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Who was Mantegna? (1431-1506) Andrea Mantegna was a painter from Padua, Italy who carried the art of foreshortening and perspective to an innovative level. In so doing he created a “worms eye view” perspective and initiated daring perspective feats that were unique and dramatic in their day.

Historical context: Joan of Arc was martyred the year Mantegna was born near the close of England’s Hundred-Years War with France. Mantegna lived to see the dawn of the Age of Discovery inaugurated by Columbus in 1492 and Vasca de Gama in 1497. A decade after Mantegna’s death Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, thus launching the Reformation. Another significant event that occurred when Mantegna was a young man of twenty-two was the Fall of Byzantium to the Turks in 1453. Byzantium (Constantinople) had guarded Europe’s eastern flank from the Moslem hordes for over a millennium. Scholars fleeing west reintroduced Plato to the Renaissance milieu.

With the Renaissance well into its third century, Humanism was overshadowing the medieval stress on God and Christian salvation. With the close of the hundred years war, Thomas A Kempis penned his great “Imitation Of Christ” (1450?) in response to the decline of spirituality. On the surface, religious paintings and sculpture were everywhere, but in the realm of the spirit men were turning their eyes away from the heavenly realities to the glories of humanity.

The focus of the age was on man and his quest for intellectual, artistic, and scholarly fulfillment. The invention of the printing press just two years after the fall of the Eastern Empire (1455) gave great impetus to these ideas. Throughout Europe, mass-produced books were being read and discussed by the intellectual elite. The new ideas and experimentation in the humanities were exploding in painting, illuminating minds and transforming the intellectual landscape. This was the “High Renaissance”.

Mantegna appeared in the eye of this cultural hurricane. He was among the many artists, scholars and writers of his day who sought to recover the classics of Greece and Rome. Brunelleschi had paved the way with the mathematical precision he brought to the arts, and painters like Mantegna sought to apply his insights with great energy. In this New World, the artist was sovereign in his own right and was seen to be anointed with “genius” rather than the more modest “craftsman” of old. As a herald of the new age, the artist was set apart from ordinary mortals, possessing a spark of the “divine”, immortality and creativity. It was this status as a demi-god, which may explain why Mantegna patrons overlooked his fickle personality.

Summary of Mantegna’s work: Born the son of a carpenter, Mantegna was later adopted by Francesco Squaricione who schooled him in the style of classical antiquity which characterized much of his painting. Mantegna grew up around Squarcione’s unkempt studio, which is described in this excerpt by Roberto Longhi:

“…had its origin in that undisciplined band of wanderers, the sons of tailors, barbers cobblers, and peasants, who during those twenty years passed through Squarcione’s studio. The studio must have been indescribable. Only an artist like DeChirico could conceive it: a dusky, menacing atmosphere, in which decapitated busts of classical statues supported twisted frames ; Florentine plaquettes being used as palettes for Prussian blue; Chinese carpets depicting glaring monsters heaped with moth eaten rolls of cloth tossed there by Squarcione……here and there, a terrible yellow dust settling down on the milk- white plaster-casts, and, all day long, the noisy comings-and-goings of Donatello’s joking assistants. It was amid all this Mantegna grew up….”⁽¹⁾

Mantegna’s work contributed to many compositional innovations. He developed a great interest in classical antiquity, especially the influence of Roman sculpture and of the works of Donatello, a contemporary sculptor. Mantegna’s particular technique was tedious and highly academic in nature. The human form was executed with precision and exactness in anatomical observation and likeness. His rendering was devoid of fleshly attributes but rather possessed sculpture-like form. Accordingly, he preferred the study of sculpture forms rather than live human forms. Mantegna devised his own theory regarding statues postulating that they were perfect and thus radiated more beauty than "“living nature”. Thus, they enabled him to study the details of human anatomy in greater refinement and his style leans more toward stone-like rather than living flesh.

In 1459 Mantegna became closely associated with the influential Gonzagas, the ruling family of the Italian city of Mantova, similar to the Medici in Florence. He executed many portraits for them. Mantegna married into the Bellini family, great painters in their own right.

His painting “St James healing a cripple” or “St. James led to his execution” depicts the “worms eye view perspective.” The vanishing point is below the bottom of the picture. “The Agony in the Garden”, painted by Mantegna and his brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini in 1460 is another example with a similar theme.

Other innovations abound in Mantegna’s work. Some of his other paintings, including St. Sebastian, convey the sculpture-like form of his style. Grisaille, an effect that copies the texture of stone, appears in his monochromatic painting of Judith Camera degli Sposi (1464-74) adorns the ceiling of the Gonzaga Palace in Padua, displaying an illusion of an opening sky from the unique perspective of the cherubim. The view is up and into the painting at a wonderful angle, a mark of Mantegna’s work.

Influence on Subsequent History: The Dead Christ, one of his last paintings believed to be painted at over the age of eighty, is one of Mantegna’s greatest feats of daring perspective. This composition is an example of his famous foreshortening technique. Foreshortening is the rule of perspective that enables one to distort parts of a represented object which is not parallel to the picture plane, in order to convey the impression of three dimensions as perceived by the human eye.⁽²⁾

Its unique view reveals Mantegna as a master of invention and exaggeration of form that influenced future painters of the Mannerist school. This school exaggerated the figure with elongation of the neck and arms, etc. Pontormo was famous among the Mannerist painters. He was the dominant artistic force in northern Italy for half a century and introduced the new techniques to artists of northern Europe, notably Albrecht Durer.

Biblical Analysis: Mantegna painted forms that were sculptural and stone-like, however Jesus comes to take our hearts of stone and make them hearts of flesh. He infuses new life into the stony heart. Mantegna was perhaps a religious man in a religious age, but his work reflects the stony heart of humanism: the external beauty of the “form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2Tim.3:5).

Corrective or prescriptive actions. On the other hand, Mantegna’s visionary innovations paved the way to new vistas on canvas and plaster. This is a call for Christians to scale the heights and open the windows of heaven by manifesting Biblical truth to a dying world.

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