Lecture 18: Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini
On this same wall, to the right of the door, is a fresco that depicts the Arrival
of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga; he is returning to Mantua from Rome.
This section of the wall is meant to be read as continuing the landscape
glimpsed behind the plaque-carrying putti. The cardinal is greeted by his
father, the marchese. The other ¿ gures include a trio of Gonzaga children;
the eldest of them is the cardinal’s younger brother, Ludovico. The cardinal
holds Ludovico’s right hand while the youngest child, Sigismondo, grasps
Ludovico’s left hand. This is a moment of family intimacy uncommon in
Renaissance painting. Behind the ¿ gures is a hilly landscape unlike marshy
Mantua; it is dotted with buildings that evoke Rome, from which the cardinal
has come.The windows of this square room illuminate only two walls, leaving the
other two in shadow. Mantegna painted the two lighted walls, those with
doors, and the rib-vaulted ceiling. By making them appear open to the sky,
he created the illusion of more light entering the room. The wall to the right
of this scene contains one of the most well-known Renaissance frescoes, The
Gonzaga Family, which depicts Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga and his family
and court. No such painting of an aristocratic family group in a domestic
architectural setting had ever been seen in Italy.Mantegna turned the mantelpiece of the huge ¿ replace into a stage on
which he presented the Gonzaga family and their court. Leading up to that
stage, he painted a staircase at the right with courtiers arriving to greet the
Gonzaga family. As the small procession reaches the “stage” level, Mantegna
introduces a dramatic pause with the elegant young man standing in front of
the decorated pilaster. The architecture visible at the top of this image, the
triangular area terminating in or supported by an urn-shaped bracket, is real
architecture, part of the structure of the room. The À at pilaster is as unreal as
the young man who stands in front of it on the “real” mantelpiece. Both are
painted illusions.The group framed by illusionistic pilasters includes the marchese at the
left, the marchesa, and numerous family members and retainers. Among
the retainers is an older female dwarf. Renaissance and Baroque courts in
Europe frequently retained dwarves, in part because of their strangeness.