Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna was a painter born in 1431 at the Isula di Carturo, near Padua, in Northern Italy.

He was adopted at a young age by Francesco Squarcione, who was the founder of an art school in the city of Padua.

At the age of 17, Mantegna established his own workshop and soon got commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Church of Santa Sophia and for several frescoes for the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani, which were nearly totally destroyed during World War II.

In 1453 Mantegna married Nicolosia Bellini, daughter of Jacopo Bellini and the sister of Gentile and GiovanniBellini, an important Venetian artistic family. He lived in Padua until he was about 30 years old and painted a lot of important works during this period, including the St. Luke Altarpiece, today exhibited in Milan or Agony in the Garden, now in the national Gallery in London.

In 1459 he got invited to become a court painter by Ludovico Gonzaga, the marquis of Mantua, and he moved there one year later. His masterpiece was a series of frescoes for the Camera degli Sposi in the Gonzaga palace. He painted the walls of the room looking like a landscape seen through openings in an airy pavilion and he created the illusion that the ceiling appears to be open to the sky. This form of illusionistic ceiling painting became a very popular element in the baroque era.

Mantegna visited Florence and Pisa in 1466 until 1467, and he worked for Pope Innocent VIII in Rome between 1488 and 1490.

In the last years of his life, Mantegna painted the Parnassus, a picture celebrating the marriage of Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga in 1490, and the Madonna of the Victory to commemorate the victory of Francesco at the Battle of Fornovo. Both pictures are exhibited in the Louvre in Paris today.

Mantegna was an important painter of the early Renaissance and the new painting techniques he used in his pictures had a long lasting influence on later Renaissance painters. He died in Mantua on September 13, 1506.

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To have a look at his works follow:

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