Mantegna

by N. D'Anvers

To make up for the meagreness of intimate personal information with which writers on Mantegna have to contend, they one and all dwell at great length on every incident of his art career, describing minutely, for instance, the strained relations between him and Squarcione, which culminated in 1456 in his bringing an action against the latter. It was decided in favour of Andrea, who pleaded that he had been under age when he signed the agreement already alluded to above, and that the conditions of the arrangement made had been broken by his foster-father. It is further related that Squarcione was from the first bitterly hostile to the intimacy between Mantegna and the Bellini, resenting the influence Jacopo exercised over a pupil he looked upon as his own special protégé. When he heard of the engagement between Andrea and Nicolasia, he vowed he would never consent to the match, and when he found that his sanction of the marriage was dispensed with, his indignation knew no bounds. He vented his annoyance by making unreasonable demands upon Mantegna’s time, and by harsh criticism of his work on the Eremitani frescoes, in which he all too clearly betrayed his jealousy of the younger artist’s superior talent. There was really nothing left for Mantegna to do but to sever all connection with so unreasonable an employer, but that he did so with regret, remembering past kindnesses, is proved by his having put off the rupture as long as he did. It was well for him when he finally left the Squarcione bottega and became free to work out, unchecked, his own art salvation, and henceforth he may truly be said to have gone on from strength to strength, until at last, in such masterpieces as the “Triumph of Cæsar” and the “Madonna della Vittoria,” he reached the very zenith of his powers.

The second period of Mantegna’s career begins with the painting of the fine triptych for S. Zeno, Verona, commissioned by the enlightened papal protonotary, Abbot Gregorio Correr, one of the leading ecclesiastics of his time, the first of the many distinguished patrons who now began to seek to secure the services of the young painter of Padua. The altar-piece of S. Zeno, the chief composition of which belongs to the class known as “sacro conversazione,” in which saints of different periods are grouped about the Virgin and Child, marks a very considerable advance in the delineation of character. The personalities of men so diverse as Saints Peter, John the Evangelist, Augustine, and Zeno are realised with great success, and the concentration of the light on the figure of the Infant Jesus foreshadows the great change that was ere long to take place in the artist’s renderings of the Holy Family. It is much to be regretted that the complete work can no longer be seen as it was when first placed in position, for it was carried off by the French in 1797; and although after the Treaty of Vienna the upper portion was restored to S. Zeno, where it now hangs in the choir, the three subjects of the predella, that are also of great significance in the study of the development of Mantegna’s style, remained in France—the “Crucifixion,” a noble but terribly realistic conception, occupying a place of honour in the Louvre, whilst the “Agony in the Garden” and the “Ascension,” that originally flanked it on either side, are at Tours.

Whilst engaged in his arduous undertaking for Abbot Correr, Mantegna painted three of his few portraits—that, now at Berlin, of Cardinal Luigi Mezzarota, the warlike prelate who led the papal troops against the Turks in 1457, defeating them with great loss; that, in the Naples Museum, of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, who received the red hat before he was seventeen; and the famous double likeness of John of Czezomicze, better known as Janus Pannonius, that is unfortunately lost, but won for its author great renown and inspired the beautiful elegy addressed to him by the poet on its completion.

Between Cardinal Francesco and Andrea a very strong friendship was soon formed, which may possibly have had something to do with the pressing invitations Mantegna now began to receive from the father of the young prelate Lodovico, the reigning Marquis of Mantua, who worthily maintained the great traditions of his ancestors, under whose auspices the ancient fortress that was to become so inseparably associated with the memory of the Paduan master was enlarged and strengthened, and the Grand Cathedral with the noble Renaissance Church of S. Andrea were built. The first of Lodovico’s invitations was probably a verbal one, but it was quickly succeeded by urgent written appeals, some of which have been preserved, in which the writer offers to make Mantegna his court painter with a high salary and to accord him certain valuable privileges, the letters reflecting not only the high esteem in which painters of eminence were then held and the eagerness with which their work was competed for, but also the great sacrifices that were demanded from them, and were such as no modern art patron would dream of exacting.

Again and again Mantegna put off his final reply to the Marquis, for he loved Padua, where he found plenty of congenial employment, and was surrounded with appreciative friends; but at last he yielded, attracted probably partly by the material advantages of the position offered to him, and partly by the exceptional facilities he would have in Mantua for the antiquarian research in which he delighted. It was in the latter half of 1459 that he arrived, accompanied by Nicolasia and their two little children, in the famous city, where he was eagerly welcomed by the Marquis and his wife, the Marchesa Barbara, and their two sons, Federico and Cardinal Francesco. From that time to his death, except for two years spent in Rome, Mantegna worked almost exclusively for the Gonzaga family, becoming ever more and more devotedly attached to them and their interests. From the first, the position of the court painter appears to have been a very enviable one, for, although it is true that the payment of his salary was sometimes delayed, he was evidently on terms of the closest intimacy with his patron, who soon after his arrival granted him a coat of arms embodying his own device, and, as proved by many a still extant letter, was ever ready to help and advise him, whether in matters so trivial as the cut of a coat or so serious as legal disputes concerning the boundaries of property owned by the artist. That the poverty of which Mantegna sometimes complained must have been purely nominal is indeed evident from these lawsuits, as well as from the fact that he was able to make a very valuable collection of antiquities and to give large dowries to his daughters when they married.

PLATE IV.—THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN

(In the National Gallery)

This beautiful composition, now in the National Gallery, London, is supposed to be a replica of the “Mount of Olives” that originally formed part of the predella of the great altar-piece of San Zeno, Verona, and to have been painted in 1439 for Giacomo Antonio Marcello, then Podestà of Padua.

The first pictures painted at Mantua were the beautiful triptych of the “Adoration of the Kings,” “Circumcision,” and “Ascension,” now in the Uffizi, Florence; the “Death of the Virgin,” in the Prado Gallery; and the remarkable “Pietà,” of the Brera Gallery; the last probably a study only, as it was still in Mantegna’s studio when the artist passed away, for which reason it has erroneously been attributed to a later period. Unpleasing though it is with its startling realism, the “Dead Christ” is of special value as a study in perspective, and, in the opinion of Dr. Kristeller, it was painted with a view to its being seen from below, for he says, “It is only as a ceiling painting, with its perspective point of sight coinciding with the central point of the ceiling, that the figure would appear correctly foreshortened. There can be no doubt,” he adds, “that it was painted as a preliminary study for the nude youth standing inside the balustrade on the ceiling decoration of the Camera degli Sposi and for other figures in ceiling pictures.” However that may be, the strange composition stands alone among its author’s works, and will probably always remain a subject of contention to critics, so variously do its peculiarities affect different temperaments.