Artistic Perspective

          Andrea Mantegna was a prominent Italian Renaissance artist who lived from 1431-1506.  His most famous work, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, is distinguished by its mastery of perspective and foreshortening.  Mantegna’s skill with this quality of realism make his works both intricately intruiging and difficult to recreate.

St. James Led to His Execution, photo courtesy of WCC

                   The Italian city of Padova houses some f Mantegna’s early frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel (dedicated to the lives of Saint James and Christopher), which lies close to Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel.  Regrettably, during the second World War the Allies destroyed many of his frescoes here during an air strike; however, during the 1920s they had been photographed in black and white, and are now in the process of restoration.

St. James Before Herod Agrippa, photo courtesy of WCC

     These frescoes provide an excellent example of Mantegna’s early experimentaion with foreshortening and complicated perspective.  In one example, St. James Led to His Execution, Mantegna creates two point perspective – in the foreground he creates a v-shaped line of people who recede into the background, and in the upper portion he mimics this with the tops of the buildings and an arches hallway.  Mantegna’s precise attention to this scientific pattern adds a dimension of reality receding into space, as if there is no end to his image.  The artist was a master of three dimensionality, even in his early career.  Mantegna’s complicated frescoes create an illusion of reality.  They are not as spacially balanced as some images from contemporary artists, yet they harmoniously work together because of his attention to perfecting linear perspective and foreshortening.