was fond of the engraving technique, which was not quite typical for the Italian Renaissance master, I worked in grisaille and made a lot of pencil sketches. Color and shades interested him much less than lines and tonal transitions of pure color. He was known as a master of drawing and perspective: it is known that A. Dürer, going to Italy in 1506, made it his goal to get to know him.
The fame of the young artist went beyond the borders of Padua so much that in 1449, at the age of 18, at the insistence of the Dukes d'Este, he briefly moved to Ferrara, where just at that time the brothers Leonello, Borso and Ercole d'Este were creating from their capital the largest center of the cultural movement, gathering around itself a whole world of scientists, writers and artists.
Recognition, fame, and attention from wealthy art patrons brought Mantegna into the circle of the most famous artists of his time. He met, for example, the Bellini family - one of the largest artistic dynasties in Venice and Italy, which gave the world such artists as Jacopo Bellini (1400–1470), who painted many Venetian churches, his son Gentile (1429–1507), extremely revered during his lifetime artist, author of numerous portraits of doges and other Venetian nobility, and of course, the most famous representative of the family is Giovanni (1430–1516), Gentile’s younger brother, who left behind more than 200 works of painting and drawing. In 1453, Andrea Mantegna entered this family by marrying the daughter of Jacopo Nicolosia Bellini.
The research literature talks a lot about the influence of the work of the Venetians Bellini on the style of Mantegna, but the influence was mutual. Bellini (especially Giovanni) adopted more complex multi-faceted and complex-perspective compositional schemes, and Mantegna’s works acquired the multicoloredness inherent in Venetian painting. And even though over time, especially towards the end of the 1490s - the beginning of the 1500s, Mantegna became more and more interested in the play of colors and paid more and more attention to small and decorative details, the main thing remained unchanged: his admiration for ancient art, which apparently arose in Squarcione's studio, will continue to be visible in the setting of figures, and in the sharp plasticity of forms, and in the desire, especially in the early period, to create the illusion of volume to such an extent that his images seem three-dimensional, protruding beyond the plane of the canvas, and in the soft, free flowing folds of the costumes of the characters, always dressed in an antique manner (most of his colleagues in the workshop depicted clothes in the Gothic manner).
In 1459, Mantegna moved from Padua to the court of Duke Gonzago in Mantua, became his court painter and received a high salary for his work. In addition, the Duke of Mantua was a famous lover of antiquity and entrusted the artist with the care of his collections, which allowed Mantegna to immerse himself more fully in his beloved culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
One of the largest works Mantegna completed for Gonzago was the frescoes of the Camera degli Sposi, which he completed by 1474. The Camera degli Sposi - a small square room with two small windows, which was originally the bedroom of Lodovico Gonzago, and later served to receive distinguished guests - like the state bedrooms of many large European palaces, was completely covered with frescoes: the ceiling was decorated with paintings imitating an air well and the sky, the walls were painted with scenes from the history of the Gonzago dynasty.
Mantegna spent 1488–1490 in Rome, working on the order of Pope Innocent VII - paintings of the Belvedere Chapel (not preserved), however, in addition to the papal frescoes, during this period he painted a large number of easel works, many of which can today be seen in the largest museums in Europe .
At the same time, Mantegna, thanks to his fame and orders, is gaining more and more opportunities to continue studying ancient culture and art. A very interesting series of 9 canvases under the general title “The Triumph of Caesar” dates back to 1492, in which the author turns to the historical genre and consistently depicts everything he knows about the ancient world - from military weapons and architecture to coins, medals, processions of dancers and musicians. By the end of the 1490s, he began to write on mythological themes.
The most famous, but at the same time the most unusual and mysterious painting of his is rightfully considered the work “Dead Christ”. For a long time it was dated to 1500, but today scientists, based on the manner of writing soft folds of fabric, extensive work with perspective and brush stroke technique, are inclined to an earlier dating - 1457. In the literature one can also find dates of ca. 1480 - as an average date between these two assumptions.
The figure depicted from a complex angle is striking and even bewildering both in its compositional structure and iconography. After you manage to tear your gaze away from the central figure of Christ depicted in the most complex perspective with the most precise perspective cuts, you involuntarily wonder about the almost monochrome surface of the picture, about the fact that Christ is depicted with no more care than the bed on which he lies, and is reduced by that right down to the level of the subject, that the figures of the Mother of God and John, in their flatness and simplicity, are almost inseparable from the background. However, there is a certain bewitching disembodiment in this picture (perhaps the discrepancy between the sizes of the bed and the body on it plays a role), which makes you look at it again and again and feel like a witness and participant in biblical events.
It still fascinates and attracts today. A striking example is the use of the composition of this painting in Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film “Return”.
The Uffizi Gallery and other museums in Italy, the Paris Louvre, the National London Gallery, the New York Metropolitan Museum, etc. are considered to have Mantegna’s works in their collections as a great honor and good fortune. Unfortunately, his works are not available in Russia, but from time to time they can be found see at exhibitions.
On the art market, every appearance of Mantegna’s works (as well as masters of his level in general) is a real sensation and an event of world significance. From 1991 to 2013, they appeared in auction catalogs only 43 times, and almost always in the graphics sections. His paintings are incredibly rare on the market: over the past 20 years, easel works (board, tempera) have been sold only 2 times, each time with record results.
The graphics (circulation and original) were sold 40 times, and in April of this year, at one of the German auctions, an attempt was made to sell several sheets of grisaille (oil and tempera on paper). Considering such a rarity of appearance on the market, it is not surprising that the percentage of works sold tends to 90.
A record amount for Mantegna's work was recorded on January 23, 2003 during an auction at Sotheby's auction house in New York. An unknown buyer paid over $25.5 million for a small (39 × 42) undated tempera “Descent into Hell.” According to artprice estimates for 2011, this result ranks 9th in the top ten most expensive works of old masters on the open market, surpassing even Rembrandt’s paintings.
In 2007 (that is, shortly before the crisis) at the same Sotheby’s, but in London, the canvas “Madonna and Child” was sold for 240,500 pounds sterling (almost half a million dollars). To be fair, it is worth noting that, apparently, this undated work (tempera on canvas, 47.6 × 36.8) belongs to an earlier period of the artist’s work and, perhaps, does not represent such artistic value as “The Descent into Hell” .
The record price of 60,000 euros for graphics (circulation) was set back in 2002 in France. This is exactly the amount they paid for the Madonna and Child sheet, thereby exceeding the estimate by more than three times.
Mantegna's works are still sold today. Of course, these are mass-produced graphics, but in the middle and lower price segments. Three sheets from his not-so-rare series “Bacchanalia with a Cask of Wine” (1490) were sold on June 5, 2013 at Bonhams for £2,125 (with an estimate of £600–800). So lovers of old Italian masters have the opportunity to add works to their collections by the great Andrea Mantegna.
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March 20th, 2010We went to Mantua to see Mantegna's paintings in the Palazzo Duomo - the famous Camera degli Sposi. In fact, it's not easy at all. A limited number of visitors are allowed into this room per day. We were lucky - we were at the castle on a rainy, very uncrowded day. They got into the hall. But only for an admiring sigh, since you can only be there for 5 minutes! We were there alone, no one stepped on our heels, the ubiquitous ragazzi were at the other end of the palace, but the servants turned out to be inexorable...
Therefore, all that remains is to admire the frescoes of the 15th century on the Internet:
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The Camera degli Sposi is located on the second main floor of the Castello San Giorgio:
From the outside the castle is gloomy and lapidary:
Mantegna's wonderful fresco ensemble transforms a simple interior. This room was indeed the "spouses' room" - for some time a bedroom, and for some time a state room. The small room (8x8 m) was changed thanks to Mantegna’s painting:
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The master divided the walls into 12 equal sections with painted pillars, which rest on a colored “marble” plinth. On all the walls, at the level of the heels of the arches, there are metal rods from which heavy leather curtains are “suspended.” The spans of the southern and eastern walls are completely covered with curtains. The sky can be seen everywhere in the lunettes, so the closed interior took on the appearance of a through pavilion, only partially fenced off by curtains where the marital bed was:
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Now, I will give the floor to V.N. Grashchenkov. I think that Viktor Nikolaevich looked at Mantegna’s frescoes much longer than we did.
“Mantegna organically linked the painting of the walls with the painting of the vault. It seems that the arcades of the “columned hall” he created carry a rib vault that goes up like a dome, although in reality its maximum height from the floor does not exceed seven meters. The architectural “divisions” and “reliefs” of the vault are painted in a gray tone, and their background imitates a golden mosaic. In the center of the vault there is a round window through which a blue cloudy sky is visible, and the light, as if pouring from it, casts shadows on the figures at the window balustrade and on the “reliefs” of the vault. Thanks to the wide round frame, decorated with green garlands and covered by a square frame “ ribs", a small window (its internal diameter is only 64 cm) stands out noticeably in the decor of the vault:
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The eight diamond-shaped sections of the vault are decorated with medallions in wreaths with portraits of the Roman Caesars supported by putti:
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Twelve panels depict the labors of Hercules and scenes from the history of Orpheus and Arion, the legendary musicians of antiquity:
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<…>Mantegna's work in the Camera degli Sposi began with the vault. And what is depicted in the round “window” was not just a “brilliant joke” (P.P. Muratov), but had a direct semantic connection with the entire painting program. To begin with, every round window in a vaulted castle, both in ancient and church buildings, is not only a light opening, but always a kind of sacred “eye”, not without reason called the oculus. Representing such a window through painting, Mantegna surrounded it with a through balustrade, composed of the same decorative elements as the lower base of the walls. On the balustrade he placed, with precise consideration of sharp perspective cuts, a tub of a dwarf orange tree. Threatening to collapse, this tub is additionally supported by its edge on a wooden stick, as if placed at the last moment. Flowers and plants in pots and tubs displayed on parapets are often found in paintings of the Early Renaissance. Such a charming everyday motif could also have a hidden meaning. The fruits and flowers of the orange tree have traditionally been associated with marriage and fertility since ancient times. The orange resembled that golden apple of eternal youth from the garden of the Hesperides, which Gaia, the goddess of the earth, gave to Hera, the wife of Zeus. Many of the functions and attributes of the Greek Hera in Roman mythology were transferred to Juno. This is what the peacock sitting on the balustrade on the other side of the orange tree alludes to. This proud royal bird, signifying immortality, was dedicated to Juno and symbolized marital consent:
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Little winged erotes (amorini), always accompanying the goddess of love, play playfully on both sides of the balustrade, sticking their heads into its round holes. One of them is with an arrow, another with a wreath, and the third holds in his raised hand an apple, an attribute of Venus, as if preparing to throw it down:
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<…>So, the round oculus, as if opening the airy expanse of the sky and surrounded by green garlands with abundant fruits, is a visible symbol of Juno and the happiness of conjugal love and motherhood that she bestows. On the contrary, the busts of emperors, like the labors of Hercules, were associated with the geniuses of the owner of the house, the Marquis of Mantua. And the images of Orpheus and Arion could hint at his passion for music<…>The way Mantegna presented the family and court of the Marquises of Gonzaga is akin to the panegyric genre of any ancient author. And in the same way, ancient literature was inspired by the playful intonation with which the allegorical composition of the “window” is presented, contrasting with its everyday spontaneity with the solemn seriousness of the Caesars in the medallions of the vault.
All of the above allows us to understand the semantic connection of the allegorical and heroic images of the vault with the scenes depicted on the walls of the Camera degli Sposi. There, in numerous and varied portrait figures, the extensive family of the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga was represented - himself, his wife, their children, grandchildren, relatives, intimates and household servants. These scenes are interpreted with such vital spontaneity and narrative specificity that they seem to depict some real events in the life of the Mantuan court:
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On the north wall, above the fireplace, we see how his secretary Marsilio Andreasi approached Lodovico Gonzaga, who was sitting in an armchair, and, leaning towards the patron, told him something. The Marquis, turning his head in his direction, holds in his hands an unfolded letter, which he has either already read or is just about to read:
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Barbara of Brandenburg, sitting next to her, looks towards her husband, as if knowing the essence of the conversation he was having with his secretary. The rest of the Gonzaga family, like the courtiers, remain indifferent to what distracted the owner of the house for some time<…>
No matter how one interprets the plot basis of the two scenes, usually defined as “The Court of Lodovico Gonzaga” and “Meeting with Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga,” their general idea is absolutely clear. They tell of happiness, tranquility and patriarchal harmony in the Gonzaga family under the wise leadership of the Marquis of Lodovico and his wife Barbara of Brandenburg. In his compositions, Mantegna depicted unremarkable events. But they are presented as if they were events of enormous historical importance. And the persons acting in them are aware of this. Not only the ruling spouses, their adult children and small grandchildren, their relatives and associates, but even the servants and the dwarf joker, like the marquis’s favorite dog under his chair, nicknamed Rubino, behave with the greatest dignity:
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<…>The first morning rays cast their bright light on the three-part composition deployed against the backdrop of the landscape. The vertical fields of spans, dividing the entire western wall from the low plinth to the arches of the vault, determined the scale and rhythmic placement of the figures, which differed from the horizontal-static structure of the “Gonzaga Court”. The leisurely movement gradually unfolds from left to right, through the figures of servants holding back the mighty horse of the Marquis and his hunting dogs, to the main scene depicting the meeting:
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<…>The Meeting is dominated by three figures - the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga, his heir Federico Gonzaga and Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga. The figures of the marquis and his eldest son, looking at each other, are depicted strictly in profile, along the edges of the stage. A cardinal in a light lilac cassock and a reddish-brick-colored cape positioned himself between them almost frontally.<…>A note is clearly visible in the cardinal's right hand. Individual letters in it, according to R. Signorini (1975), can be read as the artist’s signature. It is known that the cardinal was friendly towards Mantegna.
The figures of the three boys in the foreground, who occupy a certain place in the Gonzaga family hierarchy, have an important semantic meaning. Federico's first-born and Lodovico Gonzaga's eldest grandson, Gianfrancesco (b. 1466), future Marquis of Mantua, stands at his grandfather's feet. His posture and even the position of his hand mirror his father’s.<…>The young cleric standing in front of him is his younger brother, prothonotary Lodovico Gonzaga (b. 1458). He holds the hand of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, extending the fingers of his left hand to his little nephew Sigismondo (b. 1469) - Federico's second son and future cardinal. These stingy signs are enough to distinguish among the representatives of the three generations of Gonzaga those who are called to rule the state and those who will glorify the family by serving the church:
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<…>"Meeting" portrait heads evoking cast medals and sculpted busts<…>covered in classical reminiscences<…>. This is facilitated by the landscape background, where Mantegna captured the view of the fortified city and individual buildings in the classical style on the green slopes of the hills. This was Rome, which the artist had not yet seen with his own eyes, but imagined in his imagination, relying on other people’s sketches of famous ancient monuments and mixing reliable motifs of the architecture of the Eternal City with the usual forms of North Italian serf and residential architecture:
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<…>Only after exhausting interest in the portrait figures of the “Meeting” and the remarkable details of this “story”:
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We pay attention to the peculiar decorative “pyramidal” nature of the entire painting on the western wall. Its pinnacle was the image above the door of a round dance of putti carrying a gold plaque with a Latin inscription, perpetuating the completion of the work in the Camera degli Sposi and glorifying the Gonzaga spouses and the master himself: “To the illustrious Lodovico, second Marquis of Mantua, most excellent sovereign and most unshakable in faith, and illustrious Barbara, his wife, a woman of incomparable fame, their Andrea Mantegna, a Paduan, completed this modest work in their honor in 1474. "On the left, in the depths of this central bay, we see a pyramidal structure, topped by a stepped rotunda, surrounded by three tiers of semi-columns. This architectural fantasy on the theme of ancient Roman mausoleums was a figurative addition to the memorial inscription:
One of the outstanding artists of the early Renaissance. In 1441 he went to Padua, where he studied with Francesco Squarcione, who introduced him to ancient art. His work was greatly influenced by the sculptures of Donatello (1386–1466), Andrea del Castagni and Jacopo Bellini. From 1448 Mantegna worked independently and soon became a recognized master. In 1460 he became a court painter of the Gonzaga dynasty in Mantua. Mantegna's works are characterized by an anatomically accurate depiction of the human body, careful reproduction of details, as well as skillful rendering of perspective. These innovations had a strong influence on his brothers-in-law, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. His copperplate engravings also became widely known north of the Alps.
Judith
Mantegna one of the first in the Renaissance to depict Judith. His Judith is unemotional, her gaze is turned to eternity, this image is close to the images of saints.
Judith and Holofernes
Mantegna was the first to move from Christian to ancient themes and the first to study the anatomy of the naked body. He was the first to begin studying the nature of movement and the mechanism of muscle contraction. He enriched the composition of paintings with new laws. He never comes across faces depicted only as portraits, the number of which could be arbitrarily increased. All figures participate in the action, all are subordinated to a firmly cohesive whole. A new beauty of composition was revealed, which did not tolerate the old, so beloved careless stringing of details.
Mantegna and painting
Mantegna is considered the founder of the technique of painting on canvas. The earliest painted canvas in Italy is Mantegna's Saint Euthymia, created in 1454. Vasari wrote that during the period of writing the cycle of paintings “The Triumph of Caesar” for the palace theater in Mantua in 1482–1492, Andrea Mantegna already had extensive experience working on canvas.
An artist who escaped any classification, standing outside of schools and movements, Mantegna had an undeniable impact on the painting of Italy - from Padua to Venice. Thanks to the widespread distribution of Mantegna's engravings, the Italian Renaissance penetrated into Germany.
Crucifixion (circa 1458)
Wood, tempera, 41.3*29.5 cm. Uffizi, Florence.
This portrait is one of Mantegna's best works. A harmonious composition helps to capture the strict appearance of the character. Mantegna uses the method of turning the model in three-quarters, borrowed from the masters of northern European painting. In general, the portrait is identical to the image of Carlo Medici.
Madonna della Vittoria (1496)
Canvas, tempera, 280*165 cm. Louvre, Paris.
Mantegna painted this work commissioned by the Margrave Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519) - he is depicted on the left in the foreground - in memory of the battle of Fornovo di Taro in 1495. The famous altar painting is characterized by the use of optical illusion, the pergola effect, the heroic style of depicting the characters, warm color.
Dome fresco of the Camera degli Sposi (1465–1475)
Fragment of the painting. Fresco, diameter: 270 cm. Castello San Giorgio, Pallazzo Ducale, Mantua.
In a fresco located on the vault of a small square room, Mantegna, for the first time in Western European art, created the illusion of space extending into the sky. The opening is surrounded by a parapet, around which are depicted angels looking down, people and animals. This is a bold composition where the figures are depicted in an unusual perspective. The fresco was a model for subsequent generations of artists, especially the Baroque style.
Ludovico Gonzaga, his family and court (1474)
Fragment of the painting. Fresco, 600*807 cm. Castello San Giorgio, Pallazzo Ducale, Mantua.
The frescoes from the Camera degli Sposi, the bedroom of Ludovico III Gonzaga (1414–1478), are a famous example of world painting of the Italian Renaissance. In expressive scenes with a pronounced perspective and display of natural motifs, Mantegna presents the margrave's large, magnificent entourage - his family and his closest subjects.
Parnassus (1497)
Canvas, tempera, 60*192 cm. Louvre, Paris.
The image of Mount Muses is the first painting in a series commissioned by the Mantuan Countess Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) for her study. In the center of the picture are nine goddesses of the arts dancing to the music of Apollo, above him is Vulcan laughing at Cupid. On the right next to each other are Mercury and Pegasus. The image of Mars and Venus looks unconventional for such works. The hill on which they stand is through and offers a view into the distance. To the right rises a structure similar to a fortress. The landscape is depicted carefully and with imagination.
The Triumph of Virtue over Vice (1502)
Canvas, tempera, 160*192 cm. Louvre, Paris.
The painting, reflecting the plot of a moral and instructive allegory, also refers to the decoration of Isabella d’Este’s study. It depicts a scene in which Minerva, the goddess of war and prudence, armed with a shield, spear and helmet, expels vice from the garden of virtue. Along with Parnassus, this painting had a huge influence on the development of secular painting in the 16th century. The garden is surrounded by an arched stone fence decorated with flowers. The surrounding landscape can be seen through it. Other deities watch from the cloud the dramatic action in the garden of virtue.
Notable works of Andrea Mantegna updated: September 16, 2017 by: Gleb
Andrea Mantegna, one of the leading artists of the Early Renaissance, lived and worked in Northern Italy. He was born in Padua, part of the Venetian Republic, and at the age of ten he entered the workshop of a local minor painter, Francesco Squarcione. At the age of nineteen, he received the title of master and his first large order, painting the Ovetari Chapel of the Eremitani Church in Padua with frescoes. Already in this first fresco cycle, which was destroyed in 1944 during the bombing of Padua by the British, he showed himself as a fully developed master, with a unique, somewhat harsh style, excellent command of drawing, perspective, composition, with extraordinary architectural imagination, a penchant for cold, harsh greatness. In 1453, Mantegna married Nicolosia Bellini, the daughter of the founder of the Renaissance Venetian school Jacopo Bellini and the sister of the painters Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, who had already begun their artistic careers.
In 1457, the young artist became the court painter of the ruler of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his entire future life was connected with this city.
Mantegna's work was formed in an extremely favorable environment for the young artist. Padua was a university city, and the atmosphere of learning extended far beyond the university walls. Here, apparently, the artist’s interest in antiquity arose, of which he later became a deep connoisseur. In his youth, he even participated in archaeological excavations. He probably held in his hands books decorated with miniatures by northern Italian artists and learned to appreciate the precious beauty of detail. On the other hand, as a teenager he became acquainted with the art of Florentine masters - in the 1400s, the largest sculptor of Florence, Donatello, worked in Padua, one of whose assistants was Paolo Uccello. Having become related to the Bellini family, Mantegna apparently gained access to the famous books of drawings by Jacopo Bellini and studied the principles developed by this master for constructing complex multi-figure compositions. In Ferrara, which he visited in the early 1450s, he could become acquainted with the works of the Dutch masters. Finally, Mantua, where he lived for almost half a century, was at that time one of the prominent centers of Italian humanism.
Mantegna equally successfully worked as a monumentalist and a master of easel painting, painted frescoes, large altar paintings and small compositions reminiscent of precious miniatures, was one of the first in Italy to master the technique of engraving, tried his hand at architecture, building his own house in Mantua with an unusual round courtyard .
Mantegna's art is imbued with severity, grandeur, and heroic pathos; even in his small compositions there is always a monumental element. But at the same time, he inherited from his Northern Italian predecessors a taste for detail, a love of decorativeness and elegance. Often his compositions are so rich in decorative elements, images of fruit garlands, marble reliefs with the finest ornamental patterns, mosaics, that they evoke the wasteful richness of forms of architecture and sculpture in Northern Italy.
His desire for generality and monumentality are combined with filigree elaboration of the smallest details. Thus, in one of Mantegna’s early easel works - “Prayer for the Cup” (1455, London, National Gallery), repeating the motifs of Jacopo Bellini’s drawing, the action takes place against the backdrop of a majestic and harsh rocky landscape with stone peaks of rocks of fantastic appearance rising to the sky, from The artist’s eye does not escape the dried-out tree with half-torn off bark and the uprooted trunk with the wood pattern exposed.
Particularly striking with the combination of a monumental beginning and the finest rendering of details, as if seen through a magnifying glass, are small compositions from the 1460s - “Saint Sebastian” (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and “Saint George” (Venice, Accademia Galleries). Saint George in shining silver armor and Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows are depicted in these miniature compositions in close-up, against the backdrop of a distant landscape seen as if from above, the details of which, right down to the scattering of pebbles on the mountain road, are painted with the finest brush with scrupulous precision. The details of the desert landscape with a strange rock that looks like a giant druse of minerals and a quarry in the miniature composition “Madonna of the Quarries” (Madonna delle Cave, 1489, Florence, Uffizi Gallery) are also carefully painted.
Mantegna's landscapes are usually dominated by stone - layered rocks resembling bizarre towers, barren rocky soils; in “Saint Sebastian” even the cloud turns into a relief with the figure of a horseman. Mantegna’s attraction to the plastic expressiveness of stone masses was expressed in a number of pictorial compositions imitating marble reliefs (“Samson and Delilah”, 1490s, London, National Gallery).
In this aestheticization of the plastic principle, Mantegna’s admiration for antiquity, which appears in his imagination as a world of majestic statues and magnificent architecture, heroic deeds and solemn triumphs, is especially fully manifested. A touch of cold severity is inherent in even the most harmonious of his mythological compositions - the painting “Parnassus” (1497, Paris, Louvre) with muses dancing near a bizarre rock on which stands a happy loving couple - Mars and Venus.
A large-scale attempt to resurrect the majestic and harsh appearance of Ancient Rome was the grandiose pictorial cycle “The Triumph of Caesar” (1486-1495, London, Hampton Court). The nine large canvases included in this cycle were, according to Mantegna’s plan, to form a single frieze, about 25 meters long, intended for one of the halls of the vast residence of the rulers of Mantua - Palazzo Ducale. For Mantegna’s contemporaries, this frieze, where legionnaires carrying trophies of war approached the walls of Rome against the backdrop of the hills in a solemn march, a forest of spears and battle standards rose, musicians raised their trumpets to the sky, horsemen and war elephants moved, Julius Caesar rode on his chariot, should have make a stunning impression and amaze them with the authenticity of the created picture. Unfortunately, these days in the Hampton Court gallery these paintings are exhibited as separate paintings, which violates the compositional unity of the grandiose frieze.
The second, no less magnificent and perfectly preserved monumental cycle by Mantegna, created in Mantua, is the painting of one of the halls in the old part of the huge palace of the Mantuan rulers - Castello di San Giorgio, completed in 1464-1475. The name of this chamber - Camera degli Sposi (Room of the newlyweds) - dates back to the 17th century; its original purpose is unknown. At the beginning of the 16th century, rarities and works of art collected by the Gonzaga family were kept here. The paintings of the Camera degli Sposi are one of the peaks of Mantegna’s creativity and Italian monumental painting. A fairly large room with walls about eight meters high, covered with a very low, with a rise of only about one meter, mirrored vault and multi-scale, asymmetrically located windows and doors, was transformed by him, thanks to illusory architecture and finely calculated perspective effects, into a beautiful, full of harmony and orderliness is a centric building. Skillfully using techniques of perspective reduction, Mantegna gave this vault the appearance of a dome, decorated with reliefs with portraits of Roman emperors and cut like the dome of the Roman Pantheon with a large round window, in the opening of which the blue sky shines. Through the balustrade enclosing it, the heads of curious ladies peer into the hall, and plump putti babies frolic next to them. The wall paintings are just as illusory. Two of them are “covered” with draperies made of brocade fabric painted by the artist, on the other, as on a theater stage, the entire large Gonzaga family appears. The predominance of red and golden tones gives the scene its due splendor. And at the same time, solemnity is combined here with ease - the Duke himself quietly talks with his secretary, along the stairs leading to the dais, where members of the Gonzaga family sit, pages casually descend and ascend.
The wall opposite the windows is likened by Mantegna to two large openings in which the blue sky shines and wide landscape panoramas spread out. In one of the two vertical compositions decorating it there is a scene of a meeting between the ruler of Mantua and his cardinal son against the backdrop of a distant panorama of Rome. In another wall, against the backdrop of a fantastic rocky landscape, there are two pages holding a horse by the bridle; in her depiction, Mantegna used the effect beloved by Renaissance artists - no matter from what angle the viewer looks at this horse, its head is always turned towards us.
In these paintings, the versatility of Mantegna’s talent was especially fully and brilliantly revealed, the organic combination of sharp, almost sharp natural authenticity, heroic significance, decorative richness, his virtuoso mastery of drawing and perspective, and his outstanding gift as a colorist.
Mantegna had a huge influence on the art of Northern Italy, on the formation of new Renaissance schools in Lombardy and Ferrara. Mantegna's influence is also evident in the early works of the greatest Venetian painter of the 15th century, Giovanni Bellini.
Irina Smirnova
Andrea Mantegna’s painting “Prayer of the Cup” also has another name: “Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.” Five angels appear to the praying Christ, while the three apostles sleep in the foreground, unaware that Judas and a crowd of soldiers are coming with the intention of taking Christ into custody. Everything in this scene - the fantastical rocks, the imaginary city, the hard folds of matter - is written in the detailed, solid and precise manner inherent in the painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna.
Andrea Mantegna was of humble origin, but adopted and trained as a simple, little-known painter, he became one of the most important artists of his time. The style of Andrea Mantegna, like the style of other Renaissance masters, was formed under the influence of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Many of his works are indeed executed as grisaille - a picturesque imitation of marble or bronze relief.
For most of his life, Mantegna was court artist to the Duke of Mantua, for whom he collected a large collection of classical art. From 1460, Andrea Mantegna lived in Mantua at the court of Lodovico Gonzaga (in 1466–1467 he visited Florence and Pisa, in 1488–1490 – Rome). In the paintings of the “Camera degli Sposi” in the Castle of San Giorgio (1474), the artist, achieving visual and spatial unity of the interior, realized the idea of synthesizing real and “painted” architecture.
The illusionistic effects of these paintings, in particular the imitation of a round window in the ceiling, anticipate similar quests by Correggio. The series of monochrome cardboards by Andrea Mantegna with “The Triumph of Caesar” (1485–1488, 1490–1492, Hampton Court, London) is imbued with the harsh spirit of Roman antiquity. Among Mantegna's later works are allegorical and mythological compositions for the office of Isabella d'Este (“Parnassus” or “The Kingdom of Venus”, 1497, Louvre, Paris), a cycle of monochrome paintings, including “Samson and Delilah” (1500s, National Gallery, London), full of drama and compositional poignancy, the painting “Dead Christ” (circa 1500, Brera Gallery, Milan).
The painter Andrea Mantegna was also an innovator in the field of engraving, and his prints on ancient themes later influenced Dürer in particular. Mantegna’s graphic works (the cycle of copper engravings “The Battle of the Sea Deities”, circa 1470), almost as good as his paintings in the chased monumentality of the images, combine sculptural plasticity with the tenderness of line modeling.
Andrea Mantegna combined the main artistic aspirations of the Renaissance masters of the 15th century: a passion for antiquity, an interest in accurate and meticulous, down to the smallest detail, rendering of natural phenomena and a selfless belief in linear perspective as a means of creating the illusion of space on a plane. His work became the main link between the early Renaissance in Florence and the later flowering of art in Northern Italy.
