Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter and engraver. He trained in the Paduan workshop of Squarcione, where he matured the taste for the archaeological quotation; he came into contact with the news of the Tuscan passing through the city such as Filippo Lippi, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno and, above all, Donatello, from whom he learned a precise application of perspective. In fact Mantegna distinguished himself for the perfect spatial layout, the taste for the clearly defined drawing and for the monumental form of the figures.
The contact with the works of Piero della Francesca, which took place in Ferrara, further marked his results on the prospective study so as to reach "illusionistic" levels, which will be typical of all Northern Italian painting. Still in Ferrara, he was able to know the patheticism of the works of Rogier van der Weyden traceable in his devotional painting; through the knowledge of the works of Giovanni Bellini, whose sister Nicolosia married, the shapes of his characters softened, without losing monumentality, and were inserted into more airy sets. Constant in all his production was the dialogue with statuary, both contemporary and classical. Mantegna was the first great "classicist" of painting. His art can be defined as an important example of archaeological classicism.
Andrea Mantegna was born in 1431 from Biagio, a carpenter. Place of birth is Isola di Carturo (today called Isola Mantegna), a village near Padua, but which at the time was under the Vicentine countryside. The few news about his origins call them "of the most humble stock". From very young it is known that Andrea was a cattleman in the countryside around his country.
Very young, as early as 1441 he was mentioned in the Paduan documents as an apprentice and adopted son of Squarcione; around 1442 he enrolled in the Paduan fraglia of painters, with the nickname of "fiiulo" (son) of Squarcione. The transfer was certainly facilitated by the presence in the city of Tommaso Mantegna, Andrea's older brother, who had made a good fortune as a tailor, and lived in the district of Santa Lucia, where Andrea also lived. Subsequently, the painter began to live in the workshop of Squarcione, working exclusively for his adoptive father, who with the expedient of "affiliation" used to guarantee a loyal and low-cost labor force.
According to the contracts stipulated by Squarcione with his pupils, in his workshop he undertook to teach: perspective construction, presentation of models, composition of characters and objects, proportioning of the human figure, and more. Probably his teaching method consisted in copying ancient fragments, drawings and paintings of various parts of Italy, above all Tuscan and Roman, collected in his collection, as Vasari says in the life of Mantegna: "he practiced it very much [to Mantegna] in plaster things made up of ancient statues, and in paintings of paintings, which in cloth came to different places, and particularly of Tuscany and Rome ". Nothing is known of this collection, but it can be presumed that medals, statuettes, ancient inscriptions, plaster casts and some pieces of statues, perhaps directly from Greece (where the master had probably gone personally in the twenties), were part of it, all fragmentary works that were taken singularly for their vigor, decontextualising them and arbitrarily reassembling them.
In Padua Mantegna also found a lively humanistic climate and could receive a classical education, which enriched with the direct observation of classical works, of the Paduan works of Donatello (in the city from 1443 to 1453) and the practice of drawing with Florentine influences ( decisive and sure stretch) and Germans (tendency to sculptural representation). The sensitivity towards the classical world and antiquarian taste soon became one of the fundamental components of his artistic language, which he brought with him throughout his career.
In 1447 he visited Venice with the Squarcione.
The permanence of Mantegna at the Squarcione shop lasted for six years. In 1448 he definitively freed himself of the protection of his adoptive father, also filing a lawsuit against him, to obtain compensation in cash for works carried out on behalf of the master.
In that same year he dedicated himself to a first independent work: the altarpiece, which was destroyed in the seventeenth century, destined for the main altar of the church of Santa Sofia. It was a Madonna and Child in a sacred conversation between saints, probably inspired by the altar of the Basilica of Santo di Donatello. From those early years we received a San Marco, signed and dated 1448, and a San Girolamo, of which there are also some studies on paper.

Also of 1448 is the signature of the contract by his brother Tommaso Mantegna, as guardian of Andrea still "minor", for the decoration of the chapel of the Ovetari family in the church of the Eremitani in Padua. The work, partly destroyed during the Second World War, was entrusted to a heterogeneous team of painters, where the personality of Mantegna gradually emerged, also capable of refining its technique.
Mantegna began to paint from the segments of the apsidal basin, where he left three figures of saints, inspired by those of Andrea del Castagno in the Venetian church of San Zaccaria. Later he devoted himself probably to the lunette of the left wall, with the Vocation of the saints James and John and the Preaching of St. James, completed by 1450, and then move on to the median register. In the lunette the perspective still showed some uncertainty, while in the two scenes below it appears instead well dominated. The point of view, central in the upper register, is lowered in the scenes below and unifies the space of the two episodes, with the vanishing point of both scenes set on the painted central pillar. In the following scenes, the elements taken from the ancient rise, such as the majestic triumphal arch that occupies two thirds of the Judgment, to which medallions, pillars, figurative reliefs and inscriptions in capital letters [6], probably derived from the example of drawings by Jacopo Bellini, the father of Gentile and Giovanni. The armor, the costumes and the classical architecture, unlike the "squarcioneschi" painters, were not mere decorations of erudite flavor, but contributed to provide a real historical reconstruction of the events. The intention to recreate the monumentality of the ancient world comes to give the human figures a certain rigidity, which made them appear as statues.
In 1449 the first contrasts arose between Mantegna and Nicolò Pizzolo, with the former being sued by the latter due to the continuous interference in the execution of the chapel altarpiece. This involved a redistribution by the commissioners of the work among the artists. Probably for these contrasts Mantegna suspended his work and visited Ferrara. In any case, the shipyard stopped in 1451 due to lack of funds.
The commitment in the Ovetari chapel did not prevent the painter from accepting other positions, so in May 1449, taking advantage of a stalled phase, he went to Ferrara, in the service of Leonello d'Este.
Here he made a lost work consisting of a double portrait, perhaps a diptych, portraying Leonello on one side and his chamberlain Folco di Villafora on the other. It is not certain how long the painter stayed at the court of Ferrara, however it is undisputed that here he saw the paintings of Piero della Francesca and the Flemish that the duke collected. Perhaps he met Rogier van der Weyden himself, who was in Italy the same year, stopping also in the Este court.
In 1450-1451 Mantegna returned to Ferrara, at the service of Borso d'Este, for whom he painted an Adoration of the shepherds, where he already grasped greater attention to the naturalistic rendering of the reality derived from the Flemish example.
On 21 July 1452 Mantegna finished in Padua the lunette for the main portal of the Basilica del Santo with the Monogram of Christ between the saints Anthony of Padua and Bernardino, now preserved in the Antonian Museum. In this work he experienced for the first time the glimpses from underneath which he then applied in the remaining frescoes to the Eremitani.
The works at the Ovetari chapel were resumed in November 1453 and concluded in 1457. In this second phase only Mantegna was the protagonist, also for the death of Nicolò Pizzolo (1453), who completed the Stories of Saint James, frescoed the central wall with the Assumption of the Virgin and finally dedicated to the completion of the lower register of the Stories of St. Christopher, initiated by Bono da Ferrara and Ansuino da Forlì, where he created two unified scenes: the martyrdom and transport of the decapitated body of St. Christopher, the most ambitious whole cycle [8]. The relationship with Ansuino is discussed, which, if for some it would have been influenced by Mantegna, for others it would have been rather a forerunner.
In 1457 Empress Ovetari filed a lawsuit against Mantegna because in the fresco of the Assumption he had painted only eight apostles instead of twelve. Painters Pietro da Milano and Giovanni Storlato were called to give an opinion that justified the choice of Mantegna for the lack of space.
More looser than the Stories of St. James appears the episode of the Martyrdom of St. Christopher, immediately following, where the architecture has already acquired the illusionistic trait that was one of the basic characteristics of the entire production of Mantegna. In fact, the wall seems to open a loggia, where the scene of martyrdom is set, with a more airy setting and buildings drawn not only from the classical world. The figures, also taken from daily observation, are more loose and psychologically identified, with softer forms, which suggest the influence of Venetian painting, in particular of Giovanni Bellini, of which after all Mantegna married his sister in 1454.
During the nine years of work at the Cappella Ovetari, the unmistakable style of Mantegna was made, making it immediately famous and making it one of the most appreciated artists of its time. Despite the commitment to the Eremitani, in those years Mantegna also implied other commissions, also of considerable commitment.
Of 1453-1454 is the Polyptych of San Luca for the chapel of San Luca in the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Padua, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera. The polyptych consists of twelve compartments organized on two registers.
In the altar there are fused archaic elements, such as the gold background and the different proportions between the figures, and innovative elements, such as the spatial unification of perspective in the polychrome marble step which is the basis of the saints of the lower register and the shortened view from below of the characters of the upper register, extremely solid and monumental, that with the original frame (lost) had to give the idea of looking out from a loggia with arches, placed above the point of view of the spectator. The figures have clear contours, highlighted by the almost metallic brilliance of the colors.
Also in 1454 is the table with Sant'Eufemia at the Capodimonte museum in Naples. The painting has a hypostation similar to the Assumption of the Virgin to the Ovetari chapel, with the monumental figure of the saint, given by the vision seen from below, and framed in an arc of strict perspectival rigor, with festoons of squarciones derivation.
The San Zeno altarpiece for the choir of the church of San Zeno in Verona was commissioned by Gregorio Correr, abbot of the church, in 1456 and built between 1457 and 1459. It is the first fully renaissance altarpiece painted in northern Italy, from where it was born a fruitful school of Veronese painters: one of the many valuable examples was Girolamo dai Libri.
The frame only apparently divides the blade into a triptych: in fact, the real frame is in fact illusively continued from the portico, bordered by columns, which contains the Sacred Conversation; Mantegna also opened a window in the church that illuminated the shovel from the right so as to match the real lighting with the painted one. The architectures have in fact acquired the illusionistic trait that was one of the basic characteristics of the entire production of Mantegna. The lowered point of view intensifies the monumentality of the figures and increases the involvement of the spectator, who is also called into question by the direct gaze of St. Peter. The figures, with poses also taken from daily observation, are more loose and psychologically identified, with softer forms, which suggest the influence of Venetian painting, in particular of Giovanni Bellini. In the perspective drawing of the sacred conversation the vanishing point is at the base of the central panel, between the two musician angels.
The three scenes include the three scenes with Oration in the garden and Resurrection (preserved in Tours) and Crucifixion (preserved in the Louvre).
From the beginning in the workshop of Squarcione, Mantegna had repeated contacts with the Venetian workshop of Jacopo Bellini, one of the last exponents of late-Gothic culture that in those years was pursuing an update in the Renaissance sense starting to use the perspective and sharing with Andrea the taste for the archaeological quote.
Evaluating the great potentialities of the young Paduan, Bellini developed the decision to give him his only daughter Nicolosia in marriage in 1453. Since then the relationship between Mantegna and the Venetian painters became closer, especially with his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini. The dialogue between the two, particularly intense during the fifties, was expressed in the admiration and desire for emulation of Bellini, who learned Donatello's lesson from his brother-in-law and often presented works derived from his own (such as the prayer in the garden or the Presentation in the Temple). The same Mantegna borrowed from Bellini greater fluency and psychological identification for the characters, as well as a more fluid fusion of color and light.
When Giovanni reached full awareness of his artistic talents, the influences of Mantegna gradually melted (as well as those of his father and his brother Gentile).
Towards Mantova
The first letter of Ludovico Gonzaga dates back to 1456, requiring Andrea as a court painter, after the departure of Pisanello, perhaps the previous one in charge. The Gonzaga was the typical humanist prince and condottiere, educated in childhood by Vittorino da Feltre, who had approached Roman history, poetry, mathematics and astrology. It is therefore not surprising that the Marquis insisted on the services of Mantegna, who at the time was the artist who most sought to revive the classical world in his works. The renewal program promoted by the Gonzaga had a wider scope and involved in those same years also other artists, such as Leon Battista Alberti and Luca Fancelli.
In 1457 the Marquis officially invited Andrea to move to Mantua and the painter declared himself interested, even if the commitments already made in Padua (such as the Pala di San Zeno and other works) made his departure postponed for another three years. Probably there were also personal reasons for the delay: he had to know that by moving to court his life as a man and artist would have changed radically, thus guaranteeing him economic tranquility and remarkable stability, but also depriving him of his freedom and keeping him away from that lively environment of the Paduan nobles and humanists, in which he was so appreciated.
Between 1457 and 1459 he executed the San Sebastiano, now kept in Vienna, which Roberto Longhi, underlining the refined calligraphy, dates back to around 1470.
In 1458 Mantegna and some aids were intent on frescoing the ducal residences of Cavriana and Goito, followed a few years later by a Homeric cycle in the palace of Revere (1463-1464). Nothing remains of these cycles. Some have recognized an echo in the carvings of the master or his circle, such as the two Bacchanals (Bacchanal with Silenus at Chatsworth, collections of the Duke of Devonshire and Chatsworth, and Bacchanal with a vat in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the Zuffa di dei marine, also in Chatsworth).
In 1460 Mantegna moved with his whole family to Mantua as an official court painter, but also as an art advisor and curator of art collections. Here he obtained a fixed salary, an accommodation and the honor of a coat of arms with the motto "par un désir", living at the court of the Gonzagas until his death.
Among the first works to which the artist put his hand there was a series of portraits, a typical production of court painters, commissioned by both the Marquis and a series of nobles and powerful in close relationship with the court. The portrait of Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan (1459-1460) and the Portrait of Francesco Gonzaga (about 1461) stand out.
The first official assignment that Ludovico III Gonzaga entrusted to Mantegna, even before its definitive transfer, was to decorate the chapel of the Castle of San Giorgio. It was the private chapel in the fourteenth-century castle that the marquis had elected to his residence and which today is a wing of Palazzo Ducale. The architectural work at the chapel began in 1459, as part of a self-congratulatory project for the council of Mantua (27 May 1459-19 January 1460), and had been carried out according to a consultation with Mantegna himself, as evidenced by a letter from the Marquis al Mantegna, dated May 4, 1459. The small environment, redone and redecorated in the sixteenth century when its decorations were now lost, was covered by a small dome with lantern, where some windows were opened.
As for the pictorial decoration, Mantegna painted a large altarpiece, the Death of the Virgin, now at the Prado, which had an elongated shape, originally endowed with an upper part, sawed in an unspecified period, of which it was recognized as being part of the tablet of Christ with the animula of the Madonna (Ferrara, National Art Gallery). Of great illusionism is the presence of the painted view of the lake of the Mincio and of the bridge of San Giorgio, which was really visible from the windows of the castle, and which Mantegna later also included in the Camera degli Sposi.
The three plates of the Uffizi triptych (Ascension, Adoration of the Magi and Circumcision), arbitrarily associated with a single work in the nineteenth century, may also be part of the same decoration. However, it could also be a work carried out between 1466 and 1467 during two stays in Florence. In addition, perhaps refer to that decorative project the three engravings with the Deposition from the cross, the Deposition in the sepulcher and the Descent to Limbo.
On 23 and 24 September 1464 Andrea Mantegna, the painter Samuele da Tradate, Felice Feliciano, copyist and antique dealer, and Giovanni Marcanova, a hydraulic engineer, took a boat trip on Lake Garda. [11] It was a real archaeological expedition in search of ancient epigraphs, which well documented the passion for the collecting of antiquities of Mantegna and the group of humanists close to him. They also tried to ritually emulate the classical world: crowned with myrtle wreaths and ivy, they sang accompanied by the lute and invoked the memory of Marcus Aurelius, who was represented by the emperor Samuel, while Andrew and John were the consules. At the end of the trip they visited the temple of the Blessed Virgin in Garda, to whom they gave thanks.
In 1465 Mantegna started one of his most complex decorative enterprises, to which his fame is linked. This is the so-called Camera degli Sposi, called in Camera Picta reports, ie "painted room", completed in 1474. The medium-small size occupies the first floor of the north-eastern tower of the Castle of San Giorgio and it had the dual function of the audience hall (where the marquis treated public affairs) and the representative bedroom, where Ludovico met with his family.
Mantegna studied a fresco decoration that involved all the walls and ceiling vaults, adapting itself to the architectural limits of the environment, but at the same time illusionistically breaking through the walls with the painting, which creates a dilated space well beyond the physical limits of the room. The connecting pattern between the scenes on the walls is the fake marble base that runs all around in the lower part, on which the pillars that subdivide the scenes rest. Some frescoed brocade curtains reveal the main scenes, which seem to unfold over a porch. The vault is frescoed as if it were spheroidal and has an oculus centrally, from which young girls, puttos, a peacock and a vase stand out, silhouetted against the blue sky.
The general theme is an extraordinary political-dynastic celebration of the entire Gonzaga family, with the occasion of the celebration of the election to cardinal of Francesco Gonzaga. The moment in which Ludovico receives the news of the election is portrayed on the north wall: great attention is paid to details, to the verisimilitude, to the exaltation of the court's luxury. On the west wall is the meeting, which took place near the town of Bozzolo, between the marquis and the cardinal son; the scene has a certain fixedness, determined by the static nature of the characters portrayed in profile or three quarters to emphasize the importance of the moment; in the background there is an idealized Rome, as a wish for the Cardinal.
As prizes for the execution of the work, Ludovico Gonzaga in 1476 donated to the master the land on which he built his house, still known today as Casa del Mantegna.
During the long works in the Camera degli Sposi, conducted with particular slowness, as the restoration of 1894-1987 also demonstrated, Mantegna also worked on other works, but their consistency and identification is particularly difficult, due to the lack of documentation. It is known that in 1466 Mantegna was in Florence and Siena and that in 1467 he returned to Tuscany again. The only work referred to these trips is perhaps the Portrait of Carlo de 'Medici, which some however hypothesize dates back to the Council of Mantua.
In June 1478 the Marquis Ludovico disappeared and succeeded his son Federico, who would reign for six years. Mantegna, although often distressed by financial hardship, was well aware of the prominent rank he held at court and was eager for a public recognition of his fame, seeking with stubbornness a title. In 1469 Emperor Frederick III was in Ferrara, where Mantegna went personally to be awarded as Count Palatine. It is not clear whether or not he got what he wanted, because he used that title only after his stay in Rome.
The greatest rewards, however, he obtained from the marquesses his benefactors. In 1484 he obtained the prestigious title of knight.
A few years later the enterprise of Mantua probably dates back to the decoration of the Bondanello marquis residence (perhaps in 1478), where two rooms were frescoed, completely lost with the destruction of the building in the 18th century. Archival clues have suggested that this engraving could be linked with the Zuffa di dei marine.
In this period the activity of Mantegna was full of duties deriving from the court service (miniatures, tapestries, jewelery and cassoni, which were often created according to his design), to which the decorations deriving from the building industry of the Gonzagas, where the master had to supervise numerous workers. Among the few surviving paintings of this period, some place the famous Dead Christ (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera), whose proposed dating, however, oscillate on the whole between the end of the Paduan period and 1501 and then, then a very wide period. The perspectival frame of the body of Christ seen in a steep glimpse is famous, also for the illusion that the redeemer "follows" the spectator in every movement, according to an illusory criterion that is similar to that of the Oculus in the Camera degli Sposi and that almost eclipses, with its amazing character, the other expressive values of the work.
In about 1480 he realized the San Sebastiano, now kept at the Louvre, probably on the occasion of the marriage, which took place the following year, between Chiara Gonzaga and Gilberto di Borbone-Montpensier and destined for the church of Aigueperse en Auvergne, where he arrived in 1481.
An example of how Mantegna was esteemed and requested by the great of his time is evidenced by his relations with Lorenzo il Magnifico, de facto lord of Florence. In 1481 Andrea sent him a painting and in 1483 Lorenzo visited his studio, admiring his works, but also his personal collection of busts and ancient objects.
The marquisate of Federico Gonzaga was relatively short and he was succeeded by his eighteen-year-old son Francesco, in power until 1519. The young heir, unlike his predecessors, had not primary interests in art and literature, preferring rather to carry on the military tradition of the family, becoming a well-known leader. Among his favorite pastimes were the rides and tournaments, as well as the stables of famous stables for his horses.
However, Francesco was not at all a stranger to patronage, continuing the work of his predecessors in the creation of new architectures and achievements of large decorative cycles, even if the link between these commissions and his military enterprises was greater, so much so that Ferrarese poet Ercole Strozzi called it the "new Caesar".
In this climate Mantegna started the realization of the Triumphs, one of the most celebrated works of the time, which occupied the artist from about 1485 until his death.
The ambitious project of the Triumphs of Caesar, nine monumental canvases that recreated the triumphal painting of Ancient Rome, now preserved in the Royal Palace of Hampton Court in London, was begun around 1485, still in progress in 1492, made public in part in 1501 and concluded by 1505. Of a tenth "Triumph" called the Senators there is only one print derived from the preparatory cartoon. Inspired by ancient and modern sources and rare depictions on sarcophagi and various reliefs, Mantegna recreated the triumphal procession, which originally had to appear, through special frames, as a single long scene that was seen as through a loggia. The result was a heroic exaltation of a lost world, with a solemnity no less than that of the Camera degli Sposi, but more moving, gripping and up-to-date.
After the death of the master, Francesco II dedicated the canvases to a long gallery of the San Sebastiano building, which had just been built, probably using a series of carved and gilded pillars to frame them, some of which remain in Palazzo Ducale. The cycle immediately became one of the most admired treasures of the Gonzaga city, celebrated by ambassadors and visitors passing through. In 1626, seven of the canvases had been moved to the Palazzo Ducale, with two by Lorenzo Costa. Vasari saw them and described them as "the best thing [Mantegna] ever worked".
In 1487 Pope Innocent VIII wrote to Francesco Gonzaga asking him to send Mantegna to Rome, since he intended to entrust the decoration of the chapel of the new Belvedere building to the Vatican. The master left in 1488, with a presentation by the Marquis dated 10 June 1488.
Shortly before leaving Mantua Andrea provided perhaps the indications and drawings for four frescoes (Ascension, Saints Andrew and Longinus - dated 1488 - Deposition and Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John) destined for the atrium of the church of Sant'Andrea, found in bad condition in 1915 under a neoclassical plaster that replicated them. After the restoration of 1961 the Ascension was attributed to Mantegna and the others to his circle or Correggio. However, the most recent criticism accepted as the only sinopia of the Ascension as the master.
On January 31, 1489 Mantegna was in Rome and wrote to the Marquis of Mantua to recommend the preservation of the Triumphs of Caesar, while in another letter of the same year, dated June 15, the master described the work in progress, which concerned a lost chapel [14], adding, to amuse His Excellency, pleasant news on the Roman court, with a cheerfulness that contrasts with the traditional image of man enveloped in an aura of frowning classicism. The Mantegna, used to lead a well-to-do life and to receive gifts and honors, could not bear the Spartan treatment received at the Vatican, which in the course of the two years only compensated him for the expenses incurred.
The old descriptions of the chapel, which contained the Stories of John the Baptist and the infancy of Christ, recall the "most pleasant" views of cities and villages, the fake marbles and the fake architectural framework, with small dome, festoons, cherubs, allegories, allegories of Virtues, isolated figures of saints, a portrait of the commissioning pope and a dedicatory plaque dated 1490. Vasari wrote that those paintings "seem a miniata thing".
Vasari also dates back to the Roman period of the Madonna delle Cave, now in the Uffizi, where the passage between light and shadow, respectively in the steps to the right and left of the central figures, has been interpreted as an allegory of the Redemption . Often associated with this table is also the Christ in piety supported by two angels of Copenhagen for the presence also of quarrymen in the background; others attribute it to the period immediately following (1490-1500).
In 1490 the artist returned to Mantua. Controversial was the relationship of Mantegna with the antiquities of the eternal city: despite being the painter who more than any other had shown interest in the classical world, the ruins of ancient Rome seem to leave him indifferent; he does not mention it in his letters and does not appear in his subsequent pictorial production.
Returning to Mantua, the artist devoted himself first of all to the continuation of the series of Triumphs. Despite the vastness and ambition of the work, Mantegna worked hard on many other commissions and the numerous reminder letters received from clients and patrons are a testimony to the requests obtained, far beyond its possibilities.
Under his guidance, between 1491 and 1494, various painters frescoed Marmirolo's marquis residence (also destroyed), some rooms, called "dei Cavalli", "del Mappamondo", "delle Città" and "Greca". In this last one there were views of Constantinople and other Levantine cities, with interiors of mosques, baths and other various turkeries. Also in Marmirolo there was a lost series of other Triumphs, perhaps those of Petrarch or, more probably, of Alexander the Great. These works, transported to Mantua in 1506 to act as a backdrop to a show, were sometimes confused with Caesar's Triumphs, further complicating the tangled historical reconstruction of canvases in London today.
The monochromes with a biblical subject probably date back to 1490-1500, kept at the Cincinnati Museum, at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, in Vienna, at the Louvre and at the National Gallery in London.
In these years a series of works united by historians are united by technical affinities, such as the thin draft of the tempera which reveals the grain of the canvas. Among the Madonna with Child, the most ancient is perhaps the Madonna Poldi Pezzoli, similar to Madonna Butler (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and to the Madonna of the Carrara Academy.
For the victory of Francis II in the battle of Fornovo (1495), which temporarily drove the French from Italy, the great altarpiece called Madonna della Vittoria was commissioned to Mantegna as an ex voto, completed in 1496 and destined for the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria specially erected. The painting was charged to a Mantuan Jew, Daniele da Norsa, guilty of having removed an image of the Virgin from the front of his house, to replace it with his coat of arms. The Marquis himself was shown kneeling at the foot of the Virgin's throne, while he smiles and receives his blessing. The altarpiece, today in the Louvre, is characterized by a decorative exuberance that recalls the works of the Paduan period and the early Mantuan period, with a profusion of marbles, frames, fruit festoons, glass and coral threads, birds and false bas-reliefs.
The Madonna della Vittoria has affinity with some groups of Sacred families, typical of the production of this period, such as the Kimbell Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Trivulzio shovel
The other great work of this period is the Pala Trivulzio (1497), already destined for the main altar of the church of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona and today in the Pinacoteca of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
Isabella d'Este, unanimously regarded as one of the most educated women of the Renaissance, arrived in Mantua as a wife of Francesco Gonzaga in 1490. She brought with her a follow-up of Ferrara artists from her hometown, Mantegna immediately worried about winning the favors of young Marchesa, being advised by her tutor Battista Guarino.
Isabella, who in Mantua deepened her cultural interests and also governed the state when her husband was at war, had a somewhat controversial relationship with Mantegna. While showing appreciation for his talents, she felt that she was not good enough in portraits, trying to make use of other artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci.
The indefatigable and incontinable activity of Isabella as a collector of works of art, gems, statues and valuable objects, which through her agents sought throughout Europe, culminated in the creation of a study in the castle of San Giorgio, a private environment inspired to those of Urbino and Gubbio, whom he had seen in the company of his sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga, married Montefeltro. To embellish this environment, the only one of a kind belonging to a woman, commissioned various works of art with mythological, allegorical and scholarly themes, often using Mantegna's own. In the two paintings of the Parnassus (1497) and the so-called Triumph of Virtue (1499-1502) the artist experimented compositions rich in characters, with complex allegorical readings. a third painting Isabella d'Este in the reign of Harmony was designed by Mantegna and completed, due to his death, by Lorenzo Costa.
In these works weighs the binding subject decided by the councilors of the Marchesa, like Paride da Ceresara, who put in difficulty other artists called by Isabella as the Perugino, whose work was not considered satisfactory, and Giovanni Bellini, who came to decline the task .
To meet the tastes of the Marquise, Mantegna updated her style, adhering to a certain colorism that then dominated the artistic scene in Italy, and softening some aspects of her art, with more elaborate poses of figures, dynamism and complicated landscapes.
Grisaglie
From about 1495 Mantegna started a prolific production of paintings of a biblical subject in grisaille, that is imitating monochromatic sculpture. It was also probably compared to the production of sculptors such as the Lombards or the Ancient.
Some have attributed to Mantegna a fresco of some coats of arms, surrounded by satyrs, dolphins and ram heads in grisaille, on a faux marble background, which present the date in Roman letters 1504. Discovered in Feltre during restoration work in the old Bishopric in 2006, it was painted for the local saint and bishop Antonio Pizzamano.
The extreme production of Mantegna is that of 1505-1506, linked to works with a bitter and melancholic taste, united by a different style, linked to brown tones and an innovative use of light and movement. At this stage are attributed the two paintings for his burial chapel in the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, the Baptism of Christ and the Holy Family with the family of John the Baptist, and the bitter St. Sebastian, where a scroll reflects on the transience of the life.
On 13 September 1506 Andrea Mantegna died at the age of 75. The last period of his life was marred by pressing economic difficulties and an increasingly melancholy vision of his role as an artist, now undermined by the new generations who proposed a softer and more captivating classicism.
The disappearance of the teacher generated many certificates of esteem and regret, among which remains that of Albrecht Dürer, who claimed to have experienced "the greatest pain of his life". The German master was indeed in Venice and had planned a trip to Mantua just to get to know the highly esteemed colleague.
The admiration for his figure, however, did not translate, in general, into an artistic following, being his austere and vigorous art now considered outdated by the pressing novelties of the beginning of the century, considered more suitable to express the soul's motions in that time. Perhaps the only great master to follow echoes of Mantegna in the mighty illusionism of the paintings was Correggio, who worked in his youth in Mantua by decorating the funeral chapel of the artist in Sant'Andrea.