Mantegna, Andrea 1431-1506
Italian painter

Born near Vicenza, he was apprenticed to the tailor-painter Francesco Squarcione (1396-c.1468) in Padua and seems to have been adopted by him. In 1453 he married a daughter of Jacopo Bellini and quarrelled with his master. In 1459 he was persuaded by Ludovico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, to work for him, and remained in Mantua in his service for the rest of his life with the exception of a two-year stay in Rome (1488-90) when he painted a fresco cycle (now destroyed) for the private chapel of Pope Innocent VIII. In Padua he had come under the influence of Donatello and his debt to him is evident in works such as his Saint Zeno Altarpiece and his Saint Sebastian. His style is very sculptural and ostentatious in its use of foreshortening. At Mantua his most important works were nine tempera pictures of The Triumph of Caesar (c.1486) which were later acquired by the English king Charles I and are now at Hampton Court Palace, and his decoration of the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi. The latter is an illusionistic tour-de-force in which the ceiling is opened up to the heavens and putti look down from the painted balustrade. This is the first example of an effect which became common during the Baroque era. The other chief feature of his art was his incorporation of Classical motifs into his compositions. In this he strove for accuracy, and with this aim he built up a collection of Classical statuary which was the envy of the pope.