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After his father's death in 1484, he visited Mantua, and brought Duchess Leonora a Madonna painted by the hand of the great Paduan master, Andrea Mantegna, the court painter of the Gonzagas.
Sculpture, too, has its critic, who may be either the carver of a gem, as he was in Greek days, or some painter like Mantegna, who sought to reproduce on canvas the beauty of plastic line and the symphonic dignity of processional bas-relief. And in the case of all these creative critics of art it is evident that personality is an absolute essential for any real interpretation.
He was the son of a farmer. His early history, according to tradition, is very similar to that of Giotto. Just as Cimabue adopted Giotto, Squarcione, a painter who had travelled in Italy and Greece, and made a great collection of antiques, from which he taught in a famous school of painters, adopted Andrea Mantegna at the early age of ten years.
He studied under Andrea Mantegna and his son Francesco Mantegna. From these masters he learned to be very skilful in drawing, especially in foreshortening, or in representing objects seen aslant. But though he learned much of the science of art from his teachers, his grace and movement and his exquisite light and shade are all his own, for they did not possess these qualities.
This mysterious picture certainly stands alone in Giovanni Bellini's work, and suggests the thoughts at least of Mantegna; and while it is true that Giovanni had worked at Padua, one is surprised to come upon its influence so late in his life. The influence of the Bellini is to be found in almost all the great painters of Venice in the Cinquecento.
'I see! a sort of Mantegna Triumph with a difference! 'The drawing's all right, said Fenwick, with a long breath, and a stretch. 'If I can only get the paint as I want it' he stooped forward again peering into the canvas 'it's the handling of the paint that's what excites me! I want to get it broad and pure no messing no working over! a fine surface! and yet none of your waxy prettiness.
That chiarascuro, or treatment of light and shade, in which Lionardo and Andrea Mantegna were no mean proficients, was brought to such perfection by Correggio, that, as Mrs Jameson has sought to illustrate technical expressions, 'you seem to look through.
In the great galleries of the Louvre at Paris he found abundant models which he could study in the works of the old masters; and there, poring over Michael Angelo and Mantegna, he could recompense himself a little in his spare hours for the time he was obliged to waste on pinky- white faces and taffeta gowns.
Sandro Botticelli was not a great painter in the same sense as Andrea Mantegna. But he was a true poet within the limits of a certain sphere. We have to seek his parallel among the verse-writers rather than the artists of his day.
When we are settling the women's question, we must not forget that Marion cares more about her form and colour than about her vote; and if we are nationalising the great masters, let us remember that there is something we may find and lose in a single Mantegna more important to us than all the galleries in the world.
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