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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAL-MAR |
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MANTEGNA, ANDREA (14311506) , one of the chief
Squarcione,- whose original
heir ofhis fortune. Andrea was only seventeen when he painted, in the church of S. Sofia in Padua, a Madonna picture of exceptional and recognized excellence. He was no doubt fully aware of having achieved no common feat, as he marked the work with his name and the date, and the years of his age. This painting was destroyed in the 17th century.As the youth progressed in his studies, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, a painter considerably, superior to Squarcione, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni and Gentile, and of a daughter Nicolosia; and in 1454 Jacopo gave Nicolosia to Andrea in marriage. This connexion of Andrea with the pictorial rival of Squarcione is generally assigned as the reason why the latter became alienated from the son of his adoption, and always afterwards hostile to him. Another suggestion, which rests, however, merely on its own internal probability, is that Squarcione had at the outset used his pupil Andrea as the unavowed executant of certain commissions, but that after a while Andrea began painting on his own account, thus injuring the professional interests of his chief
original
Among the other early works of Mantegna are the fresco of two saints over the entrance porch of the church of S. Antonio in Padua, 1452, and an altar-piece of St Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, now in the Brera Gallery in Milan, 1453. It is 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.' 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. Andrea, conscious as he was of his own great faculty and mastery, seems nevertheless to have felt that there was something in his old preceptor's strictures; and the later subjects, from the legend of St Christopher, combine with his other excellences more of natural character and vivacity. Trained as he had been to the study of marbles
paper and woven fabrics gummed. Figures slim, muscular and bony, action impetuous but of arrested energy, tawny landscape, gritty with littering pebbles, mark the athletic hauteur of his style. He never changed, though he developed and perfected, the manner which he had adopted in Padua; his colouring, at first rather neutral and undecided, strengthened and matured. There is throughout his works more balancing of colour than fineness of tone. One of his great aims was optical illusion, carried out by a mastery of perspective which, though not always impeccably correct, nor absolutely superior in principle to the highest contemporary point of attainment, was worked out by himself with strenuous labour, and an effect of actuality astonishing in those times.Successful and admired though he was in Padua, Mantegna left his native city at an early age, and never afterwards resettled ' His fellow-workers were Bono of Ferrara, Ansuino of Forli, and Niccolo Pizzolo, to whom considerable sections of the fresco-paintings are to be assigned. The acts of St James and St Christopher are the leading subjects of the series. St James Exorcizing may have been commenced by Pizzolo, and completed by Mantegna. The Calling of St James to the Apostleship appears to be Mantegna's design, partially carried out by Pizzolo; the subjects of St James baptizing, his appearing before the judge, and going to execution, and most of the legend of St Christopher, are entirely by Mantegna. there; the hostility of Squarcione has been assigned as the cause. The rest of his life was passed in Verona, Mantua and Romechiefly Mantua; Venice and Florence have also been named, but without confirmation. It may have been in 1459 that he went to Verona; and he painted, though not on the spot, a grand altar-piece for the church of S. Zeno, a Madonna and angels, with four saints on each side. The Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga of Mantua had for some time been pressing Mantegna to enter his service; and the following year, 1460, was perhaps the one in which he actually established himself at the Mantuan court, residing at first from time to time at Goito, but, from December 1466 onwards, with his family in Mantua itself. His engagement was for a salary of 75 lire (about 30) a month, a sum so large for that period as to mark conspicuously the high regard in which his art was held. He was in fact the first painter of any eminence ever domiciled in Mantua. He built a stately house
Vasari eulogizes Mantegna for his courteous, distinguished and praiseworthy deportment, although there are indications of his having been nota little litigious in disposition. 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. He then formed some other connexion, and became at an advanced age the father of a natural son, GiovanniAndrea; and at the last, although he continued launching out into various expenses and schemes, he had serious tribulations, such as the banishment from Mantua of his son Francesco, who had incurred the marquis's displeasure. Perhaps the aged master and connoisseur regarded as barely less trying the hard necessity of parting with a beloved antique bust of Faustina. Very soon after this transaction he died in Mantua, on the 13th of September 1506. In 1517 a handsome monument was set up to him by his sons in the church of S. Andrea, where he had painted the altar-piece of the mortuary chapel. Mantegna was no less eminent as an engraver, though his history in that respect is somewhat obscure, partly because he never signed or dated any of his plates, unless in one single disputed instance, 1472. The account which has come down to us is that Mantegna began engraving in Rome, prompted by the engravings produced by Baccio Baldini of Florence after Sandro Botticelli; nor is there anything positive to invalidate this account, except the consideration that it would consign all the numerous and elaborate engravings made by Mantegna to the last sixteen or seventeen years of his life, which seems a scanty space for them, and besides the earlier engravings indicate an earlier period of his artistic style. It has been suggested that he began engraving while still in Padua, under the tuition of a distinguished goldsmith, Niccolo. He engraved about fifty plates, according to the usual reckoning; some thirty of them are mostly accounted indisputableoften large, full of figures, and highly studied. Some recent
pictuye pears unreasonable. Among the principal examples are " Roman Triumphs " (not the same compositions as the Hampton Court res), " A Bacchanal Festival," " Hercules and Antaeus," pictures), Marine Gods," " Judith with the Head of Holophernes, the " Deposition from the Cross," the " Entombment," the " Resurrection," the " Man of Sorrows," the " Virgin in a Grotto." Mantegna has sometimes been credited with the important invention of engraving with the burin on copper. This claim cannot be sustained on a comparison of dates, but at any rate he introduced the art into upper Italy. Several of his engravings are supposed to be executed on some metal less hard than copper. The technique of. himself and his followers is characterized by the strongly marked forms of the design, and by the oblique formal hatchings of the shadows. The prints are frequently to be found in two states, or editions. In the first state the prints have been taken off with the roller, or even by hand-pressing, and they are weak in tint; in the second state the printing press has been used, and the ink is stronger. The influence of Mantegna on the style and tendency of his age was very marked, and extended riot 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. He did not, however, leave behind him many scholars of superior faculty. His two legitimate sons were painters of only ordinary ability. His favourite pupil was known as Carlo del Mantegna; Caroto of Verona was another pupil, Bonsignori an imitator. Giovanni Bellini," in his earlier works, obviously followed the lead of his brother-in-law Andrea. - The works painted by Mantegna, apart from his frescoes, are rot numerous; some thirty-five to forty are regarded as fullyauthenticated. We may name, besides those already specifiedin the Naples Museum, " St Euphemia," a fine early work; in Casa Melzi, Milan, the " Madonna and Child with Chanting Angels " (1461) ; in the Tribune of the Uffizi, Florence, three pictures remarkable for scrupulous finish; in the Berlin Museum, the " Dead Christ with two Angels " in the Louvre, the two celebrated pictures of mythic allegory" Parnassus " and " Minerva Triumphing over the Vices -in the National Gallery, London, the " Agony in the Garden," the Virgin and Child Enthroned, with the Baptist and the Magdalen," a late example; the monochrome of " Vestals, brought from Hamilton Palace; the " Triumph of Scipio " (or Phrygian Mother of the Gods received by the Roman Commonwealth), a tempera in chiaroscuro, painted only a few months before the master's death; in the Brera, Milan, the " Dead Christ, with the two Maries weeping," a remarkable tour de force in the way of foreshortening, which, though it has a stunted appearance, is in correct technical perspective as seen from all points of view. With all its exceptional merit, this is an eminently ugly picture. It remained in Mantegna's studio unsold at his death, and was disposed of to liquidate debts. Not to speak of , earlier periods, a great deal has been written concerning Mantegna of late ears. See the works by Maud Crutwell (1901), Paul Kristeller (1901)) H. Thode (1897), Paul Yriarte (1901), Julia Cartwright, Mantegna and Francia (1881). (W. M. R.)End of Article: MANTEGNA, ANDREA (14311506) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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