Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian Renaissance artist who lived from 1430/1431 to 1506.
He was born in Isola di Carturo in the Republic of Venice. In 1442 at the young age of 11, Mantegna started studying art and became 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 day.
Squarcione loved the art of ancient Rome and as such, his students spent 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 sort of 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, as he claimed that Squarcione did not pay him for his work. In 1448, Mantegna did his first piece under his own name, an altarpiece for the church of Saint Sofia, which has unfortunately been lost over time. He 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 his inspiration for his painted figures as he thought them superior to drawing from nature. His former teacher, Squarcione, critiqued him on that regard, saying that he might as well paint his figures a stony color as well.
Due to the ill relations, he had with Squarcione, Mantegna decided to leave Padua for Mantua. Soon after, in 1460, Mantegna became court artist to Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga who was at that time, the ruler of Mantua, and was paid a considerably high salary for that position. It was in Mantua that Mantegna created his first masterworks and really 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, who was a significant art patron during the Italian Renaissance. He died in 1506 at age 75.
Mantegna’s work was extremely significant and helped move the Italian Renaissance forward. He introduced spatial illusionism to art with his perspective work that brought the viewer into the painting in a whole new way and his influence can be found in many of the greatest artists of all time, including Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.
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