One of the outstanding artists of the early Renaissance. In 1441 he went to Padua, where he studied with Francesco Squarcione, who introduced him to ancient art. His work was largely influenced by the sculptures of Donatello (1386–1466), Andrea del Castagni and Jacopo Bellini. Since 1448, Mantegna has been working independently and soon becomes a recognized master. In 1460 he was court painter of the Gonzaga dynasty in Mantua. The works of Mantegna are characterized by an anatomically accurate depiction of the human body, careful reproduction of details, as well as a skillful transfer of perspective. These innovations had a strong influence on his brothers-in-law - Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. His copper engravings also became widely known north of the Alps.

Judith

Mantegna one of the first in the Renaissance portrayed Judith. His Judith is unemotional, her gaze is turned to eternity, this image is close to the images of saints.

Judith and Holofernes

Mantegna was the first to move from Christian to antique themes and was the first to study the anatomy of the naked body. He was the first to study the nature of movement, the mechanism of muscle contraction. He enriched the composition of paintings with new laws. He never has faces drawn only as portraits, the number of which could be arbitrarily increased. All figures participate in the action, all are subordinate to a firmly cohesive whole. A new beauty of the composition was revealed, which does not tolerate the former, so beloved careless stringing of details.

Mantegna and painting

Mantegna is considered the founder of the technique of painting on canvas. The earliest painted canvas in Italy is Saint Euphemia by Mantegna, created in 1454. Vasari wrote that, during the period of writing the cycle of paintings "The Triumph of Caesar" for the palace theater in Mantua in 1482-1492, Andrea Mantegna already had extensive experience working on canvas.

An artist who escaped any classification, standing outside schools and trends, Mantegna had an undeniable impact on the painting of Italy - from Padua to Venice. Thanks to the widespread circulation of Mantegna's engravings, the Italian Renaissance infiltrated Germany.

Crucifixion (circa 1458)

Wood, tempera, 41.3*29.5 cm. Uffizi, Florence.

This portrait is one of the best works of Mantegna. A slender composition helps to capture the strict appearance of the character. Mantegna uses the three-quarter rotation of the model, borrowed from the masters of northern European painting. In general, the portrait is an identical image of Carlo de' Medici.

Madonna della Vittoria (1496)

Tempera on canvas, 280*165 cm. Louvre, Paris.

Mantegna writes this work by order of Margrave Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519) - he is depicted in the foreground on the left - in memory of the battle of Fornovo di Taro in 1495. The famous altar painting is characterized by the use of optical illusion, the pergola effect, the heroic style of depicting characters, warm colour.

Dome fresco of the Camera degli Sposi (1465–1475)

Fragment of painting. Fresco, diameter: 270 cm. Castello San Giorgio, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.

On a fresco located on the vault of a small square room, Mantegna for the first time in Western European art created the illusion of space stretching into the sky. The hole is surrounded by a parapet around which are depicted angels looking down, people and animals. This is a bold composition, where the figures are depicted in an unusual perspective. The fresco was a model for later generations of artists, especially in the Baroque style.

Ludovico Gonzaga, his family and court (1474)

Fragment of painting. Fresco, 600*807 cm. Castello San Giorgio, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.

The frescoes from the Camera degli Sposi, the bedroom of Ludovico III Gonzaga (1414–1478), are a famous example of the world painting of the Italian Renaissance. In expressive scenes with a pronounced perspective and display of natural motifs, Mantegna represents the margrave's large, full of splendor surroundings - the family and closest subjects.

Parnassus (1497)

Tempera on canvas, 60*192 cm. Louvre, Paris.

The image of Mount Muses is the first painting in a cycle commissioned by the Mantua Countess Isabella d'Este (1474-1539) for her office. In the center of the picture are nine goddesses of the arts dancing to the music of Apollo, above him is Vulcan laughing at Cupid. Right next to each other - Mercury and Pegasus. The image of Mars and Venus looks unconventional for such works. The hill on which they stand is through and opens a view into the distance. On the right is a building that looks like a fortress. The landscape is depicted carefully and with fantasy.

Triumph of virtue over vice (1502)

Tempera on canvas, 160*192 cm. Louvre, Paris.

The painting, reflecting the plot of a moral and instructive allegory, also refers to the decoration of Isabella d'Este's office. It depicts a scene in which Minerva, the goddess of war and prudence, armed with a shield, spear and helmet, drives out vice from the garden of virtue. Along with Parnassus, this painting had a huge impact on the development of secular painting in the 16th century. The garden is surrounded by an arched stone fence decorated with flowers. You can see the surrounding landscape through it. Other deities watch from a cloud the dramatic action in the garden of virtue.

Notable works by Andrea Mantegna updated: September 16, 2017 by: Gleb

Postage stamp dedicated to Mantegna,
portrait from a bust at the entrance to the chapel of the church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua.
Andrea Mantegna at the age of fifty.

Andrea Mantegna (Italian Andrea Mantegna, c. 1431, Isola di Carturo, Veneto - September 13, 1506, Mantua) - Italian artist, representative of the Padua school of painting. Unlike most other classics of the Italian Renaissance, he wrote in a harsh and harsh manner.
Mantegna was born around 1431 in the Italian town of Isola di Cartura near Venice, in the family of a lumberjack. In 1441 he was adopted by the artist Francesco Squarcione. He studied fine arts, as well as Latin at Squarcione, in 1445 he was enrolled in the painters' workshop of Padua.
At the age of 17, Mantegna achieved independence from Squarcione in court and has since worked as an independent artist. In his youth, he was influenced by the Florentine school, in particular by Donatello.
In 1453, Mantegna married the daughter of Jacopo Bellini Nicolosia (Nicolosa). In 1460 he became court painter to the Dukes of Gonzaga.
The painter Andrea Mantegna was also an innovator in engraving, and his prints on antique themes later influenced Dürer in particular. The graphic works of Mantegna (the cycle of engravings on copper “The Battle of the Sea Gods”, circa 1470), which are almost as good as his paintings in terms of chased monumentality of images, combine sculptural plasticity with the tenderness of line modeling. Andrea Mantegna combined the main artistic aspirations of the Renaissance masters of the 15th century: a passion for antiquity, an interest in accurate and thorough, down to the smallest detail, transmission of natural phenomena and selfless faith in linear perspective as a means of creating an illusion of space on a plane. His work became the main link between the early Renaissance in Florence and the later flowering of art in Northern Italy.

Samson and Delilah Tempera on canvas. 1500. 36.8 x 47 cm.
National Gallery (London, UK)

Adoration of the shepherds. 1453: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Self portrait (far right) with wife (far left)
on the canvas "Bringing to the Temple", 1465-1466, "Berlin Art Gallery"

Parnassus, 1497 Louvre Museum, Paris

Triumph of Virtue.1499-1502. Louvre Museum, Paris

Prayer for the Cup, 1455 National Gallery, London

ALTAR IN THE CHURCH OF SAN ZENO, VERONA

Altar.1460: San Zeno, Verona

"Dead Christ", circa 1500, Brera Pinacoteca, Milan

Madonna and Child with a Choir of Cherubim (1485).

Marcus, evangelist. 1450. Art Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Portrait of Cardinal Lodovico Trevisano Wood, tempera c1459-c1469
33 x 44 cm. Jam ldegalerie, State Museums (Berlin, Germany)

Death of the Virgin. Wood, tempera. 1460. 42 x 54 cm. Prado Museum (Madrid, Spain)

Adoration of the Magi.65 x 48 cm 1495-1505. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California, USA)

Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian 1480. Louvre

Madonna and Sleeping Child Tempera on canvas. 1465-1470
32 x 43 cm Jam ldegalerie, State Museums (Berlin, Germany)

Ludovico Gonzago family

Crucifixion, 1456-59, from the predella from the San Zeno Altarpiece, now in the Louvre, Paris

"Adoration of the Magi", Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Judith and Holofernes, 1495-1500,
National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin

David with the head of Goliath. 1490-1495
Kunsthistorisches Museum - Vienna (Austria)

San Luca altarpiece, 1453, tempera on panel, Brera, Milan

Madonna and Child with Magdalene and John the Baptist

Noli me tangere

Saint George. Wood, tempera. 1460. 32 x 66 cm. Accademia Gallery (Venice, Italy)

Christ the Savior. 1493. Private collection

Ascension - circa 1461 Uffizi Gallery (Italy)

Madonna and Child Andrea Mantegna - circa 1489-1490 Uffizi Gallery (Italy)

Madonna with saints 1497

St. Jerome in the desert. 1448-1451 Museum de Arte di Sao Paulo (Brazil)

Epiphany. 1506. Oil on canvas. 228 x 175 cm Church of San Andres de Mantova. Mantova. Italy.

Fresco in the Camera degli Sposi, Doge's Palace, Mantua, Italy. 1474

Frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, Doge's Palace, Mantua, Italy. 1474 "View of the western and northern walls"

Ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, Castle of San Giorgio in Mantua, Italy

"Drinking Woman"

"Maiden with a sieve"

Saint James goes to martyrdom, Ovetari chapel

Self-portrait in the Ovetari Chapel

Lorelei

Andrea Mantegna, one of the leading masters of the Early Renaissance, lived and worked in Northern Italy. He was born in Padua, which was part of the Republic of Venice, at the age of ten he entered the workshop of the local secondary painter Francesco Squarcione. At the age of nineteen, he received the title of master and the first large commission, painting the Ovetari chapel of the Padua Eremitani church with frescoes. Already in this first fresco cycle, which died in 1944 during the bombardment of Padua by the British, he showed himself to be a fully developed master with a unique, somewhat rigid style, excellent command of drawing, perspective, composition, possessing an extraordinary architectural fantasy, a penchant for cold, severe greatness. In 1453, Mantegna married Nicolosia Bellini, the daughter of the founder of the Renaissance Venetian school, Jacopo Bellini, and the sister of the painters Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, who had already begun their artistic careers.

In 1457, the young artist became the court painter of the ruler of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, and his whole future life was connected with this city.

Creativity Mantegna was formed in an extremely favorable environment for the young artist. Padua was a university city, and the atmosphere of scholarship extended far beyond the university walls. Here, apparently, the artist's interest in antiquity was born, which he later became a deep connoisseur of. In his youth, he even participated in archaeological excavations. He probably held books decorated with miniatures by Northern Italian artists and learned to appreciate the precious beauty of detail. On the other hand, as a teenager, he became acquainted with the art of the Florentine masters - in the 1400s, the largest sculptor of Florence, Donatello, worked in Padua, one of whose assistants was Paolo Uccello. Having become related to the Bellini family, Mantegna apparently gained access to the famous books of drawings by Jacopo Bellini and studied the principles developed by this master for constructing complex multi-figured compositions. In Ferrara, which he visited in the early 1450s, he could get acquainted with the works of the Netherlandish masters. Finally, Mantua, where he lived for almost half a century, was at that time one of the prominent centers of Italian humanism.

Mantegna equally successfully worked as a muralist and master of easel painting, he painted frescoes, large altar paintings and small compositions resembling precious miniatures, he was one of the first in Italy to master the technique of engraving, tried his hand at architecture, building his own house in Mantua with an unusual round courtyard .

The art of Mantegna is imbued with severity, grandeur, heroic pathos, even in his small compositions there is always a monumental beginning. But at the same time, he inherited from his northern Italian predecessors a taste for detail, a love of decorativeness and elegance. Often, his compositions are so saturated with decorative elements, images of fruit garlands, marble reliefs with the finest ornamental patterns, mosaics, that they evoke the wasteful wealth of forms of architecture and plasticity of Northern Italy.

The desire for generalization, monumentality is combined in him with a filigree elaboration of the smallest details. So, in one of Mantegna's early easel works - "The Prayer for the Chalice" (1455, London, National Gallery), repeating the motifs of the drawing by Jacopo Bellini, the action takes place against the backdrop of a majestic and severe rocky landscape with stone peaks of fantastically shaped rocks rising to the sky, from the artist's eye does not escape a dried tree with half-torn bark and a trunk upturned with roots with an exposed pattern of wood.

The small compositions of the 1460s - “Saint Sebastian” (Vienna, Museum of Art History) and “Saint George” (Venice, Galleries of the Academy) are especially striking in the combination of a monumental beginning and the finest rendering of details, as if seen through a magnifying glass. St. George in shining silver armor and St. Sebastian, pierced by arrows, are depicted in these miniature compositions close-up, against the background of a distant landscape, seen as if from above, the details of which, right down to the scattering of pebbles on a mountain road, are written out with the finest brush with scrupulous accuracy. The details of the desert landscape with a strange rock and a quarry similar to a giant druze of minerals are also carefully written out in the miniature composition “Madonna of the Quarry” (Madonna delle Cave, 1489, Florence, Uffizi Gallery).

The landscapes of Mantegna are usually dominated by stone - layered rocks resembling bizarre towers, barren rocky soils; in "Saint Sebastian" even the cloud turns into a relief with the figure of a rider. Mantegna's attraction to the plastic expressiveness of stone masses found expression in a number of pictorial compositions imitating marble reliefs (Samson and Delilah, 1490s, London, National Gallery).

In this aestheticization of the plastic beginning, Mantegna's admiration for antiquity is especially fully manifested, which appears in his imagination as a world of majestic statues and magnificent architecture, heroic deeds and solemn triumphs. A shade of cold severity is inherent even in the most harmonious of his mythological compositions - the painting "Parnassus" (1497, Paris, Louvre) with the muses dancing near a bizarre rock on which stands a happy love couple - Mars and Venus.

A large-scale attempt to resurrect the majestic and stern appearance of Ancient Rome was the grandiose pictorial cycle "The Triumph of Caesar" (1486-1495, London, Hampton Court). The nine large canvases included in this cycle, according to Mantegna's plan, were supposed to make up a single frieze, about 25 meters long, intended for one of the halls of the vast residence of the rulers of Mantua - the Palazzo Ducale. To Mantegna’s contemporaries, this frieze, where legionnaires bearing military trophies approached the walls of Rome against the backdrop of hills, a forest of spears and battle standards rose, musicians raised their pipes to the sky, riders and war elephants moved, Julius Caesar rode on his chariot, should have make a stunning impression and amaze them with the authenticity of the created picture. Unfortunately, today in the Hampton Court Gallery these canvases are exhibited as separate paintings, which violated the compositional unity of the grandiose frieze.

The second, no less magnificent and well-preserved monumental cycle of Mantegna, created in Mantua, are the paintings of one of the halls in the old part of the huge palace of the Mantua rulers - Castello di San Giorgio, made in 1464-1475. The name of this chamber - Camera degli Sposi (Bridal Room) - dates back to the 17th century; its original purpose is unknown. At the beginning of the 16th century, rarities and works of art collected by the Gonzaga family were kept here. The murals of the Camera degli Sposi are one of the pinnacles of Mantegna's work and Italian monumental painting. A rather large room with a wall height of about eight meters, covered by a very low, with a lifting arrow of only about one meter, a mirrored vault and various-scale, asymmetrically located windows and doors, was turned by him, thanks to the illusory architecture and finely calculated perspective effects, into a beautiful, full of harmony and orderliness centric building. Skillfully applying the techniques of perspective reduction, Mantegna gave this vault the appearance of a dome, decorated with reliefs with portraits of Roman emperors and cut through like the dome of the Roman Pantheon by a large round window, in the gap of which the blue sky shines. Through the balustrade enclosing it, the heads of curious ladies look into the hall, chubby putti babies frolic next to them. The wall paintings are just as illusory. Two of them are “covered” with brocade draperies painted by the artist, on the other, as if on a theater stage, the entire large Gonzaga family appears. The predominance of red and gold tones gives this scene its due magnificence. And at the same time, solemnity is combined here with ease - the duke himself is quietly talking with his secretary, who leads up the stairs to the elevations where the members of the Gonzaga family sit, the pages descend and rise at ease.

The wall opposite the windows is likened by Mantegna to two large openings, in which the blue of the sky shines, wide landscape panoramas spread out. In one of the two vertical compositions decorating it, there is a scene of a meeting between the ruler of Mantua and his cardinal son against the backdrop of a distant panorama of Rome. In another pier, against the backdrop of a fantastic rocky landscape, there are two pages holding a horse by the bridle; in her image, Mantegna used the effect beloved by Renaissance artists - no matter what angle the viewer looks at this horse, her head is always turned towards us.

In these murals, the versatility of Mantegna's talent, the organic combination of sharp, almost sharp natural authenticity, heroic significance, decorative richness, his virtuoso mastery of drawing and perspective, and an outstanding gift as a colorist, were especially fully and brilliantly revealed.

Mantegna had a huge impact on the art of Northern Italy, on the formation of new Renaissance schools in Lombardy and Ferrara. The influence of Mantegna is also reflected in the early works of the greatest Venetian painter of the 15th century, Giovanni Bellini.

Irina Smirnova

The painting by Andrea Mantegna “Prayer for the Chalice” has another name “Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane”. Five angels appear to the praying Christ, while the three apostles sleep in the foreground, unaware that Judas and a crowd of soldiers are coming with the intention of taking Christ into custody. In this scene, everything - fantastic bizarre rocks, an imaginary city, rigid folds of matter - is written in a detailed, solid and precise manner, inherent in the painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna.

Andrea Mantegna was of humble origin, but adopted and trained by a simple little-known painter, he became one of the most significant artists of his time. The style of Andrea Mantegna, like the style of other Renaissance masters, was formed under the influence of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Many of his works are indeed executed as grisaille - a picturesque imitation of marble or bronze relief.

For most of his life, Mantegna was the court painter of the Duke of Mantua, for whom he collected a large collection of classical art. From 1460 Andrea Mantegna lived in Mantua at the court of Lodovico Gonzaga (in 1466–1467 he visited Florence and Pisa, in 1488–1490 he visited Rome). In the murals of the "Camera degli Sposi" in the castle of San Giorgio (1474), the artist, achieving a visual-spatial unity of the interior, realized the idea of ​​synthesis of real and "painted" architecture.

The illusionistic effects of these paintings, in particular the imitation of a round window in the ceiling, anticipate Correggio's similar quest. The severe spirit of Roman antiquity is imbued with Andrea Mantegna's series of monochrome cardboards with the "Triumph of Caesar" (1485-1488, 1490-1492, Hampton Court, London). Among the later works of Mantegna are allegorical and mythological compositions for the office of Isabella d "Este ("Parnassus" or "The Kingdom of Venus", 1497, Louvre, Paris), a cycle of monochrome paintings, including "Samson and Delilah" (1500s, National Gallery, London), full of drama and compositional sharpness, the canvas “Dead Christ” (about 1500, Brera Gallery, Milan).

The painter Andrea Mantegna was also an innovator in engraving, and his prints on antique themes later influenced Dürer in particular. The graphic works of Mantegna (the cycle of engravings on copper “The Battle of the Sea Gods”, circa 1470), which are almost as good as his paintings in terms of chased monumentality of images, combine sculptural plasticity with the tenderness of line modeling.

Andrea Mantegna combined the main artistic aspirations of the Renaissance masters of the 15th century: a passion for antiquity, an interest in accurate and thorough, down to the smallest detail, transmission of natural phenomena and selfless faith in linear perspective as a means of creating an illusion of space on a plane. His work became the main link between the early Renaissance in Florence and the later flowering of art in Northern Italy.

In the Armory of the Moscow Kremlin until July 18 you can see the painting "Saint George" - one of the most famous masterpieces of the outstanding master of the Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna

In the Armory of the Moscow Kremlin until July 18 you can see the painting "Saint George" - one of the most famous masterpieces of the outstanding master of the Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna.

The name and work of Mantegna are not as well known to the Russian audience as, for example, Sandro Botticelli or Leonardo da Vinci, but modern art historians call him one of the "geniuses who made a sudden and radical revolution" in European art ( J. Argan), and Vasari wrote back in the 16th century that “there is not always a person who would be able to recognize, appreciate and reward someone’s talent in the way that Andrea Mantegna’s talent was recognized” (it is not known for certain who exactly the biographer had in mind, but , as we will see below, there was more than one such person).

Andrea Mantegna was born in 1431 in the family of the carpenter Biagio, in the town of Isola di Cartura, between Padua and Vicencia. In 1441, ten-year-old Andrea was apprenticed to the Padua artist Francesco Squarcione. Having changed the craft of a tailor and embroiderer to the profession of a painter at the age of thirty (i.e., very mature at that time), Squarcione became a famous teacher, founded the Academy of Arts of Padua and a museum attached to it. A well-known collector of antiquities, from travels in Italy and Greece, he brought casts of ancient sculptures, and they, apparently, also served as manuals for students, of whom Squarcione had more than a hundred people.

During the period of study, Mantegna easily surpassed the rest of Squarcione's students and became close to his teacher so much that he was adopted by him at the age of thirteen. According to Vasari, at the age of 14, Mantegna was already enrolled in the fraternity of painters.

Squarcione's practical approach to the techniques of teaching the artistic craft, as well as his love of Greek antiquity (represented in his time exclusively by reliefs and sculpture) largely determined the young Mantegna's view of art and creativity in general.

“Andrea has always been of the opinion that good antique statues are more perfect and have more beautiful forms than we see in nature ... In addition to all this, the statues seemed to him more complete and more accurate in the transfer of muscles, veins, veins and other details, which nature does not so clearly reveal (Vasari); at the same time, in his early work, Mantegna was guided, in addition to ancient sculpture, by the frescoes of Andea del Castagno in Venice, the paintings by Paolo Uccello and Filippo Lippi, and the altarpiece by Donatello in Padua. He even knew Filippo Lippi and Donatello and met them more than once in Padua.

In 1448, the 17-year-old Mantegna left the workshop of Squarcione and, already as an independent master, began painting the Ovetari Chapel in Padua (it was badly damaged during the Second World War). For almost six centuries, the frescoes of the Ovetari Chapel are considered one of the best and largest works of Mantegna, in which his growth as an artist can be traced: from scene to scene, skill in building space and the perspective reduction of figures and volumes in it is more and more noticeable.

The interaction of form and space, the volume placed in it, their images (constructions) on a plane - a canvas, a board or a wall - occupied Mantegna throughout his life. Perhaps this interest led him to what we would call graphics today, but which in the 15th century did not yet have its own name, but was most likely defined as a tonal drawing: he was fond of engraving technique, which was not quite typical for the Italian master of the Renaissance, worked in grisaille, made many pencil sketches. Color and shades interested him much less than the lines and tonal transitions of pure color. He was known as a master of drawing and perspective: it is known that A. Durer, going to Italy in 1506, set out to get to know him.

The fame of the young artist went beyond the borders of Padua so much that in 1449, at the age of 18, at the insistence of the dukes d'Este, he briefly moved to Ferrara, where just at that time the brothers Leonello, Borso and Ercole d'Este created from their capital the largest center of the cultural movement, gathering around itself a whole world of scientists, writers and artists.

Recognition, fame, attention from wealthy patrons of art introduced Mantegna into the circle of the most famous artists of his time. He met, for example, the Bellini family, one of the largest artistic dynasties in Venice and Italy, which gave the world such artists as Jacopo Bellini (1400–1470), who painted many Venetian churches, his son Gentile (1429–1507), who was extremely revered during his lifetime artist, author of numerous portraits of doges and other Venetian nobility, and of course, the most famous representative of the family - Giovanni (1430-1516), the younger brother of Gentile, who left behind more than 200 paintings and drawings. In 1453, Andrea Mantegna entered this family by marrying the daughter of Jacopo Nicolosia Bellini.

The research literature talks a lot about the influence of the work of the Venetians of Bellini on the style of Mantegna, but this influence was mutual. Bellini (especially Giovanni) mastered more complex multifaceted and complex compositional schemes, and Mantegna's works acquired the multicolor inherent in Venetian painting. And even if over time, especially towards the end of the 1490s - the beginning of the 1500s, Mantegna will become more and more carried away by the play of colors and will pay more and more attention to small and decorative details, the main thing will remain unchanged: his admiration for ancient art, which arose, apparently, in the workshop of Squarcione, will continue to be seen in the staging of figures, and in the sharp plasticity of forms, and in the desire, especially in the early period, to create the illusion of volume to such an extent that his images seem to be three-dimensional, protruding beyond the plane of the canvas, and in soft, loose, flowing folds of costumes of characters, always dressed in an antique manner (most of his colleagues in the shop depicted clothes in a Gothic manner).

In 1459, Mantegna moved from Padua to the court of the Duke of Gonzago in Mantua, became his court painter and received high wages for his work. In addition, the Duke of Mantua was a well-known lover of antiquity and entrusted the artist with the care of his collections, which allowed Mantegna to more fully immerse himself in the culture of ancient Greece and Rome that he loved.

One of the largest works done by Mantegna for Gonzago was the frescoes of the Camera degli Sposi, which he completed by 1474. Camera degli Sposi - a small square room with two small windows, which was originally the bedroom of Lodovico Gonzago, and later served to receive guests of honor - like the front bedrooms of many large European palaces, was completely covered with frescoes: the ceiling was decorated with paintings imitating an air well and the sky, the walls were painted with scenes from the history of the Gonzago dynasty.

Mantegna spent 1488-1490 in Rome, working on the order of Pope Innocent VII - the murals of the Belvedere Chapel (not preserved), however, in addition to papal frescoes, during this period he wrote a large number of easel works, many of which can now be seen in the largest museums in Europe .

At the same time, thanks to his fame and orders, Mantegna is getting more and more opportunities to continue studying ancient culture and art. By 1492, a very interesting series of 9 canvases under the general title "Caesar's Triumph" is attributed, in which the author refers to the historical genre and consistently depicts everything he knows about the ancient world, from military weapons and architecture to coins, medals, processions of dancers and musicians. By the end of the 1490s, he began to write on mythological themes.

The most famous, but at the same time the most unusual and mysterious of his paintings, is considered to be the work “Dead Christ”. For a long time it was dated to 1500, but today scientists, based on the manner of writing soft folds of fabric, great work with perspective and brushstroke technique, are inclined to an earlier dating - 1457. In the literature one can also find a date of ca. 1480 - as an average date between these two assumptions.

The figure depicted in a complex perspective is striking and even perplexing both with its compositional structure and iconography. After you manage to tear your eyes away from the central figure of Christ depicted in the most complex foreshortening with the most accurate perspective cuts, you involuntarily wonder about the almost monochrome surface of the picture, that Christ is depicted with no more care than the bed on which he lies, and is brought down by that to the level of the subject, that the figures of the Mother of God and John, in their flatness and simplicity, are almost inseparable from the background. However, there is some bewitching incorporeality in this picture (perhaps the mismatch between the size of the bed and the body on it plays a role), which makes you look at it again and again and feel like a witness and participant in biblical events.

It fascinates and attracts even today. A striking example is the use of the composition of this painting in Andrey Zvyagintsev's film The Return.

Mantegna's works are considered a great honor and luck to have in their collections the Uffizi Gallery and other museums in Italy, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery of London, the New York Metropolitan Museum, etc. Unfortunately, there are no his works in Russia, but from time to time they can be see at exhibitions.

On the art market, each appearance of the works of Mantegna (as well as masters of his level in general) is a real sensation and an event of world significance. From 1991 to 2013, they appeared in auction catalogs only 43 times, and almost always in the graphics section. His paintings are incredibly rare on the market: over the past 20 years, easel works (board, tempera) have been sold only 2 times, each time with record results.

Graphics (print and original) were sold 40 times, and in April of this year, at one of the German auctions, an attempt was made to sell several sheets of grisaille (oil and tempera on paper). Given such a rarity of appearance on the market, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the percentage of works sold tends to 90.

The record amount for the work of Mantegna was recorded on January 23, 2003 during the auction at Sotheby's in New York. Over $25.5 million was paid by an unknown buyer for a small (39×42) undated Descent into Hell tempera. According to artprice estimates for 2011, this result ranks 9th in the top ten most expensive works of old masters on the open market, ahead of even Rembrandt.

In 2007 (that is, shortly before the crisis) at the same Sotheby's, but in London, the canvas "Madonna and Child" was sold for 240,500 pounds (almost half a million dollars). In fairness, it should be noted that, apparently, this undated work (canvas, tempera. 47.6 × 36.8) belongs to an earlier period of the artist’s work and, perhaps, does not represent such artistic value as “Descent into Hell” .

The record price of 60,000 euros for graphics (circulation) was set back in 2002 in France. It was this amount that was given for the sheet "Madonna and Child", thereby exceeding the estimate by more than three times.

Works by Mantegna are still on sale today. Of course, these are circulation graphics, but in the middle and lower price segments. Three sheets from his not rare series “Bacchanalia with a barrel of wine” (1490) were sold on June 5, 2013 during the Bonhams auction for 2,125 pounds (with an estimate of 600–800 pounds). So lovers of old Italian masters have the opportunity to replenish their collections with the works of the great Andrea Mantegna.

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