Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506) was the first fully Renaissance artist of northern Italy. Born near Padua to a carpenter, he was apprenticed at eleven to the painter Francesco Squarcione, who ran a workshop and art school. By seventeen, Mantegna had legally separated from his master, claiming Squarcione had profited from his services without proper compensation. Padua's environment, rich with classical antiquities and humanist scholarship, shaped his lifelong passion for archaeology and his characteristically sharp, sculptural style.

In 1460, Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga of Mantua hired Mantegna as court painter for the extraordinary salary of 75 lire monthly, marking the high esteem for his art. He remained in Gonzaga service for forty-six years. His masterpiece is the Camera degli Sposi (1465–74) in the Palazzo Ducale, where he covered an entire room with frescoes depicting scenes from Gonzaga life. The ceiling features a revolutionary painted oculus, a circular opening to the sky with figures peering down in dramatically foreshortened perspective. This invention of total spatial illusionism began a tradition of ceiling decoration that lasted three centuries.

Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ demonstrates his mastery of extreme foreshortening, showing Christ's body from the feet with startling realism. His influence reached Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, and his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini. He died in Mantua in 1506. Works are at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, and the National Gallery.