In 1944 an Allied bomb fell into the circular courtyard of the ancient Roman-inspired house that Andrea Mantegna had built for himself in Mantua, bouncing off its frescoed frieze. It failed to detonate. On 11 March of the same year, another landed on the Eremitani church in Padua, blowing the Ovetari chapel, whose walls were decorated with the precocious young Mantegna’s first fresco cycles, to smithereens.
By then the only other surviving monumental work executed by the artist in Padua was the San Zeno altarpiece, destined from the beginning for Verona. It was delivered there on the eve of his departure for Mantua, where, from 1460 until his death in 1506, he was to stay as court painter to the Gonzagas.
The anniversary on 13 September of Mantegna’s death 500 years ago is now the occasion for a series of exhibitions in the trio of cities where he spent most of his career and left his mark, with four principal shows — at the Eremitani Civic Museum and adjoining church in Padua; the Palazzo della Gran Guardia in Verona; and the Ducal Palace and Palazzo Te in Mantua — and more than half a dozen parallel exhibitions on the art, architecture and culture of his times.
Apart from the fixed assets of the glorious frescoes of the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, his family, courtiers, distinguished visitors, retainers, dwarves, buffoons, dogs and horses in their illusionistic gilded pavilion in the San Giorgio Tower at the Ducal Palace in Mantua; what remains of the Ovetari frescoes; and the San Zeno altarpiece (the only one of his still in its original location, though temporarily on display at the Verona exhibition), almost everything Mantegna painted, drew and engraved is now dispersed in collections...
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