A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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274. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

Andrea Mantegna (Paduan: 1431-1506).

Andrea Mantegna, the greatest master of the Paduan School, has a commanding name in art history, so much so that many writers describe the epoch of painting (from 1450 to 1500 and a little onwards), of which he was one of the chief representatives, as the Mantegnesque period. "No painter more remarkable for originality than Mantegna ever lived. Whoever has learned to relish this great master will never overlook a scrap by him; for while his works sometimes show a certain austerity and harshness, they have always a force and will which belong to no one else" (Layard). "Intensity may be said to be the characteristic of Mantegna as an artist. Deeply in earnest, he swerved from his purpose neither to the right nor to the left. In expressing tragic emotion, he sometimes touched a realism beyond the limits prescribed by poetic art. So, too, he never arrived at an ideal of female beauty. But he could be as tender as he was stern; and we forget the homely plainness of his Madonnas in the devoted and boding mother or the benign protectress. His children are always childlike and without self-consciousness. His drawing was remarkably correct. An occasional lengthiness in his figures adds to their dignity, and never oversteps possible nature. Drapery he treated as a means of displaying the figure. This peculiarity he derived from an almost too exclusive study of ancient sculpture. Yet so thoroughly does it accord with his whole style, that none would willingly miss a single fold which the master thought worthy of almost infinite care" (Burton). He was a tempera painter, and "excelled in harmoniously broken tones, but with little attempt at those rich and deep effects which by the practice of art his later Venetian contemporaries initiated." "He loved allegory and symbolism; but with him they clothed a living spirit." The beauty of classical bas-relief entered deep into his soul and ruled his imagination. His classical pictures are "statuesque and stately, but glow with the spirit of revived antiquity" (Symonds). He was equally distinguished as an engraver and a painter, and his plates spread his fame and influence widely abroad.

Mantegna was born at Padua,[128] and according to Vasari, was originally, like Giotto, a shepherd boy. Like Giotto, too, he early displayed great aptitude for drawing, so much that when only ten years old he was adopted by Squarcione as son and pupil. Squarcione was an indifferent painter, but must have been an able teacher, and it was from him that Mantegna imbibed his love of the antique. It was Squarcione's intention to make him his heir, but Mantegna married a daughter of Jacopo Bellini, Squarcione's rival; "and when this was told to Squarcione he was so much displeased with Andrea that they were ever afterwards enemies." Of Mantegna's association with his brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini, the pictures numbered 726 and 1417 in this gallery are an interesting record. Mantegna soon obtained recognition. Among the most important of his early works are the frescoes of the chapel of St. James and St. Christopher in the church of the Eremitani at Padua. Copies of some of these may be seen in the Arundel Society's collection. Of about the same date is "The Agony in the Garden," No. 1417. To his early period belong also the "St. George" in the Venice Academy, and the triptych in the Uffizi. The picture now before us, the beautiful "Madonna della Vittoria," and the "Parnassus" of the Louvre belong to a maturer time. In 1466 Mantegna went, at the invitation of the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, to the court of Mantua, and there he remained till his death, as painter-in-ordinary at a salary of £30 a year—with the exception of two years spent in painting for Pope Innocent VIII. at Rome. Many of Mantegna's frescoes at Mantua are now obliterated; but some are preserved in the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace, and in spite of restorations, exhibit some of the master's characteristics in perfection. For the palace of St. Sebastiano at Mantua, he painted in tempera on canvas the "Triumph of Cæsar," now at Hampton Court. Although much defaced, this large composition still proclaims the genius of the master who "loved to resuscitate the ancient world, and render it to the living eye in all its detail, and with all its human interest." The sketch by Rubens in our Gallery, No. 278, was made from a portion of Mantegna's cartoons. In a similar style is the master's "Triumph of Scipio," No. 902, completed shortly before his death. At Rome (1488-1490) he decorated the chapel of the Belvedere, now demolished.

Though in the service of princes, Mantegna knew his worth, and was wont to say that "Ludovico might be proud of having in him something that no other prince in Italy could boast of." He liked, too, to live in the grand style of his age. It appears that he spent habitually more money than he could afford, and after his death his sons had to sell the pictures in his studio for the payment of his creditors. Still more was he a child of his age—the age of the revival of classical learning—in his love for the antique. He spent much of his money in forming a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, and the forced sale of its chief ornament, a bust of Faustina, is said to have broken his heart. "He was the friend of students, eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought to light by antiquarian research; and thus independently of his high value as a painter, he embodies for us in art that sincere passion for the ancient world which was the dominating intellectual impulse of his age." With Mantegna, classical antiques were not merely the foibles of a collector, but the models of his art. He was "always of opinion," says Vasari, "that good antique statues were more perfect, and displayed more beauty in the different parts, than is exhibited by nature." Of some of his works what Vasari adds is no doubt true—that they recall the idea of stone rather than of living flesh. But Mantegna studied nature closely too; for, as Goethe said of his pictures, "the study of the antique gives form, and nature adds appropriate movement and the health of life." Mantegna died at Mantua and was buried in a chapel of the Church of Sant' Andrea. The expenses incurred by him in founding and decorating this family chapel had added seriously to his embarrassments. "Over his grave was placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and perfect in execution. The broad forehead, with its deeply cloven furrows, the stern and piercing eyes, the large lips compressed with nervous energy, the massive nose, the strength of jaw and chin, and the superb clusters of the hair escaping from a laurel-wreath upon the royal head, are such as realise for us our notion of a Roman in the days of the republic. Mantegna's own genius has inspired this masterpiece, which tradition assigns to the medallist Sperando Maglioli. Whoever wrought it must have felt the incubation of the mighty painter's spirit, and have striven to express in bronze the character of his uncompromising art" (Symonds: The Renaissance in Italy, iii. 203). A plaster cast from this bust hangs on one of the staircases in our Gallery. Mantegna's second son, Francesco, who in his father's later years had assisted in his studio, afterwards practised independently. See Nos. 639, 1106, 1381.

"One of the choicest pictures in the National Gallery," exquisite alike in sentiment, in drawing, and in purity of colour. "Being in an admirable state of preservation, it enables us to become acquainted with all the characteristics of Mantegna's style, and above all to enjoy the refinement in his rendering of the human forms, the accuracy in his drawing, the conscientiousness in the rendering of the smallest details" (Richter). For the latter point notice especially the herbage in the foreground. Mantegna, says Mr. Ruskin, is "the greatest leaf-painter of Lombardy," and the "exquisite outlines" here show "the symmetry and precision of his design" (Catalogue of Educational Series, p. 52). The draperies also are "of extraordinary beauty in design and colour. The rose-coloured dress of the Virgin is most delicately heightened with gold, and the draperies of the two saints are of materials shot with changing colours of exquisite harmonies" (Poynter). Very sweet is the expression of mingled humility and tenderness in the mother of the Divine Child. On her right stands St. John the Baptist, the great preacher of repentance; on her left Mary Magdalen, the woman who repented. The Baptist bears a cross and on the scroll attached to it are written the words (in Latin), "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." The Magdalen carries the vase of ointment—the symbol at once of her conversion and her love ("She brought an alabaster box of ointment, and began to wash his feet with tears.... And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven"). "Mantegna combines with the most inexhaustible imagination and invention and power, which include the whole range of art, from the most playful fantasy to the profoundest and most passionate tragedy, a skill of workmanship so minutely and marvellously delicate as to defy imitation. Look at the refinement with which the drapery is drawn, the wonderful delicacy of handling with which the gold-lights are laid on, the beautiful and loving spirit which has presided over the execution of the foliage in the background, and indeed of every detail in the picture, and you will begin to have an understanding of what I mean by workmanship as such, and how an artist proceeds whose hand has been thoroughly trained, and who is truly in love with his art" (Poynter's Lectures on Art, p. 127).