Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain03cham).pdf/213

 *est extant work, but the altarpiece of St. Luke and Saints (1454), at the Brera, Milan, painted for S. Giustina at Padua, is the first which displays the master's characteristics. It and the St. Euphemia, in the Museum at Naples, are the only representatives of his early Paduan period. After 1448 Mantegna began to paint a continuation of the Life of St. James, begun by Pizzolo, in the Church of the Eremitani, Padua. The Saint exorcising the Devils, and Called from his Nets were probably designed and partly executed by Mantegna, but those of James Baptizing, and on his Trial, as well as the rest of the chapel, are altogether his work. They show a close study of the antique, as well as minute observation of common nature, and are characterized by an excessive display of scientific knowledge. The human form, regarded as a geometrical unit, is treated architecturally, and perspective is carried so far by the precipitation of the lines that the inner parts of all the figures, excepting those on the very edge of the foreground, are concealed. In no other painter's works are to be found so strange a mixture of classic feeling, realism, and science, combined with rare dramatic power and intensity of life, as in those of Mantegna; whose style may be studied to advantage, not only in his paintings, but in the few precious engravings which he executed on copper after 1468. About 1460 Mantegna entered the service of Luigi Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, but he did not take up his residence there until 1471. In 1459 he painted the Madonna of San Zeno, Verona, and the Christ in the Garden, Baring Collection. The Madonna, and the Presentation in the Temple, Berlin Museum, the St. George, Venice Academy, and the admirable St. Sebastian, Vienna Museum, belong to the years 1464-66. Between 1471 and 1474 Mantegna decorated the walls of the so-called Camera de' Sposi in the Castello at Mantua with pictures in distemper, one of which represents the Marquis of Gonzaga and his family. The dead Christ and the Marys (1474), Brera, and a Madonna (1485), in the collection of Sir Charles Eastlake, preceded the famous Triumph of Julius Cæsar; probably of the same period (1485?) is the Madonna with Angels, identified recently, in the Brera, Milan. Called to Rome in 1488 by Innocent VIII., Mantegna remained there two years, during which he painted some now destroyed frescos in the Chapel of the Vatican; a Madonna, Uffizi; Parnassus, Wisdom victorious over Vices, Louvre; Man of Sorrows, Copenhagen. The Assumption, in the Trivulzi Gallery, Milan, was painted in 1497, and the Madonna della Vittoria, Louvre, about the same time. In the National Gallery, London, are the Triumph of Scipio, Summer and Autumn, Samson and Delilah, and a Madonna with Saints; in the Historical Society, New York, a Crucifixion, and an Adoration of the Magi. The latter years of Mantegna's life at Mantua were full of trouble, on account of the banishment of his son Francesco and his greatly reduced circumstances. His tomb in the Church of S. Andrea is marked by an admirable portrait bust in bronze, perhaps the work of the great medallist Sperandio. His second son, Francesco (1479-after 1517), was the painter of a Noli Me Tangere, and a Resurrection, in the National Gallery, London.—Art Journal (1882), 225; C. & C., N. Italy, i.; Engerth, Belved. Gal., i. 200; Gaz. des B. Arts (1866), xx. 478; Keane, Early Masters, 373; Lübke, Gesch. d. ital. Mal., i. 458; Vasari, ed Mil., iii. 383, 413; Bartsch, Le Peintre Graveur, xiii. 222; Willshire, Int. to Ancient Prints, 438; W. & W., ii. 258; Zeitschr. f. b. K., x. 190; xi. 23, 54; xv. 61; xvi. 110; xvii. 197; xxi. 101.

MANTOVANO, IL. See Feti, Domenico.

MANUEL, NICOLAUS, called Deutsch, born in Berne about 1484, died there, April 30, 1530. German school; history painter, about whose artistic training nothing is known. His family name was Alleman, of which Deutsch is a translation. Elected member of the Great Senate of Berne in