Mantegna's Role In The Italian Renaissance

Mantegna was born in 1431 in a small town called Isola di Carturo, Republic of Venice, close to Padua, which is now Italy today. At the age of eleven, he started to work for a local artist named Squarcione. Mantegna grew up to be a well-known artist who was skilled in having a linear sharpness and thorough attention to detail of his paintings, mostly frescoes, and engravings. Mantegna stands out among Italian Renaissance painters for his complete dedication to classical ancient times. Mantegna was the leading artist of the school of Padua and one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. So, what made Mantegna so great, and how did his art give a big impact in the in the early Renaissance period? Mantegna started to have a great

Mantegna mainly focused on creating highly realistic painted architectural elements on walls and ceiling. Mantegna created it where, from the ground, it looked like three-dimensional shapes. Though the ceiling is indeed flat, Mantegna created in where it appears concave. Mantegna amazingly transformed the small interior room into an elegant pavilion. In Mantegna’s painting, he created a sky with chubby, child figures and women around them. The realism of the perspective made the art one of the most beautiful ceilings decorated during the early Renaissance. The art wasn’t famously known until the time of Correggio, an important northern Italian painter of the early sixteenth century, who created the same type of painting in the domes in Parma, Italy. In Mantegna’s later years when he began to get old and have bad health, he worked thoroughly during the remaining years of his life. Mantegna painted the Parnassus, a picture celebrating the marriage of Isabelle d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga in 1947. He also painted the Wisdom Overcoming the Vices for Isabella’s small room in the Gonzaga palace at Mantua. A third artwork in his later years was with the legend of the god Comus. Sadly, it was unfinished when