LIFE OF ANDREA MANTEGNA

PAINTER OF MANTUA

How great is the effect of reward on talent is known to him who labours
valiantly and receives a certain measure of recompense, for he feels
neither discomfort, nor hardship, nor fatigue, when he expects honour
and reward for them; nay, what is more, they render his talent every day
more renowned and illustrious. It is true, indeed, that there is not
always found one to recognize, esteem, and remunerate it as that of
Andrea Mantegna was recognized. This man was born from very humble stock
in the district of Mantua; and, although as a boy he was occupied in
grazing herds, he was so greatly exalted by destiny and by his merit
that he attained to the honourable rank of Chevalier, as will be told in
the proper place. When almost full grown he was taken to the city, where
he applied himself to painting under Jacopo Squarcione, a painter of
Padua, who--as it is written in a Latin letter from Messer Girolamo
Campagnola to Messer Leonico Timeo, a Greek philosopher, wherein he
gives him information about certain old painters who served the family
of Carrara, Lords of Padua--took him into his house, and a little time
afterwards, having recognized the beauty of his intelligence, adopted
him as his son. Now this Squarcione knew that he himself was not the
most able painter in the world; wherefore, to the end that Andrea might
learn more than he himself knew, he made him practise much on casts
taken from ancient statues and on pictures painted upon canvas which he
caused to be brought from diverse places, particularly from Tuscany and
from Rome. By these and other methods, therefore, Andrea learnt not a
little in his youth; and the competition of Marco Zoppo of Bologna,
Darlo da Treviso, and Niccolo Pizzolo of Padua, disciples of his master
and adoptive father, was of no small assistance to him, and a stimulus
to his studies.

Now after Andrea, who was then no more than seventeen years of age, had
painted the panel of the high-altar of S. Sofia in Padua, which appears
wrought by a mature and well-practised master, and not by a youth,
Squarcione was commissioned to paint the Chapel of S. Cristofano, which
is in the Church of the Eremite Friars of S. Agostino in Padua; and he
gave the work to the said Niccolo Pizzolo and to Andrea. Niccolo made
therein a God the Father seated in Majesty between the Doctors of the
Church, and these paintings were afterwards held to be in no way