CHAPTER IV.

WORK AT MANTUA AND ROME: ENGRAVINGS, A.D. 1474-1490.

The painting of the Camera degli Sposi gave the Marquis an opportunity for the bestowal of new favours on his chosen artist, “suus Andreas,” as Mantegna proudly terms himself on the tablet where he has recorded the completion of the work. Lodovico now granted him a piece of land near the Church of St. Sebastian, in Mantua, where Andrea built a house with the help of the architect Giovanni di Padova, and decorated it with frescoes which were the admiration of his contemporaries, but which perished in the sack of Mantua.

Unfortunately his love of splendid undertakings led him into extravagance; he had already incurred heavy debts by purchasing a property at Buscoldo, and the expenses of his new house involved him in further difficulties. According to his usual habit he had recourse to the Marquis, and addressed him on the 13th of May, 1478, in a querulous letter, complaining that he is growing old, and has several sons and one daughter of a marriageable age, and yet that while others think he is basking in the sunshine of his Excellency’s favour he is in reality poorer than when he first came to Mantua. He ended by asking him to pay the eight hundred ducats required to satisfy his Buscoldo creditors, and to give him six hundred more in order to defray the cost of his new house.

Lodovico was at that time in great difficulties himself, for he had been defeated by his enemies, and even compelled to pawn his jewels. None the less his reply was frank and generous. He fully recognised his obligations, and assured him that all his last pledges should be redeemed, but reminded him that of late fortune had been unfavourable to his arms, and that it was impossible for him to give what he did not possess. This letter, written in the same kindly spirit which we have often before had occasion to notice, was the last which Andrea ever received from his noble patron. Before another month had elapsed the good Marquis was dead, and had been succeeded by his son Federico.

The young Gonzaga had known Mantegna from his boyhood, and proved as kind and liberal a friend as his father to the wayward artist. He not only paid his debts, but exempted the estates which he possessed both at Goïto and at Mantua from the land-tax. All his dealings with Andrea are marked by the same generous feeling. His letters express much concern on hearing of an attack of illness which had interrupted the painter’s work; and on another occasion, when one of Andrea’s sons was ill, he sent his own doctor from Venice to attend him.

During the six years of this prince’s brief reign Mantegna was chiefly employed in painting halls at the villas of Marmirolo and Gonzaga, which have long since shared the common ruin of the summer palaces round Mantua.

His fame was now at its height. “The virtue of Andrea,” wrote the Marquis Federico, “is known to the whole world;” and in 1483 Lorenzo de’ Medici stopped at Mantua to visit our painter’s house and renowned collection of antiquities. Other sovereigns sent him pressing invitations, and all were desirous of having a work by Mantegna’s hand; but the great man was capricious, and refused most of these solicitations. Federico himself had to make his painter’s excuses in an elaborate epistle to the Duchess of Milan, whose portrait Andrea flatly refused to undertake. There was no help for it, and the disappointed lady had to rest satisfied with Federico’s explanation, that since these excellent masters were so full of fancies we must be content with what they choose to give us.

But when Federico’s early death in 1484 left the rule of his principality to a mere child, Andrea, filled with anxiety for the future, and still heavily burdened with debt, began to look around him for another patron. His thoughts naturally turned to the illustrious patron of the fine arts who had recently visited his studio, and he appealed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in a pathetic letter, bewailing the losses he had sustained in the successive deaths of two generous masters, and begging to be employed, if perchance he should have any talent likely to please so magnificent a prince. What answer Lorenzo returned to this entreaty we do not learn, but he probably gave him a commission before long, since we know that it was for him Andrea painted the beautiful little Virgin of the Uffizi, which, with the master’s habitual slowness, he did not finish until the close of his visit to Rome. This little gem remains a precious memorial of the intercourse between two of the most interesting personalities of the Renaissance, and few of Andrea’s conceptions are sweeter than the blue-draped Mother gazing with drooping eyelids on the Child whom she rocks to sleep in her arms, while the peasants are seen at work in the field beyond and a band of herdsmen drive their flocks up the steep hill-side path.

After all, however, the state of affairs at Mantua was more hopeful than Andrea had imagined in his first grief for the loss of Federico; and before long the contemplated marriage of the boy Marquis Francesco with Isabella of Este renewed his connection with the house of Ferrara, whose members had been among his earliest patrons. He now painted a Madonna for the Duchess Eleanor, which Francesco himself took to Ferrara, where his mother-in-law was impatiently awaiting its arrival. Most critics agree in identifying this picture with the noble Virgin, formerly in the possession of Sir C. Eastlake and now in the Dresden Gallery, a work in which the thoughtfulness of the child and tender maternal feeling of Mary are peculiarly impressive.

Very soon afterwards, in the year 1485, Mantegna began the greatest work of his whole life, the “Triumphs of Julius Cæsar,” now at Hampton Court. They were originally destined for the palace of St. Sebastian, at Mantua, which the young Marquis was then building; and a letter of the 25th of August, 1485, describes how Prince Ercole of Ferrara saw Mantegna employed on them in his studio. While engaged on this engrossing work he was interrupted in the summer of 1488 by an invitation from Pope Innocent VIII., who begged Francesco that the great Lombard artist might be allowed to decorate his newly erected chapel in the Vatican. Political reasons induced the Marquis to consent; he knighted Andrea and sent him to Rome with the most flattering recommendations.

During two years Mantegna painted in the chapel of the Vatican, and it is a subject of the deepest regret that a series of frescoes executed in his best period should have been ruthlessly destroyed by Pius VI. when he enlarged the Vatican Museum. On the entrance wall the Madonna sat enthroned, above the altar was the “Baptism,” on the side walls the “Birth of Christ” and the “Adoration of the Magi;” while Old Testament subjects and the Virtues were represented in grisaille on the ceiling, all painted, says Vasari, with the same miniature-like finish.

But Andrea did not find the Pope a liberal patron or Rome a pleasant residence. He complains bitterly in his letters to Francesco of the irregular payment which he receives, and the difference which he finds between the habits of the Vatican and those of the Courts.

Whether he was not treated with the deference to which he was accustomed, or whether failing health oppressed his spirits, his tone becomes more and more melancholy. A longing for home had seized him, and he implores the Marquis to send him a few lines of comfort, since he is now, as he always has been, the child of the House of Gonzaga, and will serve no other prince. Anxiety for his unfinished “Triumphs” is added to the solicitude which he feels for his absent family, and he entreats Francesco in the same breath to find his son Lodovico employment, and to take care that his “Triumphs” are not injured by rain coming in at the windows, since he considers them the best and most perfect of all his works.

Francesco replied in the most friendly manner, promising to attend to his requests, and begging Andrea to be careful of his health, and to return as speedily as possible to complete the “Triumphs,” which he counts the greatest glory of Mantua and his own house. But the frescoes of the Belvedere Chapel were no small task, and Andrea had, as he complains, no assistant to help him in his labours. He found means, however, to express his dissatisfaction to the Pope one day by adding another Virtue to the figures which he had designed. The Pope, who frequently visited him when at work, asked him who the last Virtue might be. “That is Discretion,” said the painter; upon which the Pope, not to be outdone, returned promptly, “Put her in good company then, and add Patience.” Another version of the story, given by Ridolf, is that he added the figure of Ingratitude as an eighth to the seven deadly sins, saying that this was the blackest of all crimes. In the following June he writes more cheerfully, describing a singular visitor he has had in the person of Zizim, brother of the Sultan Bajazet, then a captive in the Vatican, and sending his portrait for Francesco’s amusement. Another six months passed, and the Marquis wrote again, this time in a very urgent strain, both to the Pope and Mantegna, saying that his marriage with Isabella of Este was to take place in January, and that Andrea’s presence was indispensable. The courier who brought the letter found the painter ill in bed and unable to move; so the wedding festivities had to be celebrated without him, and his return was delayed until the following summer, when the Pope at length dismissed him with a complimentary letter of thanks to the Marquis. Besides the small “Virgin” of the Uffizi, only one other work of Andrea’s Roman time is known to exist, a “Man of Sorrows, supported by Angels,” now in the Museum of Copenhagen, and, like the Brera Pietà, remarkable for the skill and knowledge displayed both in the drawing and distribution of light and shade.

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It has often been said that during his visit to Rome, Mantegna first learnt the new art of engraving, in the practice of which he spent so large a portion of his time and powers. But if we consider, on the one hand, the variety both in style and subject of his plates, and on the other the great undertakings on which he was engaged during his last years, we shall see that this is impossible.

It is true that no fixed date in his earlier career can be assigned with certainty, but an attentive study of his engravings will, we think, result in the conclusion that his first efforts in this new branch of art belong to his Paduan days, and that he pursued it at intervals all through his career, but with increased activity during the latter part of his life. Two plates especially, the unfinished “Scourging” and the “Descent of Christ into Limbo,” bear a strong resemblance to the Eremitani frescoes, while others remind us in a similar manner of the San Zeno altar-piece and the earlier Mantuan paintings. At first his method was imperfect, but we trace a gradual improvement in the plates, in proportion as he acquired greater technical knowledge in the new art and became acquainted with Maso di Finiguerra, and it may be with Schongauer’s engravings. All are marked by the same firmness of outline, by the same closely-marked shading drawn in slanting lines from right to left, and, above all, by the constant endeavour to give the print something of the charm of chiaroscuro and colour. Since, however, a whole school of engravers formed themselves on Mantegna’s style, and Zoan Andrea, Mocetto, Campagnola and others, all adopted his method and confined themselves almost exclusively to the reproduction of his works—the task of distinguishing Mantegna’s original plates is by no means easy. Of late years they have been subjected to a severe criticism, and many formerly attributed to him are now rejected. But, whether we accept twenty-four or twenty with M. Duplessis and Bartsch, or limit the number to thirteen with M. Wallis, we shall equally acknowledge how wonderfully every aspect of his genius is represented in these engravings, and how inexhaustible was that wealth of thought and imagery which, unable to find its full expression in painting, sought another channel in the sister art.

[Illustration: THE ENTOMBMENT.

_From the engraving by Mantegna._]

Small as is the cycle of genuine prints, they embrace a wide range of subject; pagan myths, Roman and Christian themes, are all treated in turn with the same seriousness of purpose and marvellous variety of invention. Sometimes he reproduces his own pictures—the “Virgin of the Grotto” from the Uffizi triptych, in later years we have the “Triumphs” and the “Dancing Muses of the Parnassus.” The Bacchanalia, and still more the “Battle of the Sea-gods,” remain to show us how deeply the spirit of classic bas-relief had sunk into his soul. Certain subjects there are in which he takes especial delight, which he treats with as great freshness and originality as if he had never before approached them. Such are the “Hercules and Antæus,” already represented in grisaille on the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, and the “St. Sebastian,” which hardly yields in beauty to the sublime painting of the Belvedere. At other times he reveals some altogether new conception, as in the noble “Descent from the Cross,” which supplied the motives whence Albrecht Dürer, Luca Signorelli, Daniele da Volterra, and Rubens in turn took their inspirations. In dramatic power and intensity of feeling this plate is only equalled by the well-known “Entombment,” where all the horrors of death, all the depths of the wildest despair, seem gathered up and concentrated in that one figure of St. John wringing his hands aloft and uttering the great and bitter cry which cannot be restrained. The same strong feeling shows itself under another form in the seated Madonna, whose whole figure is swayed with the foreboding of coming anguish that mingles with her love, as she bends forward to press the Child closer to her face. But although these figures, animated with rage and despair, with a great hatred or a still greater love, are the subjects on which Andrea seemed to dwell with preference in his engravings, he returns at times to the serene repose of ancient statuary, and designs for us a group of perfect majesty in the three grand figures of “St. Andrew, St. Longinus, and the Risen Christ,” who stands between them, calm and strong, with the awe of that death which he had conquered still upon his brow.

Again, in vivid contrast with reeling satyrs and angry Tritons battling on the rough sea-waves, we have the quiet portrait heads of Lodovico Gonzaga and his wife, Barbara,[2] whose homely faces and earnest eyes look out of the same quaint costumes as on their palace walls at Mantua, and on whose brocaded robes infinite pains have been bestowed.

This is not the place to enter into further details, or a whole volume might with profit be devoted to the consideration of Mantegna’s engravings, but enough has been said to show how important a part of his works they form, and how extraordinary was the genius of the man who could, in his leisure moments during the brief intervals which elapsed between his greater tasks, give to the world so rich a treasure of profound and varied thought.

[Illustration: JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES.

_From the drawing by Mantegna in the Uffizi._]

[Illustration]