DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0162
158
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
not only paid him the sums stipulated, but rewarded
him munificently besides. About the year 1487
he returned to Mantua, where he built himself a
magnificent house, painted inside and outside by
his own hand, and in which he resided in great
esteem and honour until his death in 1506. He
w’as buried in the church of his patron saint, St.
Andrew, where his monument in bronze and several
of his pictures may yet be seen.
The existing works of Andrea Mantegna are so
numerous that we must content ourselves with re-
cording only the most remarkable, and the occasions
on which they were painted.
In the year 1476 Andrea executed for his friend
and patron, the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, the
famous frieze representing in nine compartments
the Triumph of Julius Caesar after his conquest of
Gaul. These were placed round the upper part of
a hall in the palace of San Sebastiano, at Mantua,
which Ludovico had lately erected. They hung
in this palace for a century and a half. When
Mantua was sacked and pillaged in 1629, they,
with many other pictures, escaped ; the Duke Carlo
Gonzaga, reduced to poverty by the vices and pro-
digality of his predecessors, and the wars and cala-
mities of his own time, sold his gallery of pictures
to our King Charles I. for 20,000/., and these and
other works of Andrea Mantegna came to England
with the rest of the Mantuan collection. When
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
not only paid him the sums stipulated, but rewarded
him munificently besides. About the year 1487
he returned to Mantua, where he built himself a
magnificent house, painted inside and outside by
his own hand, and in which he resided in great
esteem and honour until his death in 1506. He
w’as buried in the church of his patron saint, St.
Andrew, where his monument in bronze and several
of his pictures may yet be seen.
The existing works of Andrea Mantegna are so
numerous that we must content ourselves with re-
cording only the most remarkable, and the occasions
on which they were painted.
In the year 1476 Andrea executed for his friend
and patron, the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, the
famous frieze representing in nine compartments
the Triumph of Julius Caesar after his conquest of
Gaul. These were placed round the upper part of
a hall in the palace of San Sebastiano, at Mantua,
which Ludovico had lately erected. They hung
in this palace for a century and a half. When
Mantua was sacked and pillaged in 1629, they,
with many other pictures, escaped ; the Duke Carlo
Gonzaga, reduced to poverty by the vices and pro-
digality of his predecessors, and the wars and cala-
mities of his own time, sold his gallery of pictures
to our King Charles I. for 20,000/., and these and
other works of Andrea Mantegna came to England
with the rest of the Mantuan collection. When