Andrea Mantegna
The daring experimenter with perspective.
Mantegna loved antiquity and dramatic angles. His Lamentation over the Dead Christ is painted with the feet pointing straight at the viewer.
Andrea Mantegna was born in 1431 near Padua, the son of a carpenter. As a child he was taken on as a pupil, and formally as an adopted son, by the painter Francesco Squarcione in Padua. He later broke with him and went to court to obtain his share of the earnings. Padua was a university city with a strong interest in antiquity, and that interest proved decisive for him.
His breakthrough was the frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel in the Eremitani church in Padua, on which he worked from 1448. They were almost entirely destroyed in an air raid in 1944. He then painted a large altarpiece for the church of San Zeno in Verona. In 1453 he married Nicolosia, sister of Giovanni Bellini. From 1460 he was court painter to the Gonzaga family in Mantua, a post he held until his death in 1506.
In Mantua he created the Camera degli Sposi, the Bridal Chamber, in the ducal palace, completed in 1474. The walls show the Gonzaga family with courtiers, dogs and horses. On the ceiling he painted an opening to the sky, where putti and ladies of the court peer down over a balustrade. It is the first painting since antiquity with such a consistent view from below. He also painted The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, now in the Brera in Milan, in which the dead body is seen from the feet in bold foreshortening. The series The Triumphs of Caesar is now at Hampton Court in England.
Mantegna collected ancient sculpture and coins, and his pictures are full of ancient buildings, inscriptions and armour. His figures have sharp outlines and often look as if they were carved in stone. He was also one of the first major painters to work in engraving, and his prints spread across Europe.
His influence was great, both through his perspective and through his love of antiquity. Albrecht Dürer studied his engravings, and his illusionistic ceiling became the model for Baroque ceiling painting.