The Renaissance in Mantua took off from the mid- fifteenth century, depending entirely on the Gonzaga dynasty, which made the city, despite the smallness of the territory and its relative importance on the European chessboard, one of the most splendid courts in Europe. Unlike other declinations of the Italian Renaissance, Mantovano concerned only the ruling family: the difference between the Gonzaga commissions and those of the Mantuan, however affluent, is abysmal.
Historical and cultural context
The Gonzagas had expelled the Bonacolsi in 1328, imposing a dominion over Mantua that lasted until the seventeenth century. Being Mantua an imperial fiefdom, the Gonzagas worked hard to obtain the imperial legitimacy, which came in 1432, when Gianfrancesco Gonzaga obtained the marquess title. The imperial bond was always a reason of pride and prestige for the family, also underlined by the repeated marriages with princesses of German descent.
Dynasty of great patrons, the Gonzaga immediately dedicated themselves to represent their dominion over the city also through artistic commissions, settling in the decentralized castle of San Giorgio.
After 1423 Gianfrancesco Gonzaga financed the creation of the Ca ‘Zoiosa, the school of the humanist Vittorino da Feltre, who was the preceptor of the Marquis’s sons. The future ruling class was thus educated from infancy to classical culture, Roman history, poetry, philosophy, mathematics and astrology.
In the first half of the century a late Gothic style prevailed as in the rest of the Lombard area, with the fundamental stay of Pisanello as court artist until his death in 1455, who realized frescoes of chivalric tone (Torneo-Battle of Louverzep) and a series of medals of great elegance. However, contacts with Tuscan artists were not lacking, as was the presence of Filippo Brunelleschi in the city between 1436 and 1438, when asked about hydraulic issues. The wide humanistic knowledge that was spreading in the city determined an early rapprochement with the Paduan Humanism, with the repeated contacts withDonatello and with the stays of the Tuscan architects Antonio Manetti and Luca Fancelli.
A leap in quality came after the peace of Lodi (1459), when the territory of Mantua had a happy moment of political prestige, sanctioning the importance of the city in the Italian chessboard, between the Visconti of Milan and the Serenissima. This centrality was sealed that year, when Mantua was chosen as the seat of the council called by Pius II to organize the crusade against the Ottomans to resume Constantinople, which fell in 1453. On that occasion the Marquis Ludovico IIIhe almost simultaneously called Leon Battista Alberti (in the city since 1459) and Andrea Mantegna (from 1460), who marked the undisputed reference points of the Mantuan artistic avant-garde.
The era of Ludovico Gonzaga, in power until 1478, marked a first climax in the artistic life of the town, followed by the short marquisate of his son Federico, substantially continuing that of his father. With the rise to power of Francis II the interests of the young heir, they turned mainly to carry on the military tradition of the family, becoming a well-known leader. Instead, his wife Isabella d’Este, one of the most cultured and celebrated women of the Renaissance, dominated the art scene, collecting antiques of great value and requiring the collaboration of the greatest artists active in the peninsula, such as Titian, Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci and Correggio. This passion for patronage was also transmitted to his son, Frederick II, who called Giulio Romano, a prominent student of Raphael, to Mantua, who created for him Palazzo Te, an extraordinary example of sixteenth-century classicism.
Urban planning
The urban interventions on the city were limited, also because of its structure already fixed for some time and not very flexible: on three sides the city is closed by the belt of the lakes originating from the Mincio, with a road network derived from the Roman era. The north-east corner of the city was the old political-religious center, around the current Sordello square, home of the Bonacolsi palace, as opposed to the municipal nucleus of Piazza delle Erbe and the Broletto, reduced to market location.
The buildings promoted by the Gonzagas pivoted on the new political center of the Castle of San Giorgio and on the two churches of Sant’Andrea, containing venerated relics, and San Sebastiano, a private church of the dynasty.
Architecture
San Sebastiano
In architecture it was decisive the arrival in 1459 of Leon Battista Alberti, called by Ludovico III Gonzaga. His first intervention concerned, from 1460, the church of San Sebastiano, which stands on the edge of the center along one of the main arteries leading to the marshy area of the Tea, just outside the walls, where were the stalls of the famous horses, pride of house.
Alberti designed an austere and solemn building and, although his project was not faithfully and arbitrarily restored in the twentieth century, was the basis for the Renaissance reflections on the buildings with a Greek cross. The church is divided on two floors, with the lower basement, and is articulated on a central space, almost cubic and covered by a cross vault, from which three short aps arms of equal size depart. The fourth side is that of the façade, where there is a portico which today is composed of five openings. In general it is a classical temple elaboration on the podium, with broken architrave, tympanum and a Syriac arc, which testify to the extreme freedom with which the architect disposed the elements. Perhaps the inspiration was an Late Antique work, like the Orange arch.
Sant’Andrea
The ancient lexicon was manipulated with equal ease in the Basilica of Sant’Andrea, although, in this case too, tampering with the original projects that took place during the course of the work, after Alberti’s death. The building was created to replace a shrine where a precious relic of the blood of Christ was venerated. Alberti changed the orientation of the church by aligning it with the road axis that connected Palazzo Ducale to the Tea.
The plant of the church is a Latin cross, with a single, large nave with a barrel vault with lacunar, on which open side chapels with a rectangular base. The choice was also linked to specific ancient references, such as the Etruscan temple described by Vitruvius and the Basilica of Maxentius. In order to seal the whole area monumentally, the façade was given particular importance, set up as a triumphal arch with a single archway between the walls, even more monumental than the previous example on the façade of the Tempio Malatestiano. More emphasis is then given by a second upper arc, beyond the eardrum, which marks the height of the nave and which thanks to the internal opening allows the lighting of the building. The atrium has a great thickness, as a point of filtering between inside and outside, which also recurs in the outline of the internal chapels.
Palazzo Ducale and the castle of San Giorgio
Since the time of Ludovico III Gonzaga the Castle of San Giorgio, a strong fortress on the Mincio, was the object of changes that gradually, generation after generation, transformed its appearance from a military building to a noble residence. Over time the castle was equipped with new wings and courtyards, becoming a real palace, Palazzo Ducale, a real city-palace separate and totally out of scale compared to the real city.
Palazzo Te
Built between 1524 and 1534 on commission of Federico II Gonzaga, it is the most famous work of the Italian architect Giulio Romano.
Painting
Andrea Mantegna
The painting production for the Gonzagas was dominated throughout the fifteenth century by Andrea Mantegna, court artist from 1460, when he succeeded to the late Pisanello, until his death in 1506. Chosen young to Padua by Ludovico III Gonzaga, the artist stood out as one of the most innovative and revolutionary of the Italian scene, with his strong interests for classical antiquity and for the creation with the painting of illusionistically open spaces, where space real and painted one blend with great skill. Among his first works for the marquis stands the table of the Death of the Virgin, created for a missing private chapel of theCastle of San Giorgio, where the theme is treated without miraculous hints, in an architecture with a view from the window that is finely grasped from life. The softening of shapes and colors, started in the artist’s journey already in the San Zeno Altarpiece (1457-1459), is further developed here, with a greater naturalness of human gestures and types, which are ennobled by the wide monumental breath of the composition.
Great masterpiece of the artist in Mantua is the Camera degli Sposi (” Camera picta “), completed in 1474. The rather small representation environment is covered by frescoes on the walls and on the vault. Of the four sides, two are covered with painted drapery, while the others present the same drapes, but moved aside to reveal scenes from the Gonzaga court. The painted pillars seem to contain a loggia that breaks through the real space of the wall, also involving the real objects of the room, like the shelf of the fireplace that becomes a raised base of a terrace where Ludovico, seated next to his wife, he is receiving a letter from his secretary. The illusory game finds its apex in the famous oculus of the vault, where a series of cherubs and bridesmaids, looking down jokingly, look out, strongly shortened by sott’in su. On the vault there are also a refined series of grisail frescoes, with busts of Roman emperors and mythological scenes, which give the hall the tone of a magnificent ancient hall, where the life of the contemporary court claims the same nobility of the classical age. The Camera degli Sposi marked an epochal turning point in the style of Italian courts, which from the sumptuous decorations of late Gothic style passed to a more solemn, intellectual and humanistic image.
Under Francesco II, Mantegna devoted himself to an even more ambitious work, the Triumphs of Caesar (c. 1485- 1505), where the passion for the ancient, the prestigious ostentation for the patrons and the medieval legacy of passion for detail and episodic detail. The cycle, of which nine canvases are known, all in the Hampton Court building in London, was extremely famous, visited by every guest of respect and celebrated by all, even if all this popularity is at the origin of the bad state of preservation today, because of the numerous and improper restoration attempts over the centuries. Each canvas has a square shape, about 2.80 meters on each side, where the protagonists of a triumphal procession of Julius Caesar are depicted, which unfolds in a painting for a whole room, with a point of view optimized for a view from below. In fact, in ancient times it is thought that there was a system of wooden pillars that interspersed the scenes, giving the impression even in this case to see everything through an open loggia. The procession, inspired by more ancient and modern sources, unfolds with continuous inventions, without yielding, where the scholar data is placed in the background by human representation, caught in the most varied attitudes.
The era of Isabella d’Este and Federico Gonzaga
In the era of Isabella d’Este the fame of Mantegna, now elderly, underwent a certain downsizing. Although the marquise appreciated his undisputed talents as a painter of figurative and mythological scenes, commissioning various paintings for his studio, he criticized him as a portraitist, perhaps grasping the stiffest features of his style, not inclined to soften according to the style of soft naturalness which was then depopulated in Italy, with exponents such as Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino and the Venetians like Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione.
The beginning of the 16th century is dominated by the marquise’s cultural initiatives, of which it remains a very precious correspondence with various painters, which testifies to the relationship between clients and artists on the eve of the “Modern Manner”. For his Studiolo he requested paintings from the major artists of the time, including the aforementioned Mantegna and Perugino, as well as Lorenzo Costa il Vecchio and Correggio. Isabella was also commissioner of Titian.
The love for the arts was fully transmitted to his son Federico, who in 1524 impressed a “modern” turn to court art with the arrival of Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, who created Palazzo Te by frescoing the famous Sala dei Giganti.
Sculpture
At the court of Mantua the sculpture did not have much following, due to the lack of quarries in the territory and the expensive import duties from the neighboring territories. For this reason a rich production of grisail paintings was developed, which had the greatest creator in Mantegna. Only at the time of Isabella d’Este are the stays of some famous sculptors, such as the Lombardo or the Antico, the author of a series of bronzes that imitated classical works for Isabella’s studio.
Source from Wikipedia