ABSTRACT

In Andrea Mantegna's frescoes for the state bedroom in the Ducal Palace of Mantua, the Renaissance taste for illusionism, evident in the revival of anecdotes about Classical Greek artists that were applied to Giotto, permeates the entire work. By the last decade of the quattrocento, Mantegna had been court painter to the humanist Gonzaga family of Mantua for nearly thirty years. As a sacra conversazione, the Madonna della Vittoria transforms verbal communication into communication through pose, gaze, and gesture. But Mantegna integrates the contemporary figures with the Christian figures, just as he had integrated fictive architecture and sculpture with actual architecture in the Ducal Palace. Mantegna engages Mary and Christ, as well as the six saints in the altarpiece, in an image designed to celebrate and honor Gianfrancesco's victory. In the lushness of Mary's bower, therefore, Paradise is regained, as Mantegna shows Gianfrancesco praying for redemption and salvation.