Louvre Opens a Major Retrospective of the Great Renaissance Master ~ Andrea Mantegna

PARIS - Drawing on its remarkable collection of Andrea Mantegna’s ( 1431-1506 ) paintings (by far the largest outside Italy), completed by exceptional loans from other French and international collections, the Louvre has mounted France’s first major retrospective of this foremost Renaissance artist. The exhibition endeavours to trace the main stages of Mantegna’s career, through works in different techniques. It recalls the influences that marked his production and how rapidly his reputation spread. The Louvre's major retrospective of the work of one of great masters of the Italian Renaissance: Andrea Mantegna. On exhibition 26th September through 5th January, 2009.

For the first time in France, this exhibition will allow visitors to explore the full range of the achievements of this influential figure in Western painting and to discover the environment in which his career was nurtured. French museums are home to a number of remarkable masterpieces by Mantegna, by far the largest grouping of his works outside Italy. The exhibition, whose highlights also include a number of exceptional loans from public and private collections worldwide, will attempt to trace, through works exemplifying a wide variety of techniques, the major phases in Mantegna’s career as an artist, his influence on his contemporaries and the early dissemination of his works throughout Europe.

Works of spectacular size or with stunning effects of perspective are shown alongside those with extremely refined handling or more intimate subjects. Such is the paradoxical nature of this artist whose austerity and erudition should not distract spectators from his genuine sensitivity, his gift for observation and the poetic vein evident in his works often tinged with melancholy and sometimes humor as well.

The considerable size of this retrospective, which will offer visitors the opportunity to view some 190 works by Mantegna and contemporary artists, is therefore complemented by the extraordinary visual range of the works on display. Although the exhibition focuses primarily on the artist’s painted works, a number of drawings, engravings, sculptures and decorative art objects will also be presented. Considering the rarity of surviving works from this period, this retrospective will certainly stand as a watershed event, as it will bring together an exceptional number of works on French soil by an artist of great significance, and especially since many of these works are essential elements in the artist’s oeuvre, representing a wide range of art forms and executed at many different stages of his life, thus allowing us to reconstruct in a very compelling fashion the career of this genius. This monographic exhibition, in a presentation designed by Richard Peduzzi and Cécile Degos, offers visitors a new perspective on these masterpieces. Among Mantegna’s greatest works, some are quite spectacular in their dimensions and their breathtaking use of perspective, while others are characterized by an extreme refinement in execution or find inspiration in the more intimate scenes of everyday life. Here we have the paradox of this artist of great austerity, laying on his antiquarian erudition sometimes a bit too thickly, but at the same time unable to obscure an authentic sensitivity, an astonishing talent for observation, a poetic vein, often tinged with melancholy and sometimes humor as well.

Beginning in 1504, near the end of his life, Mantegna worked on his own funerary chapel in the Basilica Sant’Andrea in Mantua, the most striking evidence of the social status attained by the artist. His renown had already earned him the admiration of Albrecht Dürer who, during a visit to Venice, set out to meet the master, but Mantegna died in Mantua on September 13, 1506, several days before Dürer’s arrival. The wave of appreciation for Mantegna’s work, already begun during his lifetime, only came to be further enhanced over the centuries, particularly in France. For instance, in 1499, the Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen and a minister under Louis XII, saw Mantegna as “the world’s greatest painter” and had one of the artist’s Triumphs of Caesar copied onto the facade of his Norman château in Gaillon. The artist’s prestige continued into the 16th and 17th centuries—from the Fontainebleau School to Poussin and Stella-while in the 19th century Gustave Moreau and Degas were his champions and Proust was to sing his praises several times in Swann’s Way.

This exhibition is organized by the Louvre and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux. This exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of Eni and Deloitte.

Curator(s) : Dominique Thiébaut, Curator in Charge, Department of Paintings, Musée du Louvre and Giovanni Agosti, Professor of Modern Art History, Università Statale di Milano.

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