Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna was an Italian Renaissance artist who lived from 1430/1431 to 1506. Mantegna’s work helped progress the Italian Renaissance. He introduced spatial illusionism to art with groundbreaking perspective work that brought the viewer into the painting in a whole new way.

Mantegna was born in Isola di Carturo in the Republic of Venice. In 1442 at the age of 11, Mantegna began studying art as an apprentice in the workshop of artist Francesco Squarcione in Padua. Squarcione had a very active and large school and was relatively famous in his time.

Squarcione loved the art of ancient Rome and had his students spend a lot of time drawing ancient Roman statues, vases, and reliefs. This is part of the reason why the figures in Mantegna’s works have a stony quality to them. Squarcione also taught perspective to his students, and in particular, forced perspective. Geometrical perspective had just been invented, or calculated by Brunelleschi in 1413, which Mantegna learned and revolutionized through his art.

At age 17, Andrea Mantegna left Squarcione’s school on bad terms and claimed that Squarcione did not pay him for his work. In 1448, Mantegna did his first commissioned piece under his own name, an altarpiece for the church of Saint Sofia, which has unfortunately been lost to time. Mantegna came under the influence of the artist, Jacopo Bellini, whose sons were also well-known and respected artists, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. In 1453 Mantegna married Bellini’s daughter, Nicolosia. Mantegna continued to use ancient Roman sculptures as inspiration for his painted figures as he thought them superior to drawing from nature. His former teacher, Squarcione, critiqued him on that regard, saying he might paint his figures a stony color as well.

Due to ill relations with Squarcione, Mantegna decided to leave Padua for Mantua. Soon after, in 1460, Mantegna became court artist to Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua. He was paid a considerably high salary for that position. It was in Mantua that Mantegna created his first masterworks and established himself as an artist. For the next several decades, Mantegna was commissioned by the most esteemed patronage including Pope innocent VIII and the Marquise Isabella d’Este, a significant art patron during the Italian Renaissance. Mantegna died in 1506 at age 75.

Mantegna’s work was significant and helped progress the Italian Renaissance. He introduced spatial illusionism to art with his perspective work that brought the viewer into the painting in a whole new way. Mantegna’s influence can be found in many of the greatest artists of all time, including Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.

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