Andrea Mantegna was a very significant and influential artist from the Italian Renaissance who changed the course of Northern Italian painting due to strong concern about ancient classical art and the use of perspective in art. He was born somewhere around the year 1431 near the city of Padua. He grew from an apprentice to the chief painter of the Gonzaga family in Mantua, setting a new standard for the intellectual approach in painting. His style can be characterized with the high-level sculptural quality as he painted figures as if they were made of marble. Mantegna can be called the master of frescoes and thus, he developed the method known as di sotto in su. With his inventions Mantegna combined the techniques of Venetian school and the use of archaeological precision in art. His workshops became responsible for the development of new methods in copper engraving, which correspondingly led to large distribution of Mantegna’s works and techniques all over Europe. He died in the year 1506.
Education
Mantegna’s apprenticeship started when he was an extremely young child under the guidance of Francesco Squarcione, a passionate collector of archaeological artifacts in addition to being an artist and a painter. Squarcione’s studio was not exactly a traditional painting school and did not resemble a conventional painting class, as it was more of a school focusing on classical antiquities, where students were instructed to reproduce Roman reliefs and statues. The rigorous training opened up for Mantegna a whole new world of relentless enthusiasm for classical buildings and historical relics. However, this relationship fell apart very soon, as Mantegna’s talent soon surpassed that of his teacher, therefore making him leave the studio when he reached the age of 17 and became famous for his independent works. His experience was enriched when he got married to one of the members of the well-known family of painters in Venice called Bellinis.
Signature Works
His career has been significantly shaped by a number of remarkable works that have redefined the idea of the representation of space. One of the most notable of his works is The Camera degli Sposi (Painted Room) located in the Ducale Palace of Mantua, which is famous for its extraordinary optical effect. He has created a fake oculus on the flat surface of the ceiling, making it look like the skies and children are watching from above. Among another well-known work of his, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, his contemporaries were amazed by this unique visual approach that utilized extreme foreshortening and made the viewers feel like they are lying at the feet of the Savior.
Notable Patrons
Mantegna’s considerable abilities caught the eye of many influential patrons in the fifteenth century; however, he had the longest cooperation with Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who offered him the position of the court painter in 1460. Thanks to such cooperation, Mantegna earned his place among the most outstanding artists of the Renaissance epoch and gained an opportunity to obtain some special rights and rewards. During his cooperation with the Gonzagas, Mantegna carried out numerous commissions of public and decorative works. Besides that, such cooperation gave Mantegna an opportunity to cooperate in projects of other noble families as well. He made significant religious works for the rich princes of Ferrara and even went to Rome to make a painting for the Pope Innocent VIII.
Influences
Mantegna’s visual language can be defined as derivatives of discoveries made by his contemporaries and what was left over from the classical world. The Florentine sculptor Donatello greatly restricted Mantegna’s imagination with his intense and emotional sculptures, particularly those made in Padua, inspiring Mantegna to immortalize rigid static and stone-like figures. Additionally, Mantegna’s approach to mathematics was hugely influenced by the architectural principles devised by Leon Battista Alberti, whom he was lucky to meet in Mantua. The combination of perspective rules set forth by Alberti and Donatello’s statuary heavy feeling made it possible for Mantegna to create realistic and deep backgrounds populated with figures imbued with a sense of three-dimensionality.