Andrea Mantegna worked in the second half of the fifteenth century, mainly in the

northern Italian cities of Padua

and Mantua.
His work is probably the best witness that we have of the enthusiasm that existed
during
his time
for the art and the history of ancient Rome.
This image shows Dido,
first Queen of Carthage,
who plays a leading role in one of the great texts of the history of literature,
The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil.
Dido fell in love with the Trojan hero Aeneas and was left desolate when he left
her to fulfill his divine
duty, the foundation of what would become ancient Rome.
it is an incredibly moving story of love which ends with the Queen's suicide.
Here we see her, victim of love, preparing for her death.
Behind her is a funeral pyre
and she holds a sword that Aeneas has left behind
and which she will use to kill herself.
The painting is exquisite.
Precision in the definition of forms and lines is characteristic of Mantegna.
The pose of the figures is based on ancient prototypes.
Mantegna brings up a notch the antiquarian standards of the time.
He was close to contemporary students of antiquity
and he was himself very interested in ancient monuments, such as triumphal arches
and triumphal columns.
A striking aspect of this picture
is that nearly the whole image is made of a single color, a mixture between yellow
and orange.
Monochrome paintings were a specialty at the time
and they're known as grisaille,
a term that comes from the French word for the color grey.
They became fashionable, because in the Renaissance they were very often used to
imitate ancient Roman relief sculptures.
The term grisaille is applied to this picture,
even though the color here is not grey.
What this painting is trying to do
is to imitate not stone but bronze.
The ability of painters to imitate different materials with their art was praised
by contemporaries.

This painting shows Jesus Christ displaying the wounds of his crucifixion on his
hands and feet.
He is held up for contemplation by two angels.
Different types of angels are described in Christian texts.
Here we see a Seraph dressed in red
and a Cherub dressed in blue.
Christ rests at the edge of an ancient looking sarcophagus.
Next to his right hand you can barely see that it is open
and on the ground nearby,
next to the edge of the painting, you can see the lid.
The beautiful landscape extends to a horizon showing the light of dawn.
The clouds are lit from underneath.
To the right we see a hill crowned with the three crosses.
The depiction of drapery is amazing.
Look at the cloth held by the angel to the right.
We have a sense here that the artist enjoyed himself, that he is showing off, that
this is like
a signature with a distinctive flourish.
The careful study of the anatomy of Christ
and the careful description of nature are characteristic of the Renaissance which
favored these qualities,
overgeneralized and schematic approaches to representation.
The expressions of the three faces denote grief and pain. They seem a bit forced.
This is a reminder that we're still in the early stages of the Renaissance.
Learning is not only an individual accomplishment.
We learn many things collectively.
The history of art teaches this.
Painters at this time
were still not able to paint human expression
in a way that seemed entirely realistic.
But thanks to the effort of this artist and of his contemporaries
the next generation would be able to achieve that goal.

It is an interesting paradox that we can appreciate and be deeply moved by aspects

of a painting
that fall short of its own goals.
Here the figures seem frozen, rocklike. To my eye,
this translates into a sense of permanence,
as if we were witnesses to something immovable.
We feel that we are seeing something that is historically distant,
eternal.

What we see here is a closed room in the Ducal Palace of Mantua

that Mantegna has painted with fictive landscape views and people.
When one is in this room,
it seems as if the ceiling and the sidewalls open onto the sky and the countryside.
It is a feed of illusionism
and it's worth traveling to Mantua to see it.
We're going to focus only on what is painted on the ceiling.
We're looking up at a ceiling that appears to open up onto a blue sky.
The figures are kept safe behind a balustrade,
if not they would fall onto us.
In fact,
somethings here actually look like they are about to fall.
Look at the large pot with plants to the left.
It is barely held in place by a stick.
It could fall at any moment.
On the opposite side of the opening,
a small naked child holds an apple that could also fall on us.
Some of the figures in the image smile.
They seem humored by all this.
Clearly Mantegna had a sense of humor
and he enjoyed this kind of trickery,
but something else is at stake here.
By engaging us so directly,
the artist turns us from passive viewers to viewers that participate more actively
in the scene.
We're almost physically involved with it.
We feel that we should move away from the objects that may fall.
Mantegna is a master at this.
By engaging our attention he achieves two different goals.
First of all, he makes us more alert to what he's painting, to his story or
his message.
Secondly, he makes us more aware of his art and of his ability as a painter.
Future generations of artists, especially in the seventeenth century,
will work even harder at making us seem like active participants in the scenes that
they paint
and at making us appreciate their skills.
One final idea,
painters are makers of visual fictions, of visions.
They each create a world that we look at and that we believe in and that we enter
with our minds.
This is a great thing.
It makes our own lives infinitely greater.
Instead of having only one vision or one version of life,
our own,
we can find many
created by individuals that were shaped by their times and places and also by their
individual geniuses.