Andrea MantegnaN 1, born in Isola di Carturo, around 1431 and died September 13, 1506 in Mantua, is an Italian engraver and painter of the First Renaissance who definitively broke with the Gothic style in the middle of the 15th century, without departing from this attitude throughout his life.

Marked by the Greco-Roman heritage, exploiting perspective through his research on shortcuts, he innovated in terms of feigned architecture, with wall decorations, vaults, creating scenes of great virtuosity, thanks among other things to the horn -the eye and a sense of detail.

Beyond Mantegna court painter, emerges with him, in Western art, the central figure of the artist, of the genius, who sets a school, and whose cultural impact can be measured centuries later. Andrea Mantegna was born probably in 1431N 2 in a small village, Isola di Carturo (today Isola Mantegna, municipality of Piazzola sul Brenta), located not far from Padua, on the lands of the Republic of Venice. Herdsman2, he was the second son of a carpenter-joiner named Biagio, of modest means, who died between 1449 and 14513.

Before the age of eleven, entrusted by his parents for adoptionN 3.3, he entered as an apprentice with the painter Francesco Squarcione, who is at the head of a workshop in Padua, one of the most important in this region. A former tailor and embroiderer, Squarcione is passionate about ancient art and rhetoric. He is, like his compatriot Petrarch, a lover of Roman antiquities, and had amassed an impressive quantity of objects dating from the Roman Empire, and even, thanks to the commercial links maintained by Venice1, from Magna Graecia (statues in marble, vases, bronzes, bas-reliefs, etc.). His collection serves as a model for his commissions in the taste of the time5, and there are up to 137 students who have assisted him - including the Ferrarese Cosmè Tura and Francesco del Cossa1 - as his workshop was renowned throughout Italy1.

On May 23, 1445, in the oldest document mentioning his existence, Andrea Mantegna is called “Andrea pictore”: it is the codicil of a will linking Squarcione to a notary from Padua3. Tommaso Mantegna, Andrea's older brother, also a tailor, lives in the Santa Lucia district, not far from the workshop2. Imbued with resurgent humanism1, Squarcione taught him Latin, the classical authors, and gave him fragments of Roman sculpture to study, and thereby, the figures, the volumes, the putting into perspective, as Giorgio Vasari underlines in these terms: “[Mantegna] practiced using plaster objects, copied from ancient statues, and on copies of paintings, which came from different places, and in particular from Tuscany and Rome” (The Lives, III ). The apprentice then developed a passion for antiquities and remained in the master's service for six years. It bears witness to the work of the Florentine artist Donatello undertaken for the city from 1443. Sensitivity to the classical world and taste for antiques became one of the fundamental components of his artistic language, which he followed throughout his career. Mantegna left Squarcione's workshop during a trip made with the master to Venice in 1448; relations deteriorate between the two men since Andrea sues Squarcione for unpaid work: Mantegna frees himself and leaves to earn his living2.
Padua: first works
Martyrdom of Saint Jerome, part of the frescoes of the Ovetari chapel (Padua).

Aged seventeen, Mantegna then completed his first known work, a large altarpiece intended for the Santa Sophia church in Padua, destroyed in the 17th century6: it was a Virgin and Child in a sacred conversation between saints, probably inspired by the altar of Saint Anthony's Basilica designed by Donatello. His Saint Mark dates from this period (Frankfurt, Städel Museum).
Frescoes of the Ovetari Chapel

Andrea, still in his minority, was placed under the tutelage of his brother Tommaso who authorized him to undertake jointly the decoration of the chapel of the Ovetari family located in the church of the eremitics. The work, partly destroyed in 1944 during the Second World War7, was entrusted to a heterogeneous team of painters, where Mantegna's personality gradually emerged, also capable of refining his technique. During the construction site, Niccolò Pizzolo, a former student of Squarcione, came into conflict with Mantegna, the latter wanting to take care of a part of the chapel which was initially not allocated to him. In addition, the lack of funds in May 1449 meant that the work stopped in 14518.

The commitment to the Ovetari chapel, an order which will last nine years, does not prevent the painter from accepting other tasks. In 1447, he had met the Venetian notary Ulisse degli Aleotti (died in 1488) who some time later commissioned the Saint Jerome (São Paulo art museum), of which there is a study on paper; Degli Aleotti On July 21, 1452, Mantegna completed in Padua the lunette of the central portal of the Basilica of Saint Anthony, preserved at the Museo antonianoN 4. For this work, he experimented for the first time with the point of view di sotto in sù (seen from below upwards), which he then applied to the frescoes of the second phase of the work on the eremitics which in fact resumed in November 1453 to end in 1457. Pizzolo, who died in 1453, left Mantegna a large part of the profits from this accomplishment. The painters Ansuino da Forlì and Bono da Ferrara undoubtedly worked on this work which had entered its second phase, while two Venetian painters, Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d'Alemagna, had previously tackled the first. In 1457, the sponsoring princess Ovetari took legal action against Mantegna on the grounds that, in one of the frescoes of the chapel, that of the Assumption, he had painted only eight apostles instead of twelve, for lack of 'space11.

1453 was the year of Mantegna's marriage to Nicolosia Bellini, the daughter of the painter Iacopo Bellini, also the father of two sons who became painters, Giovanni and Gentile. Due to this union, some researchers believe that Mantegna was influenced by Bellini, and in general, by Venetian painting from this early-Renaissance period, which he nevertheless marked by his precocious talent and his daring5. His Presentation in the Temple is a painting dated 1455, which has the particularity of resembling that painted by Giovanni Bellini dated 1460, but presents more contrasted and luminous hues2.

At the time of his engagement to Nicolosia, he received the order for a polyptych intended for the high altar of the Sainte-Justine basilica. The altarpiece of Saint Luke, today kept in the Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), is made up of twelve panels representing Benedictine saints. In 1454 he completed and signed a Saint Euphemia, tempera on linen preserved in the Capodimonte museum (Naples), which recalls in its composition the Virgin in Assumption from the Ovetari chapel, and where we can still guess the influence of the workshop by Squarcione2. Two years later, he began the first version of the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which he completed in 1459.
Verona and the Altarpiece of Saint Zeno

At the end of 1456, the Venetian notable Gregorio Correr (1409-1464), abbot of the San Zeno basilica in Verona and future patriarch of Venice, commissioned him for an altarpiece intended for the choir of the building for the upper part of the main altar . This new work took the young painter at least three years; he completed it in his Paduan workshop, with this attention to detail which characterized him and justified his relative slowness12. The Altarpiece of Saint Zeno is a polyptych centered on the figure of the Madonna surrounded by musical angels, with on each side, two panels each containing four saints. The predella shows three compositions taken from the life and Passion of Christ. The work is the first of its kind in Northern Italy, and Verona saw the emergence of a new school of painters, one of the masters of which was Girolamo dai Libri13.

The high altar was still under construction in 1460, which is revealed by the correspondence that Mantegna began to exchange with the princes of Mantua, who wanted to attract him to their court12. Despite his success and the admiration he received, Mantegna left the Padua of his youth early.
His life in Mantua (1460-1506)
House built by Mantegna in Mantua on land offered by the marquis in 1476.
In the service of a humanist prince

Already since 1456, Louis III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, had been urging Mantegna to enter his service; also in 1460, the painter finally accepted being appointed court painter. This departure was postponed for several reasons: Mantegna was very attached to Padua where he had established strong friendships, moreover several commissions were in progress and he had to complete them because being a painter in the service of a patron prince required exclusive employment5 . At the beginning of his office, he resided from time to time in Goito: there, a Gonzaga residence was to be redecorated, a project of which Mantegna had been warned as early as 1458 but which did not take place. Mantegna took on assistants and invited artist or scholar friends as reinforcements. Louis III also planned the decoration of a residence in Cavriana, then later in Revere (1463-1464):