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There is a little dark fellow in the Brera at Milan whose zeal in displaying the merits of Mantegna's foreshortened Christ is as unforgettable as a striking piece of character-acting in a theatre. There is a more reserved but hardly less appreciative official in the Accademia at Bologna with a genuine if incommunicable passion for Guido Reni.
Yet the fact that Duerer missed coming into contact not only with Mantegna but with Titian, Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, is indeed the saddest fact in regard to his life. We can well believe that he felt it in Mantegna's case. Ah! Why could he not bring himself to accept the overtures made to him, and become a citizen of Venice?
He had built a chapel in the Belvedere of the Vatican, and wished the greatest painter of the day to decorate it. Therefore he wrote to Francesco, Marquis of Mantua, requesting that he might avail himself of Mantegna's skill. Francesco, though unwilling to part with his painter in ordinary, thought it unadvisable to disappoint the Pope. Accordingly he dubbed Mantegna knight, and sent him to Rome.
They could not perhaps have obtained it direct like the Tuscans: the colourists and masters of light and shade might never have understood the blank lines and faint shadows of the marble; but they received the antique influence, strong but modified by the medium through which it had passed, from Mantegna; and the relentless self-sacrifice to Antiquity, the self-paralyzation of the great artist, was not without its use: from Venetian Padua, Mantegna influenced the Bellini and Giorgione; from Lombard Mantua, he influenced Leonardo; and Mantegna's influence was that of the antique.
William Michael Rossetti, "these superbly invented and designed compositions, gorgeous with all splendour of subject-matter and accessory, and with the classical learning and enthusiasm of one of the master spirits of the age, have always been accounted of the first rank among Mantegna's works". Though in part restored, these paintings, by an artist who died more than four hundred years ago, are full of interest for their vivid presentation of a rich imagination of a great historical event.
II., Revival of Learning, p. 212. Nothing is known about Mantegna's stay in Florence. He went to meet the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna. This Cardinal, a great amateur of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to Mantua in August, 1472, where the "Orfeo" of Messer Angelo Poliziano was produced for his amusement.
The era of collectors began then, and Mantegna's old master was the first of them. Every man of taste did his best to get possession of some fragment of antique sculpture, everyone bought engravings, everyone went to see the pictures of the great masters everyone tried to get together a little library of printed books.
Francois asked him, as he placed his copy of Mantegna's figure in his portfolio. "Oh! no, that's merely a dip into innocence, a good lesson to teach one to be modest and sincere. Life is very different nowadays."
The lower central compartment is instinct with grace and tenderness. The Virgin, mild-faced and melancholy, is seated on a marble throne. The Child held on her arm, droops his head, heavy with sleep, upon her arm in a babyish and appealing attitude curiously opposed to the dignity of the Child in Mantegna's group which hangs on the opposite wall.
Symonds, speaking of that great picture of Mantegna's, now in Hampton Court, says that the artist has converted an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of line. The same could have been said with equal justice of Mr. Godwin's scene. Only the foolish called it pedantry, only those who would neither look nor listen spoke of the passion of the play being killed by its paint.
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