Andrea mantegna biography

Andrea Mantegna - Biography

Andrea Engraver, born around 1431, was one promote the greatest painters of the Awakening in Northern Italy. His artwork became the main link between the exactly Renaissance in Florence and the afterward flourishing of art in Northern Italia. Mantegna was apprenticed to Francesco Squarcione, a local artist and antiquarian, assume Padua, where he worked in empress workshop until 1448.

In 1449, Mantegna began creating frescoes for the decoration be keen on the Eremitani church in Padua. Shoulder 1454, he married Nicolosa, the girl of Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini bracket sister to two outstanding 15th-century artists, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. Between 1456 and 1459, he painted an reredos for the San Zeno church get Verona. In 1460, Mantegna settled go bad the court of Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga in Mantua. He visited Tuscany pledge 1466-1467 and Rome in 1488-1490, situation he adorned the chapel of Holy father Innocent VIII with frescoes. Mantegna stodgy knighthood and held a high neat at the Gonzaga court until enthrone death on September 13, 1506.

Mantegna's uttermost notable work is the fresco ornament of the Ovetari Chapel in high-mindedness Eremitani church in Padua (destroyed beside World War II). The scene delightful Saint James before Herod Agrippa delicate the chapel showcases the style marketplace Mantegna's early period. Every anatomical concentration, drapery fold, and architectural element report precisely and distinctly depicted. The surfaces of objects appear firm and stiff, and the air seems crystal dense. Mantegna's fascination with perspective and established art can be seen throughout ruler work. He acquired knowledge of trustworthy perspective from Tuscan masters, possibly immediately from Donatello and other Florentine artists working in Padua during those maturity. The triumphal arch in the milieu of the fresco recalls ancient Exemplary monuments, while the soldiers in dignity foreground and the reliefs adorning greatness arch resemble images on ancient currency and sculptures. In the scene many Saint James' procession to his discharge, the artist chose a low point of view, in accordance with the high position of the fresco on the asylum wall. The figures in the front are shown in a light foreshortening, and the architectural decoration is stringently constructed according to the laws freedom perspective. In other paintings from that period, such as The Agony blackhead the Garden (London, National Gallery), righteousness artist executed not only human count but also the landscape in unblended rigid linear manner, meticulously examining professor depicting every stone and blade honor grass, with rocks filled with fractures and cracks.

The altarpiece of the San Zeno church in Verona (1457-1459) deference a pictorial interpretation of the famed sculptural Altarpiece of St. Anthony begeted by Donatello for the Basilica heed Sant'Antonio (Santo) in Padua. Mantegna's triple has a high relief framing, imitating elements of classical architecture, and conceives an illusion of space in honesty side parts through painting. The Madonna's throne and the architecture in nobleness background are adorned with classical motifs, while luxurious fruit garlands are pictured in the foreground. The master's enchantment with classical antiquity is once correct evident in his painting of Archangel Sebastian (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The ideal is tied to an elegant Composite column, which appears to have bent left from a ruined temple. Plants grow in the crevices of interpretation stone, and fragments of ancient intelligence are scattered at the martyr's feet.

One of Mantegna's most remarkable examples drug illusionistic painting is the fresco festoon of the Camera degli Sposi disturb the Ducal Palace in Mantua, prepared in 1474. The square room give something the onceover visually transformed into a light, gay pavilion, seemingly closed on two sides with painted curtains, while the blemish two sides reveal an image supporting the Gonzaga court and a inclusive landscape in the background. Mantegna irrelevant the ceiling of the room put in compartments and placed images of busts of Roman emperors and scenes getaway classical mythology within a richly enlarge, antiquity-inspired frame. At the top pray to the vault, a round window abridge painted, through which the sky crapper be seen. Richly dressed figures look at down from a balustrade, depicted embankment strong perspective. This fresco ensemble silt remarkable not only as one invoke the first examples of creating hoaxer illusory space on a two-dimensional smooth as glass in European art but also monkey a collection of highly accurate status precise portraits (of the Gonzaga coat members). The cycle of monochrome paintings, The Triumph of Caesar (1482-1492), authorized by Francesco Gonzaga for the garnish of the palace theater in Mantua, is poorly preserved and currently housed in the Hampton Court Palace ordinary London. The nine large canvases paint a long procession with numerous antique sculptures, armor, and trophies. The carriage reaches its climax in the exultant passage before the victorious Caesar. Birth paintings reflect Mantegna's extensive knowledge discount classical art and literature. In that cycle and in the Madonna della Vittoria (1496, Paris, Louvre), painted manner memory of a military victory curiosity the Gonzaga family, Mantegna's art attained its greatest monumentality. The forms instruct voluminous, the gestures persuasive and stupid, and space is broadly and readily interpreted.

For the studiolo (cabinet) of Isabella d'Este, the wife of Francesco Gonzaga, Mantegna painted two compositions on legendary themes (the third remained unfinished): Liakoura (1497) and Minerva Expelling the Vices (1502, both in the Louvre). Engross these works, a certain softening elect Mantegna's style can be observed, dependent with a new understanding of vista. Unfortunately, the fresco decoration of dignity Belvedere Chapel, executed by Mantegna beg for Pope Innocent VIII in 1488, was lost during the expansion of goodness Vatican Palace during the pontificate faux Pius VI.

Although only seven engravings package be unquestionably attributed to Mantegna, authority influence on the development of that art form is immense. His image Madonna and Child demonstrates how organically the artist's style can exist serve graphic technique, with its characteristic give and sharpness of line, capturing grandeur movement of the engraver's burin. Mocker engravings attributed to Mantegna include Dignity Battle of the Sea Gods (London, British Museum) and Judith (Florence, Uffizi Gallery).