(music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)
Beth: We're in the Basilica of San Zeno
in the town of Verona in northern Italy
looking at an altarpiece in situ by the
great Renaissance artist, Andrea Mantegna.
Steven: This is an altarpiece that has
one foot in the older traditions of the Trecento
and one foot that's beginning to move
into a much more sophisticated understanding
of pictorial space.
So on the one hand, you have this frame
which we think may be original to
Mantegna himself which divides
the main scene into three sections
with these four Corinthian columns
we're calling the Classical paths.
Beth: So you might think about that older
Trecento 1300s tradition of an altarpiece
with and an image of Mary and Christ
in the center with separate panels
within a larger frame.
Steven: But Mantegna's image behind the columns
is a insistently continuous.
Beth: Instead of very separate panels
with figures with a gold background,
Mantegna's unified that space behind the frame
so that the figures really seem to occupy
a very real space created with the illusion
of linear perspective.
Steven: That's not completely unheard of
before Mantegna, but he's also pairing
the actual physical wooden carved frame columns
with more classicizing columns
in the pictorial space immediately behind them.
Beth: So those columns in the front that are real,
are coming into our space, right?
They're real columns.
And the garland that unites them
seem to be on that edge of our space
and the pictorial space.
And then we move back where we see
Mary holding the Christ child on her lap,
angels around her singing and playing music.
On either side, four saints in this space
showing us the court of heaven,
but it's a christian heaven in an insistently
classical, antique, pegan space.
This is a kind of painting called
a "sacra conversazione", a sacred conversation
or holy community.
Steven: You have to gather in one pictorial space
figures that come from different historical periods.
If we start all the way on the left,
you see a figure with a red undergarment
and a yellow mantle on top.
He's holding keys so that's Saint Peter.
Beth: Behind Saint Peter is Saint Paul,
behind him, Saint John.
Steven: Saint John looks sensitive
as is traditional, almost feminine.
Finally, the fourth figure on the left
in the back, is Saint Zeno, the namesake
for this church and somebody we think
was the person who brought christianity
to the town of Verona.
Beth: And is the patron saint of Verona.
Steven: On the other side of the Virgin Mary,
in the front, there is this extraordinary rendering
of Saint John the Baptist.
Look at the S-curve of that body.
This is a christian figure,
but links christian tradition back
to the classical tradition.
That body is just a tour de force
example of contrapposto.
Beth: That's right.
Mantegna we know was devoted to
studying ancient Greek and Roman antiquities
and it's so obvious that he's been looking at
classical sculpture with that figure
of John the Baptist.
And it's not just in the tilt of his hips
and that contrapposto in the S-curve,
it's also just an amazing naturalism
of his pose, the way he looks down,
reads the book, that he holds the book.
He's so believable and he's so close to us
we can imagine him as a real figure
about to step out of that painting.
Steven: That's the thing that grabs me,
the vividness, the use of oil paint with
a kind of linear quality that
Mantegna brings to his paintings
with a careful use of light which,
by the way, reflects the way the light is
actually entering into this church,
all of which creates this really intense illusionism.
Beth: These are real figures that we can engage with.
These are figures that we can pray to
who will intercede on our behalf with Christ.
But we also know at the same time,
given all of that accessibility,
that we're looking at an image of
the court of heaven and that one day
perhaps through our own prayers,
through our own good works,
we could hope to join the blessed in heaven.
So like in, for example,
Mantegna's Saint Sebastian,
we have a contrast between the classical path
which is represented by those sculptures
in [Grazei] that we see and there's some
carving in the [freeze] and in the [roundels].
Then we have the christian present
in this painting, full color in the figures
in the court of heaven.
The altarpiece in this guild frame
is within the apse of this church,
decorated with fresco from a century or two earlier.
Steven: Because that's true fresco paint
applied directly on wet plaster,
it's lost a vividness of its color
because it mixes with the white of the plaster.
It makes the oil painting of Mantegna
all the more brilliant, all the more saturated.
Beth: We can see how oil paint could create
a realism in texture and form that was
really impossible with the earlier medium
of fresco or even tempera.
Steven: It must have felt like a kind of
early technicolor.
Beth: For the people of Verona in the 1460s.
Steven: This painting has had an interesting history.
We're not the only people who admired it.
Napoleon admired it and in fact,
brought it back to Paris.
It was returned after Napoleon lost power,
but not entirely.
If you look down at the predella,
you can see that there are additional scenes
and those have not been returned.
The are en tour and they're in Paris.
(music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)