CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS AND WORK AT PADUA, A.D. 1431-1457.
Among the different schools of painting which flourished on the mainland of North Italy during the fifteenth century, that of Padua was the only one which attained more than a merely local importance. Independent of Byzantine traditions and strikingly peculiar in its characteristics, it rivalled for a time and even surpassed the Venetian school in the vigour and individuality of its art.
A Paduan by birth, Andrea Mantegna became the greatest master of his day, and left the stamp of his powerful genius not only on the schools of neighbouring cities, but on the whole artistic world. By his own achievements, and still more by the greatness of his aims, he stands foremost among the men of his generation who carried on the work of the Renaissance and prepared the way for the splendid age that was to follow.
This development was the more remarkable, because until the fifteenth century we do not hear of a single Paduan artist of note. Giotto had left the frescoes of the Arena Chapel within the walls of the “learned city,” and Umbrian influences had later reached her students through Gentile da Fabriano, but these seeds were slow in bearing fruit. The men who painted in the famous basilica of Sant’ Antonio were mostly foreigners. Jacopo d’Avanzo and Altichieri of Verona, Giusto of Florence, belonged to other Italian cities, and although a Paduan guild existed and increased steadily in numbers the results were poor, and the few works which its members produced were feeble imitations of Giottesque or Umbrian originals.
The first to raise Paduan art out of obscurity was Francesco Squarcione, who, although “not the best of artists himself,” undoubtedly gave a new direction to painting in his native city, and in a measure earned the title of founder of the school, which has been liberally bestowed upon him. Born in 1394, and by profession a tailor and embroiderer, Squarcione early devoted himself to art, and having inherited some fortune from his father, spent his youth in travelling both in Italy and Greece.[1] During his travels he collected a considerable number of pictures, and made drawings and took casts of ancient marbles, which on his return to Padua he exhibited for the teaching of young artists. By these means he soon obtained great reputation as a master, and as many as a hundred and thirty-seven pupils, he himself tells us, were trained in his school.
A man of excellent judgment in art, but of slender powers of execution, who knew how to attract talented pupils to his studio, and who employed them in the production of works which bore his name, is the universal verdict passed upon Squarcione by early writers. The truth of this testimony is tolerably well proved by the curious difference of style visible in the only two authentic works of his that remain, an altar-piece in the gallery of Padua, and a Madonna painted for the Lazzara family. The former is a coarse and unpleasant work, with the hardness of line and heavy colouring that mark Zoppo and the inferior Squarcionesques, while the latter in the dignity of its pose and careful modelling bears evident traces of Mantegna’s hand. Squarcione no doubt possessed a quick eye for discerning talent, and it is his lasting claim on the gratitude of posterity that he at once saw and appreciated the rising genius of the young Mantegna.
* * * * *
Andrea Mantegna, the greatest of Lombard masters, was born in the neighbourhood of Padua in the year 1431. His father, Biagio, is supposed to have been a small farmer, and Vasari tells us that in his childhood Andrea herded cattle until Squarcione, struck by the boy’s talent for drawing, adopted him as his own son.
In November, 1441, Mantegna’s name is entered on the registers of the Paduan guild as Squarcione’s foster-child, and seven years later he painted an altar-piece for the ancient church of Santa Sofia. Of this youthful work contemporaries speak with high praise as bearing marks of a practised hand, but it had already disappeared in the seventeenth century, and the earliest painting of Mantegna that now exists is the fresco above the portal of Sant’ Antonio. In this lunette, which bears the date of 1452, the two saints Anthony and Bernardino are represented supporting the sacred monogram; but the figures are too much damaged to be a fair test of the young artist’s style, and the work is chiefly interesting as a proof of the high reputation in which he was already held by his fellow-citizens.
It is to the frescoes of St. Cristoforo’s chapel in the church of the Eremitani friars that we must turn in order to form a correct idea of Mantegna’s powers during this time. Here we see him carrying the principles which he had learnt in Squarcione’s workshop to their furthest limits, and with the boldness of genius venturing on new and untried paths. Here too we find him painting side by side with the best of Squarcione’s other pupils, and we have an opportunity of comparing his work with that of artists who had been formed on the same models.
This chapel, which stands to the right of the high altar, at the east end of the great Eremitani Church, belonged to the Ovetari family, whose last representative, dying in 1443, had left a sum of seven hundred gold ducats to be spent in decorating its walls with frescoes illustrating the history of St. James and St. Christopher. Squarcione received the commission from the dead man’s heir, and between the years 1448 and 1458, the walls, apse, and ceiling were covered with frescoes by his different pupils.
Thus, only a few steps from the garden which encloses Giotto’s Chapel, another great series was painted, to become for the schools of North Italy what the Brancacci Chapel had been for Florence.
Less fortunate than the celebrated frescoes of the Carmine, these paintings have suffered much from the damp of the walls, and a great part of the subjects in the apse, as well as several figures in the martyrdom and burial of St. Christopher, are completely destroyed. Other portions are still in good preservation, and afford excellent examples of the peculiarities of the Paduan school and the studies which laid the foundation of Mantegna’s subsequent greatness.
The leading feature which marks the work of all Squarcione’s scholars, and was to attain its highest artistic development in Mantegna’s later conceptions, is the sculptural treatment of form, which was a direct result of an exclusive study of ancient statues. Painting in their hands becomes more plastic than pictorial, the forms are sharply defined, the drapery falls in the small folds of ancient bas-relief, while the severity of the whole is relieved by rich decorations in the shape of festoons of fruit and foliage, which, when unskilfully managed, give a heavy and over-loaded effect. This plastic tendency sprang from the discovery, then first dawning upon the men of the Renaissance, that the principles of the highest art are to be found in the antique, and was so far as it went true and laudable in its aim. But in the case of the Squarcionesques this study of classic statuary was not combined with sufficient knowledge of nature, and, therefore, frequently degenerated into a lifeless rigidity and absence of expression, if not into positive ugliness and coarseness of form.
This stiffness and want of vitality strike us at once in the four Evangelists on the ceiling of the chapel, wrongly ascribed by Vasari to Mantegna, and in the upper frescoes of St. Christopher’s life, attributed to three different artists—Marco Zoppo, Bono of Ferrara, and Ansuino of Forli. These last-named subjects are not without a considerable degree of skill in perspective and composition, but are alike marked by the same rigidity of form and metallic coldness of colouring. The feeblest of the three is Bono’s representation of St. Christopher bearing the child through the river, a work which, in awkwardness, incorrect drawing and truly painful ugliness, seems to exaggerate the worst faults of the Paduan school.
On the other hand there is a decided advance in the frescoes of Niccolo Pizzolo, the only one of the Squarcionesques who approached Mantegna’s style, and whose improved colouring and greater nobleness of type are best explained by the discovery that he had worked with the Florentines, Donatello and Filippo Lippi, during their residence in Padua. To him Vasari ascribes the figure of the Eternal between St. Peter and St. Paul on the dome of the tribune, and later critics have recognised his hand in the “Call of St. James and St. John” and “St. James exorcising Devils” on the upper part of the left wall. But the finest of all his works here is “The Assumption,” in the apse, a fresco which in joyous life and freedom of movement so far surpasses the ordinary manner of the Paduans that one of the best critics, Dr. Woltmann, pronounces it to be by Mantegna’s hand. Against this we have the testimony of the anonymous traveller of the sixteenth century, who says decidedly that Andrea painted the lower part of the right and the whole of the left wall, but that “The Assumption” and cupola are by Pizzolo. Vasari is silent on this point, but remarks that Pizzolo’s works in this chapel yielded nothing in excellence to those of Andrea, and probably the best solution of the question is to accept both “The Assumption” and the upper frescoes of St. James’s life as the joint composition of the two artists, or at least to allow that they were partly designed by Mantegna.
In the midst of Pizzolo’s labours in the Eremitani Chapel his promising career was cut short by a violent end. He had, it appears, an unlucky habit of taking part in street brawls and riots, and one evening as he was returning home from his work he was attacked and slain by some unknown persons whose enmity he had excited.
Mantegna was now left alone to complete the unfinished work, and whatever uncertainty rests on his share in the earlier frescoes there is no doubt that the six remaining subjects are entirely by his hand. In each of these we see some clearer revelation of unfolding powers. Step by step some fresh difficulty is overcome, some new knowledge gained, until by slow degrees the battle is won, and the mastery over human form is complete.
In the fresco of “St. James baptizing Converts” the statuesque air of Squarcione’s school is still strongly felt in the principal figures. The action is stiff, and the faces are mostly wanting in expression. But the spectators of the ceremony are, on the contrary, full of life and animation. Nothing can be more natural than the two children who look on with wondering eyes—the taller of the two holding a water-melon in his hand, while the smaller one presses close to his side—or the youth under the colonnade in the act of turning round to speak to a figure whose face is concealed by a pillar. If from these we turn to the decorative part of the fresco, the winged angels in the upper corners at once remind us of the charming groups of children on Donatello’s bronzes in Sant’ Antonio, and prove how attentively Mantegna must have studied these recently finished works of the Florentine master. The beneficial influence of the great sculptor had already appeared in the earlier frescoes of the Eremitani, and from his example Andrea now learnt how to combine the study of nature with sculptural treatment, and to adopt a more elevated type of human form.
The next subject, “St. James before Herod,” reveals a new feature, afterwards to become prominent in his career, in the accurate knowledge of Roman costumes and classical architecture which is here displayed. One of the finest figures is that of a soldier leaning on his lance in the left-hand corner of the picture, an ancient Roman, in whom we recognise immediately the painter’s own portrait, from the close resemblance which his strongly marked features and massive brow bear to the bust on Andrea’s tomb at Mantua. Both of these frescoes show considerable skill in perspective, but in the next, “St. James blessing a kneeling Disciple on his way to Execution,” Mantegna boldly ventures on an experiment that is altogether new. For no apparent reason, but purely as a trial of skill, he suddenly alters the point of sight to a low level, and while the feet of the foremost figures appear to stand on the edge of the picture the lower extremities of those in the background vanish altogether. The difficulties thus created are on the whole correctly solved. Each figure is carefully foreshortened, and the Roman arch under which the procession passes is drawn in admirable perspective, but freedom of action is impaired, and the whole suffers from an unpleasant sense of effort and unnatural constraint. Perspective was in those days a favourite branch of learning in the University of Padua, and Mantegna, whose vigorous genius took pleasure in the driest studies, seems to have derived this strange passion for applying its laws to the human form from Paolo Uccelli, a Florentine who had lately visited Padua. In his ardour to accomplish his self-imposed task he failed to see the mistake of subjecting living figures to the rules of architecture, and of treating them as existing solely in order to demonstrate a scientific problem.
But at the time the young painter’s exhibition of skill excited the utmost admiration, and both Daniele Barbaro and Lomazzo praise him as the first artist who opened men’s eyes to the true principles of perspective.
If we are to believe Vasari, Squarcione, who till now had been as proud of his pupil’s growing fame as if it were his own, suddenly altered his tone and openly blamed Mantegna for the stony rigidity of his figures, declaring that they were mere copies of marble statues, altogether devoid of life and expression.
The reproach, although not wholly undeserved, was a curious one in Squarcione’s lips, but the real cause of the breach which took place between the master and scholar was Andrea’s connection with the rival workshop of Jacopo Bellini. The Venetian painter, with his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, had lately taken up his abode at Padua, and a strong friendship had sprung up between Mantegna and the members of his family which before long led to the marriage of the young Paduan with Jacopo’s daughter Niccolosia. Their union took place while Mantegna was actually engaged on the Eremitani frescoes—probably about 1454 or 1455, since in 1458 he had already two or three children—and becomes an important fact in art history as strengthening the ties between these distinguished artists. The influence each was to exercise on the other was destined to prove great and lasting. Jacopo Bellini, who had spent some time in Florence, was probably instrumental in leading Mantegna to follow Donatello and Uccelli’s models, while from Giovanni, Andrea would learn the softer colouring and delicate feeling that impart so pure a charm to those well-known Madonnas which fill the churches of Venice. Mantegna, on his part, gave back at least as much as he took, and no one can doubt that Gian Bellini owed to his brother-in-law in a great measure his knowledge of classical architecture and perspective, as well as the sculptural cast of drapery, that distinguish his pictures from those of earlier Venetian masters. In all probability this new influence, rather than Squarcione’s jealous reproaches, was the cause of the marked improvement visible in the later frescoes. The principal figures in the “Execution of St. James” are more life-like; there is less hardness in the modelling and laying on of shadows, while the background, with its winding road and rocky terraces crowned with olive-trees, is an exact copy of a Lombard hill-side. Nothing, indeed, is more striking in these frescoes than the close attention to natural objects, which shows how strongly realistic was the bent of our painter’s genius, in spite of his Squarcionesque training and love of antique statuary. He not only fills his backgrounds with faithful reproductions of Italian landscape and streets, with red roofs, arched loggias, or vine-trellised arbours, but recalls every detail and renders the furrows and wrinkles of old age, the ragged coat or torn shoe, with an accuracy that is almost painful.
The eagerness with which he sought difficulties and his courage in grappling with them meet us again in the foreshortened rider who looks on at the Saint’s martyrdom, and is still more triumphant in the bold action of the men who drag away the dead body of the giant Christopher, in itself a masterpiece of perspective which served as a model for Titian and other Venetians in dealing with similar subjects in future years.
Unfortunately these two last frescoes, “The Martyrdom” and “Burial of St. Christopher,” are much injured, and some of the chief figures are completely obliterated. The portions that remain justify the praises of former critics who pronounced these to be the finest of the whole series. Here at least Squarcione’s reproach is refuted, the stony look of the faces has given place to warm flesh-tones and softer modelling, and the band of archers assembled under the vine-trellis in the scene where the saint is to meet his doom are remarkable for their energetic action and expressive faces.
According to Yasari, in this last subject, Mantegna represented Squarcione himself in the character of a fat archer, as a proof that he knew how to draw from living models, and the same writer mentions several other contemporary personages whose portraits are also introduced. Especially interesting in our eyes is the group, in the right-hand corner of “The Martyrdom,” of an elderly man standing between two younger figures, one of whom wears a red cap. The Venetian costume of these three spectators, and a certain resemblance of one of the youthful heads to a medal bearing the likeness of Gentile Bellini, go far to confirm the truth of Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s supposition that here we have portraits of Mantegna’s father and brothers-in-law, who were all in Padua at the time, and whom he would very naturally introduce among his other friends.
With these frescoes Andrea’s labours in the church of the Eremitani end, and the decoration of the chapel, with which Squarcione’s pupils had been intrusted some ten years before, was finally completed.
If from details of execution we pass to consider the work as a whole, it must be owned that the general impression left upon the spectator’s mind is one of coldness and severity. These stern and vigorous figures which look down upon us from the walls awe us by the power and reality of their presence; they impress us by the accurate science and years of assiduous labour which they reveal, but they fail to touch the heart or delight the eye; they are wanting in that sense of beauty which, is so conspicuous a feature in Mantegna’s later work. If he had painted nothing else he would have left behind him the reputation of a master of strong realistic tendency, who solved difficult problems and attained a remarkable degree of proficiency in drawing and anatomy, but lacked the qualities necessary for the highest class of art.
Fortunately for us Mantegna’s activity does not end here. The frescoes of the Eremitani were only the first stage in a great career, and as we contemplate them we can always reflect with satisfaction that these powerful works, in their grimness and austere dignity, in their curious display of scientific knowledge and minute attention to detail, were the preliminary studies, by means of which he reached the perfection of after years, and achieved the ultimate successes that were to make his name celebrated.
[Illustration]