Art: The Glory of Mantua

In the middle of the 15th century, few cities in Christendom bustled with such prosperity as Mantua, and few princelings patronized the arts so diligently as the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga. His court painter was Andrea Mantegna. and the walls and ceilings of his grim Gothic castle boasted some of the master’s finest work. This week, in that same castle, Italy’s President Giovanni Gronchi opens an exhibition that should restore to

Mantua some of the glory it knew 500 years ago. Of the 70 known Mantegna paintings scattered over the world, 45 have been brought together for the biggest Mantegna show ever held.

It took the museum’s Giovanni Paccagnini five years to assemble the paintings, and the ordeal was not without its bitter disappointments. The British royal family’s ambitious Triumph of Caesar, which Charles I bought, is in such poor condition that it could not be sent at all. Spain was mysteriously uncooperative. Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was prevented from lending its Madonna because of the donor’s proviso, and the Museum of Art in Copenhagen decided to keep its Christ Seated on a Sarcophagus because it is so popular with tourists.

But Paccagnini persisted; when London’s National Gallery agreed to send its Agony in the Garden (see color) only if the castle were air-conditioned. Pacca gnini got it air-conditioned. Thus the show-shares, with the exhibition in Venice of Mantegna’s contemporary Carlo Crivelli (TIME, July 14) the honor of being the most exciting now on view in Italy.

A Sense of Drama. Like Crivelli. Man tegna, the son of a carpenter, studied under the strict Paduan master, Francesco Squarcione. He was such a precocious pupil that, at the age of 17, he got a commission to do a number of frescoes in Padua’s Ovetari Chapel. From then on his future seemed secure. He married the daughter of the painter Jacopo Bellini; the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga made him a knight, and Lorenzo the Magnificent sang his praises.

From Squarcione and from the university city 01 Padua, Mantegna learned to love Italy’s classical heritage. But to classic balance and order, he added his own intense sense of drama and an audacious willingness to experiment. In the Agony, he transformed Padua into Jerusalem. There is an eerie tranquillity about the scene, like the stillness before an earth quake. As Jesus prays, soldiers are already on the way to seize him. In a few moments, his final agonies will begin.

A Sense of Outrage. The Dead Christ was one of Mantegna’s last works. In the Agony, he had experimented with the figure of St. James by showing it to the viewer almost feet first, and thus fore shortened. The Christ carries the experiment to the ultimate, and the effect is something of a shock. The greenish corpse fills almost the entire canvas, the marks of suffering still plain to see. The ungainly intimacy of the portrayal has an impact of its own: few portrayals of the Pieta evoke such a powerful sense of grief and of pity for the tortured Christ—or of outrage for his murderers.

In his day, Mantegna was a pivotal figure in the art of northern Italy, but his influence spread beyond. Rembrandt for a time used his work as a model, and in the month of September 1506. Albrecht Diirer set out for Mantua just to meet him. Diirer was too late. Before he ar rived, the old master of Mantua died of apoplexy at the age of 75.