CHAPTER VI.

LAST WORKS AND DEATH: HIS INFLUENCE ON ART, 1500-1506.

During more than forty years Andrea had now lived at Mantua in the service of the Gonzagas. Both at their court and throughout Italy he was held in the highest honour, and enjoyed a degree of favour and consideration which, but few artists have known in their lifetime. His children were, with the one exception of Gian’ Andrea, grown up and well provided for; he had lands and possessions of his own both in town and country and what he valued even more—a collection of precious antiquities. Behind him lay a whole lifetime of great works, and although now in his seventieth year his powers as yet showed no trace of weakness or failing. We have seen how rich in works of every branch of art was this last decade of the fifteenth century; how untiring was his activity, and how fresh and inexhaustible the treasures of his imagination. Everything seemed to foretell an old age of honour and prosperity, in which the great master should still charm men by the creations of his brain and hand, and yet as his bodily powers grew weaker should enjoy more of the repose to which he was so well entitled. But this was not to be, and the last few years of Mantegna’s lifetime are a weary record of sorrows and misfortune. Again we find him involved in pecuniary difficulties, brought on by his own extravagance, and very probably by that of his son, Francesco; in order to meet his liabilities he was compelled to part with the beautiful house which he had decorated with his own hand, and to live in lodgings, which he disliked extremely. Yet, with the strange recklessness that formed part of his character, we find him entering into new and imprudent engagements. In March, 1504, he made a will, leaving a sum of money to his son Francesco and the chief part of his fortune to Lodovico, together with the charge of bringing up the child Gian’ Andrea, in whose favour he afterwards altered certain provisions. At the same time he left two hundred ducats for the endowment of the chapel of San Giovanni, in Alberti’s large church of Sant’ Andrea, as a burial-place for himself and his family. Special mention is made of his wife, Niccolosia, who had died some years before; and masses are ordered to be said for the repose of her soul. In August of the same year (1504) he obtained possession of this chapel by a contract with Sigismondo Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua, and the canons of the church. Its decoration now became his favourite scheme, and it was his intention to paint the walls in fresco and to erect a family monument there. He bought a piece of ground outside to prevent the windows from being blocked up by building, and announced his intention of turning it into a garden, where he could spend his time in summer, and build a small room, where he might keep himself warm in winter, “in order,” he adds touchingly, “that I may take a little rest in my old age.” But all this expenditure became the cause of fresh difficulties, and added to the burdens under which Andrea already groaned. Other trials came to sadden his old age. His son Francesco incurred the displeasure of the Marquis by some grave misconduct, and neither Andrea’s tears nor the intercession of Isabella could prevent his banishment from Mantua in 1505. This disgrace was a heavy blow to Andrea, who owned that his son had offended grievously, but thought that his fault might have been overlooked in consideration of his own services. “Messer Andrea,” wrote Isabella to her husband, “has just now been to see me, so full of tears and so altered in countenance that he seemed to me more dead than alive.”

But his activity was undiminished, and, heavy as his heart might be, brain and hand were still the same as ever. We find him returning to a favourite subject of earlier days in the “St. Sebastian,” originally ordered by the Bishop of Mantua, but now in possession of the Scarpa family at La Motta, in Friuli. The life-sized figure, lean in proportions and suffering in expression, has a grandeur of its own. At the feet of the saint is a lighted candle, which sends a thin blue smoke upwards, and makes us wonder at its meaning, until we read the words on the scroll which hangs to the coral string above—_Nil nisi divinum stabile est, cætera fumus_.

This, then, was the conclusion to which he had come at the end of that long life full of works and honour; this the conviction that old age and gathering troubles were forcing upon the mind of the great painter, who had seen so clearly and felt so keenly the beauty and the joy of life.

In that same sad year of his son’s banishment he commenced another of the classic friezes which he loved to paint. This was the splendid composition known as the “Triumph of Scipio,” now in the National Gallery, which a wealthy Venetian named Francesco Cornaro ordered and paid for in part in 1505, but which, to his great indignation, was still in Andrea’s studio at the time of his death, when it was seized upon by creditors nearer at hand.

The real subject of this work, executed in chiaroscuro on a background painted to imitate red marble, is the reception of Cybele among the deities of Rome. A colossal bust of the Phrygian goddess is borne in state into the presence of Scipio, who receives the messenger in consular array; while Claudia Quinta, a Roman lady, kneeling at his feet, welcomes the image with outstretched arms. Every gradation of movement is represented here, from the swift tread of the bearers on whose shoulders the goddess advances, to the motionless forms of the Roman soldiers who stand grouped around Scipio; and nothing is more striking than the skill with which the artist brings this rapid action by degrees to a complete pause. The general character of the piece, its costumes, figures, and draperies, all recall the “Triumphs.” It is, as it were, a last echo of the great composition whose harmonies still lingered on in Mantegna’s ears.

Before the end of the year Andrea, tired of a wandering life, had again bought a house, this time in the Contrada Unicorno, and settled himself there for the winter, promising to pay the owner three hundred and forty ducats in three instalments. It was an unwise venture, as the issue too soon proved. A plague drove the wealthier Mantuans from the city, provisions became scarce, and his own health began to give way. Still he remained in Mantua and painted on manfully, endeavouring to finish a mythological picture of Comus, which Isabella had ordered. But it was in vain. He could not work fast enough to satisfy his creditors, and when pressed to pay the stipulated sum for his house he was compelled to apply to the Marchioness for help.

Isabella was then at a villa near Cavriana, and Andrea wrote to her in pathetic terms, telling her of his distress, and offering to her for sale the one of all his antiques which he most valued, “_la mia cara Faustina_.” Often in brighter days great masters and connoisseurs had wished to buy this bust, but he had refused all their offers, and now since part from it he must, the Marchioness is the only person to whom he can bear to give it up.

Strange as it seems, Isabella did not answer this letter, and with a meanness unworthy of her wrote to her servant, Jacopo Calandra, telling him to bargain with Andrea and obtain the Faustina at the lowest price possible.

This unkindness cut Mantegna to the heart, and when Calandra communicated Isabella’s answer to him, he refused angrily to part with the bust for less than the hundred ducats which had been offered him in former days. Isabella, however, was determined to have it, and on the 1st of August Calandra was able to write:—“Your Excellency will be glad to hear that I have at last obtained possession of Andrea Mantegna’s Faustina. He gave the bust into my hands with great reluctance, recommending it to my care with much solicitude, and with such demonstrations of jealous affection that if he were not to see it again for six days I feel convinced he would die.” The words were to come true sooner than Isabella or Calandra had expected. Andrea could bear to part with houses and lands, but the marble was dear to him as his own flesh and blood, and the parting with it broke his heart.

He was already ill at the time, and six weeks later he died, on Sunday, the 13th of September, 1506. To the last the old spirit of loyalty to the Gonzagas did not leave him, and his son Francesco, writing to inform the Marquis of the sad event, describes how a few minutes before his death he asked for his master, and grieved much to think that he should never see him again.

Francesco was at that time at Perugia, whither he had gone to meet Pope Julius II., and had little time or thought for the great painter who had just passed away. Isabella scarcely troubled herself more, and in a letter full of joyous congratulations to her husband on his entry into Perugia, merely alludes to Mantegna’s death:—“You know Messer Andrea died suddenly a few days after your departure.” There were others who felt more deeply and judged more rightly of the loss which the world had sustained in Mantegna’s death. Albrecht Durer was at that time in Venice, on his way to visit the great Lombard artist whose engravings had filled him with admiration, and from whom he had learnt perhaps more than from any other master. His purpose was frustrated by the news of Andrea’s sudden death, and in later years he was often heard to say that he looked upon this as the saddest event of his whole life. Another graceful tribute to Mantegna’s memory was paid by a certain Lorenzo di Pavia, a collector of antiquities and objects of art, who had known Mantegna at the court of Mantua, and who, on hearing of his unexpected death, wrote to Isabella in these terms:—“I grieve deeply over the loss of our Messer Andrea Mantegna, for in truth a most excellent painter, another Apelles, I may say, is gone from us. But I believe that God will employ him elsewhere on some great and beautiful work. For my part, I know that I shall never see again so fine an artist and designer. Farewell.”

The melancholy history of Mantegna’s difficulties did not end with his death, and his sons had a hard task to satisfy his creditors. One hundred ducats were still owing to the bishop and canons for the mortuary chapel, and Cardinal Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua, laid an embargo on the contents of his studio. Francesco Mantegna had to obtain the permission of the Marquis to sell the pictures that still remained there, among which he names the “Triumph of Scipio,” which Cornaro had never received, the “St. Sebastian,” now at La Motta in Friuli, and the famous _Cristo in scurto_.

By this means his debts were paid, and a settlement of his affairs concluded. Francesco Gonzaga seems to have behaved kindly, and both Andrea’s sons continued in his service, Lodovico as agent, while Francesco succeeded to his father’s place, and painted by turns in the palaces of Mantua, Gonzaga, and Marmirolo.

The remains of the great master were buried in his own chapel of Sant’ Andrea, where half a century later his grandson placed a bronze bust, supposed to have been the work of the medallist Sperandio, and which, after being taken to Paris in 1797, has been restored to its place on Mantegna’s tomb.

The chapel itself is bare and dingy, its walls are whitewashed, rubbish heaps are allowed to litter the floor, and the general aspect is of the most cheerless description. But the gloomy surroundings only serve to heighten the imposing grandeur of the bust.

The sculptor has caught the spirit which animated the great master, and has represented Mantegna, after the manner of an old Roman, wearing a laurel wreath on the thick clusters of hair that shade the deeply furrowed brows and massive features with which more than one portrait in his own frescoes has made us familiar. We seem to feel the fiery flashes of that piercing eye bent upon us, and to realise the iron strength and unbending force of the genius which no difficulty could dismay, and no labour exhaust.

* * * * *

Sperandio’s bust is almost the only thing in Mantua which still speaks of Andrea. The perishing frescoes are still to be seen in the deserted palace, and the walls of the house in which he once lived are standing; but in this city, where he painted for nearly fifty years, his name is forgotten, and while every child in the streets will talk to you of Giulio Romano and the Hall of the Giants, scarcely a creature in the place has ever heard Mantegna’s name. His Faustina is preserved among other antiques in the public museum, where visitors can see for themselves the classic outline of the features which he loved so well; but the custodian, who unlocks the hall, and has much to say of the many statues, passes by this one in silence, or wonders why it is we linger before this bust, unmindful of the tragic story which has invested the marble with so deep an interest.

[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION. BY MANTEGNA.

_In the Louvre, Paris._]

The name of Mantegna, however, is not one that depends on local fame, and there can be no difference of opinion as to the important place which he holds in the history of the Renaissance. We have only to consider how great and widespread was the influence which his works exercised on contemporary art both in Italy and Germany. If we examine the different schools of North Italy we shall find that there is scarcely one which did not receive some new impulse from his powerful genius.

His son Francesco followed in his father’s steps, and worked in the same lines without ever rising above the level of mediocrity. The few scholars and assistants he had in Mantua imitated his example, and whatever remnants of art were still to be found in Padua bore the stamp of Andrea’s earliest style.

In Venice we recognise his vigour and precision of outline, and the classical tendency of his types, not only in the works of his brothers-in-law, the Bellini, but in those also of the rival Murano painter, Luigi Vivarini. Montagna and Buonconsiglio at Vicenza, Ercole Grandi and Cosimo Tura at Ferrara, alike formed their style upon his, while the best Veronese masters were all either his followers or imitators.

We know that Caroto and Bonsignori assisted him in the execution of his later works, while his influence is even more apparent in the works of Liberale, Girolamo dai Libri, and Francesco Morone. The masterpiece of the last-named artist, the frescoes on the walls and ceiling of the sacristy of Santa Maria in Organo, at Verona, are indeed exact imitations of the style of decoration adopted by Mantegna in the Camera degli Sposi. We trace the same all-prevailing Mantegnesque in the works of Lorenzo Costa, who spent some years of his life in Mantua, and if we are to believe Vasari it is to the stimulus of Mantegna’s example that we owe the inspiration which made a painter of Francia.

The link which binds Mantegna to the Umbrians is as yet uncertain, but even if Melozzo da Forli in his Roman frescoes derived no help or suggestion from Andrea, Giovanni Santi’s stanzas remain to show us how intimate was his acquaintance with the Paduan master’s works.

If from contemporary art we pass to the culminating period of the Renaissance, we find Raphael taking him as his model in more than one instance. The likeness of the boy-angels of the Camera degli Sposi to the famous cherubs of the “Madonna di San Sisto” has been frequently remarked, and in the bearers of the dead Christ, who walk backwards in the Borghese “Entombment,” we find a distinct reminiscence of Andrea’s great engraving.

Again, in the treatment of antique themes, Raphael often approaches Mantegna, and we have little doubt that both he and Leonardo had closely studied the works of their illustrious predecessor.

Perhaps the actual connection between Mantegna and Michelangelo is less capable of demonstration, but the strength and energy of expression which were so remarkable features in the genius of both men, as well as a certain resemblance in their characters, form a link which binds them together.

A very different artist, Correggio, who married a Mantuan wife, owes his knowledge of the laws of perspective and composition in a large measure to the study of Mantegna’s works, and, whether or not he visited Mantua himself, probably derived the first idea of the dome-painting for which he became famous from the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi.

But this is not all. The engravings of Mantegna spread his influence beyond the limits of Italy into countries north of the Alps. There was a robustness, vigour, and grave earnestness of purpose, as well as a fantastic element in his art, which attracted the Teutonic mind, and it is perhaps not too much to say that he influenced German art more than any other Italian painter.

We have already alluded to Albrecht Dürer’s admiration for his works and anxiety to become personally acquainted with him. A further proof of the fascination which drew him to Mantegna appears in the highly-finished copies of the “Bacchanalia” and “Battle of the Sea Gods,” which Dürer executed with his own hand, and in the St. John of “The Entombment” which, unable to forget, he introduced in his own “Crucifixion” of 1508. Professor Colvin has pointed out how much he learnt from the Italian master in the delineation of passionate movement, and how close is the affinity between the avenging angels of Dürer’s “Apocalypse” and the angry Tritons of Mantegna’s engraving.

Nor is Dürer alone among northern painters in his adoption of Mantegnesque motives. Holbein repeatedly availed himself of those episodes of the “Triumphs” which he knew from Andrea’s own engravings in his works at Busle and Lucerne; and a portfolio of Mantegna’s works was numbered among the treasures of art in Rembrandt’s possession.

More singular is the admiration which Rubens conceived for an artist with whom he can have had few points in common, yet we find him visiting Mantua in order to study Andrea’s works, and reproducing a scene from the “Triumphs” after his own fashion.

We have already seen the great honour in which Andrea was held during his lifetime. That he was equally esteemed by the succeeding generation we learn from the verses of Ariosto, who places him next to Leonardo in his “Orlando.” High as the praise is, we cannot think it excessive, for Mantegna stands half-way between those men who first brought art to life again, and those who carried it to the highest degree of perfection, and he occupies the foremost place among the artists of the mid-Renaissance, who saw how much was wanting before farther progress could be attained, and allowed no difficulties to stop them in their endeavour to acquire knowledge.

With this end in view no research was dull, no toil wearisome. He embraced the driest studios with the passionate ardour of his nature, and gave life to the scientific problems which he attempted to solve by the very force of his great zeal.

At the same time he brought to the task a degree of culture rare among the men of his class, and both his friendship with scholars and antiquarians and his own classical studies were productive of the most important results for Italian painting. He is the chief representative in art of that revival of learning which was the leading intellectual impulse of the age; and, by bringing this influence to bear upon painting, he won a great step in the History of its development. First among the artists of the Renaissance, he saw with unerring instinct the path by which art would attain her final triumphs. Early in his career the conviction had forced itself upon his soul that the most perfect models of beauty are to be sought in antique art, but that this very perfection can only be reached by a minute and faithful study of nature. To reconcile anew these two principles, to combine in his work classic grace and human action, became the aim of his life, the task which he most nearly achieved in the “Triumphs”—although even there he is not always successful.

“We are conscious,” wrote Goethe, “of a sense of conflict, but this conflict is surely the highest in which ever artist was engaged.” The perfect union of the two principles was to be effected by artists of the next generation, and where Mantegna had sown Raphael and Leonardo were to reap.

It is this sense of conflicting elements, this occasional antagonism between the ideal form after which he strove and the actual fact present before his eyes, which has given rise to so much mistaken criticism of Mantegna’s work. By some critics of the very first rank he is called a mere realist, while on the other hand the old reproach that he neglected the study of real life to copy statues has been repeated till it has grown wearisome.

Although it is easy to trace their origin, both charges are equally unjust. No man had ever a more thorough knowledge of nature, or was more keenly alive to the minutest details of everyday life around him. But something he felt was needed to lift this changeful scene, with its seething throng of human thought and action, into the atmosphere of perfect art.

It is just that touch of grace, that power to ennoble and refine which the Greeks understood so well, that Mantegna felt and sought after in days of long and arduous toil. If at times a certain rigidity of form, a carelessness of desire to please, is visible in his work, it is because in his anxiety to obtain his end he occasionally omitted these minor matters. But to say that Mantegna was alike destitute of feeling for beauty and of spiritual perception appears to us simple blindness.

In knowledge and mastery of the human form, in skill and finish of workmanship, in wealth of imagery and creative thought, few have ever surpassed him.

In dramatic energy and intensity of expression he stands unrivalled by any but Michelangelo. Every variety of emotion, every passion that can swell the breast of man is included within the range of his experience. He knew where to seek the purest springs of joy, and in darker hours his strong soul had fathomed the lowest depths of the most unutterable anguish. The sportive dances of laughing cherubs and nymphs, the pleasures and pains of such mythical creatures as Tritons and Nereids, satyrs and sea-monsters, the sublime and rapt devotion of a Magdalen, the heroism of a Sebastian, were all familiar to him. He enters in the fullest manner into the exultant joy of the victors returning with their long array of spoils and captives from the fight, and yet in the midst of the mighty triumphal procession he pauses to show us the innocent child stretching out its little arms to its mother.

But more than all he loved to paint the rage of violent passion, the wild gestures of uncontrollable grief. There are certain figures into which he seems to have concentrated either the tempest of the most ungovernable fury or the agony of the bitterest despair. Once seen, these creations of his brain refuse to loose their hold on our imaginations, and remain to haunt us with their terrible forms, just as the wailing St. John of “The Entombment” was ever present to Albrecht Dürer’s mind.

The very greatness of Mantegna’s genius, its immense strength and power, may in itself be the cause that he is not strictly speaking a popular artist. His works have never been, perhaps they will never become, the enthusiastic object of general worship. But within the last few years the number of his admirers has increased steadily, and his high merit has received the fullest recognition from some of our most cultured writers.

That this circle will widen year by year, as a larger number of students are drawn to examine for themselves those works of Mantegna which are fortunately within the reach of us all, we feel confident. It is scarcely necessary to add the expression of our conviction that to those who attentively consider them, no works yield a more genuine and lasting pleasure, while assuredly there are none that better repay the devotion of a life-long study.

FRANCESCO RAIBOLINI

CALLED

FRANCIA

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

FRANCIA.