“Cardinal Ludovico Trevisiano”
This tempera painting on wood panel, titled “Cardinal Ludovico Trevisiano”, is a portrait that was created circa 1459-1460 by the Italian Renaissance artist, Andrea Mantegna. Cardinal Ludovico Trevisiano was a Venetian prelate who lived from 1401 to 1465.
Trevisiano started off his career as a physician. In 1430, he moved to Rome to serve as the physician to Cardinal Gabrile Condulmer. After Condulmer was elected as the pope of the Catholic Church (Pope Eugenius IV), Trevisiano began his ecclesiastical career as a member of the canon of the cathedral chapter of Padua in Venice and remained with the church for the rest of his life.
Trevisiano reached notoriety for his participation in the Council of Mantua in 1459 in which the Roman Church tried, ineffectually, to start a Crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Trevisiano was on the Council, though he was not in support of the war.
This portrait was commissioned by Trevisiano to the artist and fellow Venetian, Andrea Mantegna, just after Trevisiano’s return to Venice. Trevisiano had invited Mantegna to Mantua during the council proceedings, though Mantegna opted to stay at his home in Padua. Later on, Mantegna would move to Mantua and that is where he really established himself as an artist of his day.
Italy during the Renaissance was the birthplace of portraiture as a serious art form. Mantegna preferred to use sculptures as his models for the majority of his paintings, which has given his style of figurative paintings an overall stony quality to them. Critics have said that the painting depicted here resembles a Roman bust, which probably was a compliment. Trevisiano was a fierce man, who was a hardened military leader for the church as well as a diplomat, and this portrait gives him an air of nobility and seriousness.
“Cardinal Ludovico Trevisiano” is currently on display at the Gemäldegalerie art museum, which is part of the Staatliche Museen (State Museum) in Berlin, Germany.
For more on Andrea Mantegna, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
