Andrea Mantegna: 9 works

'Mantegna, who was the most important Upper Italian painter of the Quattrocento, became court painter to the Gonzaga in Mantua in 1459.'

'Andrea Mantegna made this drawing as a preparatory study for the left side panel of an altarpiece, still in the church of San Zeno in Verona, which he painted between 1456 and 1459. Although the drawing is highly finished, it was evidently made at an early stage of the design, since Mantegna subsequently changed the saints' positions.'

'The triumphant contrapposto pose and figural canon of the Christ Child, which recurs in other works by Mantegna, derives from antique Roman sculpture, which was then being ardently collected. In this and other devotional paintings Mantegna experimented with distemper, a glue tempera, painted on a fine linen canvas.'

'This almost perfectly preserved painting by Andrea Mantegna, showing the dialogue between a crowned woman and a bearded, turbaned man, has defied attempts to uncover either its subject or its meaning.'

'Mantegna was trained in the Paduan workshop of Squarcione, but he was strongly influenced by the Florentine sculptor Donatello. He married the daughter of the Venetian artist Jacopo Bellini, and was influenced by his work, as well as that of his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini.'

'This late work by Mantegna testifies to the great influence antiquity had upon Renaissance art.'

'Andrea Mantegna's composition of figures and objects compressed within a shallow space was based on his study of ancient Roman reliefs.'

'The materials used by Mantegna in this painting were precious, though they have been partly lost: the dark background, which today strikes us as rather restrained, was originally a brilliant blue colour made from costly lapis lazuli. It is anyway still possible to recognize the outstanding quality of the work, which has been attributed to Andrea Mantegna in the early phase of his career, in the years around 1450.'