98. Carlo Crivelli, c. 1430/35–1495, Late Gothic Style, Venetian school, Italian, Madonna of the Passion, c. 1460. Tempera on panel, 71 × 48 cm, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona
All of religious subjects, Crivelli’s compositions remain within the late Gothic style and the constant use of a golden background is part of the painter’s archaism. However, the depth given to the characters is a sign of modernity.
99. Alesso Baldovinetti, c. 1425–1499, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Madonna and Child, c. 1460. Tempera on panel, 104 × 76 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Alesso Baldovinetti was a Florentine painter as well as a mosaic- and stained-glass-maker. His paintings show the influence of Domenico Veneziano and Fra Angelico.
100. Piero della Francesca, c. 1416–1492, Early Renaissance, Italian, Madonna of Senigallia, 1460–75, Oil on panel, 61 × 53 cm, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
101. Giovanni Bellini, c. 1430–1516, Early Renaissance, Venetian School, Italian, Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St John (Pietà), c. 1460, Oil on panel, 60 × 107 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Bellini knows the Florentine pictorial researches (a lot of Florentine artists travelled to Venice at the time) and he introduced oil painting in Venice. Traditionally, the Virgin was holding the dead Christ on her knees. In this painting Bellini proposes a new iconography and a new-size landscape format. In the foreground, a stone pedestal evokes the tomb of Christ. The search for volume and geometry is characteristic of the artist’s work.
102. Piero della Francesca, c. 1416–1492, Early Renaissance, Italian, Resurrection, 1463, Mural in fresco and tempera, 225 × 200 cm, Museo Civico, Sansepolcro
103. Andrea Mantegna, 1431–1506, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, The Agony in the Garden, c. 1460, Egg tempera on wood, 62.9 × 80 cm, National Gallery, London
Mantegna took his inspiration from the drawing of his brother-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, in this painting.
Andrea Mantegna
(1431 Isola di Carturo – 1506 Mantova)
Mantegna; humanist, geometrist, archaeologist, of great scholastic and imaginative intelligence, dominated the whole of northern Italy by virtue of his imperious personality. Aiming at optical illusion, he mastered perspective. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea’s work flooded in, for example the frescos of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua.
In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas and the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his entree into Venice.
Mantegna reached an artistic maturity with his Pala San Zeno. He remained in Mantova and became the artist for one of the most prestigious courts in Italy – the Court of Gonzaga. Classical art was born.
Despite his links with Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna refused to adopt their innovative use of colour or leave behind his own technique of engraving.
104. Enguerrand Quarton, active 1444–1466, Early Renaissance, Provence School, French, Pietà of Villeneuve-les-Avignon, c. 1460, Oil on panel, 160 × 218 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Masterpiece of the art from Provence, this painting, with its gilded background, still betrays the influence of Byzantine art. On the left, the donor is portrayed. He is represented as an intercessor between the divine group and the viewer.
105. Domenico Veneziano, 1410–1461, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1465, Oil on panel, 51 × 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Berlin
106. Dirk Bouts, c. 1410–1475, Northern Renaissance, Flemish, The Last Supper, c. 1467, Oil on panel, Altarpiece, 180 × 150 cm, Collégiale Saint-Pierre, Louvain
A major work by Bouts, The Last Supper was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in Louvain. The painter received the mission to conform to the advice of two theologians in the depiction of the scene. This is the first time that the consecration of bread is the moment chosen in the Last Supper’s representation, rather than the prediction of the betrayal.
107. Andrea Mantegna, 1431–1506, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Portrait of Carlo de Medici, 1467, Oil on panel, 40.6 × 29.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
108. Hans Pleydenwurff, 1420–1472, Northern Renaissance, German, Crucifixion of the Hof Altarpiece, c. 1465, Mixed technique on pine panel, 177 × 112 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
In the Crucifixion Hans Pleydenwurff used motifs from a Deposition from Rogier van der Weyden’s circle (Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Flemish painting also influenced the painter in the use of warm and rich colours.
109. Andrea Mantegna, 1431–1506, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Camera Picta, Ducal Palace, 1465–1474, Fresco, Palazzo Ducale, Mantova
Mantegna’s originality comes to the foremost obviously in the central part of the ceiling, which breaks from the seriousness and formality of the rest of the room. It is perhaps Mantegna’s most delightful and creative invention: the centre of the vault seems to open up, the first painting of the Renaissance to apply the notion of illusionism not just to an easel picture or wall but to a ceiling as well. This view upwards completes the trompe-l’œilvision Mantegna created in the Camera Picta, which is the first illusionistic room of the Renaissance; the ideal of the flat picture space as an extension of the real world is here given a spectacular expression, as a viewer in the middle of the room can see clouds overhead, fictive curtained walls, and classical architectural framework.
110. Piero della Francesca, c. 1416–1492, Early Renaissance, Italian, Nativity, 1470–75, Oil on panel, 124.4 × 122.6 cm, National Gallery, London
111. Dirk Bouts, c. 1415–1475, Northern Renaissance, Flemish, The Ordeal by Fire, 1470–1475, Oil on panel, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Characteristic of the revival of a Gothic tendency in the fifteenth-century bourgeoisie, this painting, belonging to the genre of justice scenes, emphasises the figures’ verticality and their lack of volume.
112. Francesco Botticini, c. 1446–1498, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Tobias and the Three Archangels, c. 1470. Tempera on panel, 135 × 154 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
113. Francesco del Cossa, 1436–1477, Early Renaissance, Ferrarese School, Italian, The Triumph of Minerva: March, from the Room of the Months, 1467–70, Fresco, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara
114. Michael