1.
Andrea Mantegna
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Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective and his flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He also led a workshop that was the producer of prints in Venice before 1500. Mantegna was born in Isola di Carturo, Republic of Venice close to Padua, second son of a carpenter, at the age of eleven he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter. Squarcione, whose vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art. All the while, he continued undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available, as many as 137 painters and pictorial students passed through Squarciones school, which had been established towards 1440 and which became famous all over Italy. Padua was attractive for artists coming not only from Veneto but also from Tuscany, such as Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Mantegnas early career was shaped indeed by impressions of Florentine works. At the time, Mantegna was said to be a favorite pupil, Squarcione taught him Latin and instructed him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. The master also preferred forced perspective, the results of which may account for some of Mantegnas later innovations. However, at the age of seventeen, Mantegna separated himself from Squarcione and he later claimed that Squarcione had profited from his work without paying the rights. His first work, now lost, was an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia in 1448. After a series of coincidences, Mantegna finished most of the work alone, though Ansuino and this series was almost entirely lost in the 1944 allied bombings of Padua. The most dramatic work of the cycle was the work set in the worms-eye view perspective. The sketch of the St. Stephen fresco survived and is the earliest known preliminary sketch which still exists to compare to the corresponding fresco, the drawing shows proof that nude figures were used in the conception of works during the Early Renaissance. In the preliminary sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to a more average viewpoint however, despite the authentic look of the monument, it is not a copy of any known Roman structure. Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, as the young artist progressed in his work, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni Bellini and Gentile Bellini, and of a daughter Nicolosia. In 1453 Jacopo consented to a marriage between Nicolosia and Mantegna, trained as he had been in the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, Mantegna openly avowed that he considered ancient art superior to nature as being more eclectic in form. As a result, the painter exercised precision in outline, privileging the figure, overall, Mantegnas work thus tended towards rigidity, demonstrating an austere wholeness rather than graceful sensitivity of expression
2.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
3.
Ducal palace, Mantua
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The buildings are connected by corridors and galleries and are enriched by inner courts and wide gardens. The complex includes some 500 rooms and occupies an area of c.34,000 m², although most famous for Mantegnas frescos in the Camera degli Sposi, they have many other very significant architectural and painted elements. The Gonzaga family lived in the palace from 1328 to 1707, subsequently, the buildings saw a sharp decline, which was halted in the 20th century with a continuing process of restoration and the designation of the area as museum. In 1998, a room was discovered by Palace scholars. The room is thought to have used for performances of Monteverdis music in the late 16th century. The entrance of the palace is from Piazza Sordello, onto which the most ancient buildings, the Palazzo del Capitano and they formed the original nucleus of the so-called Corte Vecchia. The Palazzo del Capitano was built in the late 13th century by the Captain of the People Guido Buonacolsi. Initially built on two floors and separated from the Magna Domus by an alley, in the early 14th century it received a floor and was united to the Magna Domus by a large façade with a portico. The additional floor consists of a hall, known as Hall of the Weapon Room of Hall of Diet. His commissioner, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, is portrayed in the paintings, the frescoes were rediscovered and restored in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1519 Isabella dEste moved her residence from the Castle of St. George to this sector of the Gonzaga palace. Isabellas apartment included two wings now divided by the entrance to the Cortile dOnore, another hall in the same wing is the Camera Granda or Scalcheria, frescoed in 1522 by the Mantuan artist Lorenzo Leonbruno. Later Guglielmo X Gonzaga, in the 16th century, transformed the rooms of the Corte Vecchia creating the Refectory, facing the Hanging Garden, at the same time was created the Appartamento degli Arazzi, comprising four halls. Three of the latter have tapestries, executed in the Flanders on cartoons by Raphael and they were bought at Brussels by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in the early 16th century to decorate what at the time was called the Green Apartment. After decorating the Palatine church of St. Barbara and a period in the Ducal Palaces stores, a further restoration was carried on during the Napoleonic Wars in the Sala dello Zodiaco, also known as Napoleon Is Hall, after the French emperor slept there. The Castle of St. George was built from 1395 and finished in 1406 under commission by Francesco I Gonzaga, designed by Bartolino da Novara and it has as square plan with four corner towers, surrounded by a ditch with three entrances, each one with a drawbridge. The painters decoration creates a space, as if the chamber was a loggia with three openings facing country landscapes among arcades and curtains. The painted scenes portrays members of the Gonzaga family, the Domus Nova was originally designed by Luca Fancelli in 1480–84
4.
Filippo Lippi
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Fra Filippo Lippi, O. Carm. also called Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento. Lippi was born in Florence in1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, when he was still a small child, both his parents died. He was sent to live with his aunt Mona Lapaccia, however because she was too poor to rear him and he was 8 years old when he left for the convent and started his education there. In 1420 he was admitted to the community of Carmelite friars of the Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Florence, taking vows in the Order the following year. He was ordained as a priest in approximately 1425, and remained in residence of that priory until 1432, georgio Vasari, the first art historian of the renaissance, writes that Lippi was inspired to become a painter by watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church. Lippis early work, notably the Tarquinia Madonna show that influence from Masaccio, in his Lives of the Artists, Vasari says, Instead of studying, he spent all his time scrawling pictures on his own books and those of others. Due to his interest, the decided to give him the opportunity to learn painting. Lippi then went on to visit to Ancona and Naples, where he was captured by Barbary pirates and his skill in portrait-sketching helped to eventually release him. Louis Gillet, writing for the Catholic Encyclopedia, considers this account assuredly nothing, with his return to Florence in 1432 is paintings had became popular, warranting the support of the Medici family, who commissioned of The Annunciation and the Seven Saints. Cosimo de Medici had to him up in order to compel him to work. His escapades threw him into financial difficulties from which he did not hesitate to extricate himself by forgery and his life included many similar tales of lawsuits, complaints, broken promises and scandal. In 1441 Lippi painted an altarpiece for the nuns of S. Ambrogio which is now a prominent attraction in the Academy of Florence and it represents the coronation of the Virgin among angels and saints, including many Bernardine monks. In 1452 he was appointed chaplain to the nuns at the Monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Florence, in June 1456 Fra Filippo is recorded as living in Prato to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit for the figure of the Madonna, under that pretext, Lippi engaged in sexual relations with her, abducted her to his own house, and kept her there despite the nuns efforts to reclaim her. This relationship resulted in their son, Filippino Lippi, who became a famous painter following his father, Vasari accounts for this relationship in his publication of The Lives, which was published soon after. In 1457 he was appointed commendatory Rector of S. Quirico in Legania, despite these profits, Lippi struggled to escape poverty throughout his life. The close of Lippis life was spent at Spoleto, where he had commissioned to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin for the apse of the cathedral. In the semidome of the apse is the Christ Crowning the Madonna, with angels, sibyls and this series, which is not wholly equal to the one at Prato, was completed by one of his assistants, his fellow Carmelite, Fra Diamante, after Lippis death
5.
Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist
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The Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist is a fresco cycle by the Italian Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi and his assistants, executed between 1452 and 1465. It is located in the Great Chapel of the Cathedral of Prato, geminiano Inghirami, the preposto of the Cathedral of Prato, then capitular church, was at the time an influential man in culture and politics, with important friendships in Rome and Florence. He himself a humanist, he often commissioned artworks to Renaissance artists, the city decided to decorate the Great Chapel in the church in 1440, allocating a budget of 1200 gold florins for the work. Inghirami asked archbishop Antonino Pierozzi to call Fra Angelico, however, the aging friar, perhaps due to the extent of the work or because he was already committed to other works, declined the offer. Next was Fra Filippo Lippi, who accepted and established himself in Prato in 1452, collaborators he brought with him included Fra Diamante, who had been his companion in noviciate. Her name was Lucrezia Buti, after acting as his model for some paintings, the two lived together in a house near the citys Duomo. Once the scandal broke out, Lippi and Buti fled from the city and it was however Pope Pius II that granted them the dispensation allowing them to marry. The frescoes were finished in 1465 under the supervision of the new preposto Carlo di Cosimo de Medici, the following year Lippi moved to Spoleto, with his son Filippino and his apprentice Sandro Botticelli, where he died four years later. In October 1993 the paintings were vandalized with a pen by Pietro Cannata who had already performed vandalistic acts on other works of art among which the David of Michelangelo in 1991. They were restored starting from 2001, the chapel being reopened to public in 2007, the cycle occupies the two lateral walls and the end wall of the Cappella Maggiore, covering a surface of 400 m2 in total. At the left are the Stories of St. Stephen, the saint of the church and patron saint of Prato, at the right are the Stories of St. John the Baptist. The end wall, at the side of the glass window are two saints in painted niches and, below, bent around the corners, are the martyrdoms of St. Stephen. At the top, in the pendentives of the cross-vaults, are the four Evangelists, the two saints stories are to be read from the top to the bottom, and mirror each other on the opposite walls. The Stories of St. Stephen include, Kidnapping of Newborn St. Stephen, at the right is the meeting between the young St. Stephen and Bishop Julian, who, according to the legend, took care of him during his adolescence. It shows the saint leaving Julian to being his mission in Cilicia, stoning of St. Stephen Funeral of St. Stephen. Set in a Palaeo-Christian basilica, it shows numerous characters taking part in St. Stephens funeral. They include portrait of true people Lippis time, such as a red-dressed Pope Pius II, Carlo di Cosimo de Medici behind him, and, next to them, the Joyous Friar — the Story of Fra Filippo Lippi. Disposition as a tool, Fra Fillipo, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca
6.
Prato Cathedral
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It is dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. It is one of the most ancient churches in the city and it was built in several successive stages in the Romanesque style. The church contains a number of works of art, in particular fine sculpture. The church of Saint Stephen was built in a meadow after an appearance of the Virgin Mary near the village of Borgo al Cornio. The first building was a parish church. Which the earliest document dates from AD994, the expansion of the church began in the 15th century and transformed the modest building into one of the most lovely Gothic-Romanesque buildings in Tuscany. The cathedral is documented as early as the 10th century as the Pieve di Santo Stefano, located in the Borgo al Cornio, the first settlement in Prato. The current structure dates from the Romanesque period of the 12th century, the upper stage of the bell tower was constructed in 1356. During the 14th century the cathedral acquired an important relic, the Sacra Cintola or Belt of the Holy Virgin. This brought about the enlargement of the edifice by the addition of a transept which is attributed to Giovanni Pisano, the Cintola Chapel was also built at this time to house the relic. In the early 15th century, a new façade or west front was added in the International Gothic style, in the space between the two was created a narthex or corridor leading to the external pulpit, built by Michelozzo and decorated by Donatello between 1428 and 1438. The seven original reliefs of the parapet were removed from the pulpit in 1967, the façade is divided into three sections by shallow buttresses or pilasters. The façade has a central portal with a lintelled doorway surmounted by a Gothic arch. In the lunette over the door is a terracotta sculpture by Andrea della Robbia depicting the Madonna with Saints Stephen. Below the central gable, a clock is set into the façade. It is surrounded by segments of the marble and forms part of the harmonious design. The frescoes of the chapel are also of the 15th century. Internally, the church, built on a Latin cross ground plan, has a nave and they are separated by elegant columns of green serpentine, the capitals being attributed to Guidetto
7.
Piero della Francesca
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Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni dAnghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438. Besides, he took notice of the work of some of the Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro during his youth. In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of SantEgidio in Florence, in Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccios frescoes and his figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Pieros undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years, in 1442 he was listed as eligible for the City Council of San Sepolcro. Three years later, he received the commission for the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, in 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of SantAndrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura. Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, in this sojourn he executed in 1451 the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as Sigismondos portrait. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna, in 1454 he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of SantAgostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptic is lost and the four panels of the wings, a few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed, the Baptism of Christ, in The National Gallery in London, was executed around 1460 for the high altar of the church of the Priory of S. Other notable works of Piero della Francescas maturity are the frescoes of the Resurrection of Christ in Sansepolcro, in 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456, the cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found
8.
Francesco del Cossa
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Francesco del Cossa was an Italian Renaissance painter of the School of Ferrara. The son of a stonemason in Ferrara, little is known about his early works, Cossa is best known for his frescoes. One of his followers was Leonardo Scaletti of Faenza, in conjunction with Cosimo Tura, Cossa is now known for fresco decoration of the summer pleasure villa/palazzo known as the Palazzo Schifanoia, located just outside the city gates. Together, they painted a series of the elaborate allegories around the themes of zodiacal signs and these were only partially restored in the 20th century, and there are three that are reasonably assigned to Cossa. Of these, one of the most remarkable images is the horde of naked toddlers in the Allegory of May – Triumph of Apollo, apparently a sign of springtimes prolific blossoming, the crowded rows of babies mass like a phalanx of infantile Rockettes. The Allegory of April has a depiction of the trio of Graces, sandro Botticellis version in Primavera dates from 1482. See the 1501 version of the Three Graces, assuming the date of death of Cossa is correct, this one must have been completed prior to the others. Unhappy that he had paid by the square foot for his work for Duke Borso and complaining he was being paid the same as the worst dauber in Ferrara. In Bologna he obtained many commissions under the patronage of the Bentivoglio family and he executed stained glass windows in Bologna, the best of which is a circular window, in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, representing St. John in Patmos. In the National Gallery of London there is a picture by him representing St. Vincent Ferrer, there is a fine profile portrait at Locko Park near Derby, said to represent Duke Ercole I of Ferrara. In the Dresden collection there is also an Annunciation that has, however, del Cossa features as one of the two protagonists in Ali Smiths novel How to Be Both, short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Encyclopedia of Artists, volume 2, edited by William H. T. Vaughan, ISBN 0-19-521572-9,2000 Web Gallery of Art
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