Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist is a fragment of fresco from the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, now held in Mantua's Diocesan Museum. It was painted around 1509-1511 by Correggio and is 1.5m in diameter. [1] It shows the Virgin Mary, the Christ Child, St Joseph (right), St Elizabeth (left) and the infant John the Baptist (centre, holding a banner inscribed Ecce Agnus Dei).
Four large tondi were commissioned from Mantegna for the basilica church just before he left for Rome, where he spent two years in the service of Pope Innocent VIII. They may have been begun by his studio, meaning that one of them might have been begun in 1488 but only completed twenty years later by a young Correggio, who had worked on the Mantegna funerary chapel. All four tondi were detached and restored in 1961. The experts examining them attributed only one (The Ascension) to Mantegna himself and even in that case he may have only contributed the preparatory drawing.
Isabella d'Este was Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by numerous women. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as having been "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world".
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio, usually known as just Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the sixteenth century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Baroque art of the seventeenth century and the Rococo art of the eighteenth century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini.
The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Assisi, a town in the Umbria region in central Italy, where Saint Francis was born and died. It is a Papal minor basilica and one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy. With its accompanying friary, Sacro Convento, the basilica is a distinctive landmark to those approaching Assisi. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, who founded a confraternity.
Luca Fancelli was an Italian architect and sculptor.
St. Sebastian is the subject of three paintings by the Italian Early Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. The Paduan artist lived in a period of frequent plagues; Sebastian was considered protector against the plague as having been shot through by arrows, and it was thought that plague spread abroad through the air.
The Basilica of Sant'Andrea is a Roman Catholic co-cathedral and minor basilica in Mantua, Lombardy (Italy). It is one of the major works of 15th-century Renaissance architecture in Northern Italy. Commissioned by Ludovico III Gonzaga, the church was begun in 1472 according to designs by Leon Battista Alberti on a site occupied by a Benedictine monastery, of which the bell tower (1414) remains. The building, however, was only finished 328 years later. Though later changes and expansions altered Alberti's design, the church is still considered to be one of Alberti's most complete works. It looms over the Piazza Mantegna.
The Palazzo Ducale di Mantova is a group of buildings in Mantua, Lombardy, northern Italy, built between the 14th and the 17th century mainly by the noble family of Gonzaga as their royal residence in the capital of their Duchy. The buildings are connected by corridors and galleries and are enriched by inner courts and wide gardens. The complex includes some 500 rooms and occupies an area of c. 34,000 m2, which make it the sixth largest palace in Europe after the palaces of the Vatican, the Louvre Palace, the Palace of Versailles, the Royal Palace of Caserta and the Castle of Fontainebleau. It has more than 500 rooms and contains seven gardens and eight courtyards. Although most famous for Mantegna's frescos in the Camera degli Sposi, they have many other very significant architectural and painted elements.
The Basilica di San Zeno is a minor basilica of Verona, northern Italy constructed between 967 and 1398 AD. Its fame rests partly on its Romanesque architecture and partly upon the tradition that its crypt was the place of the marriage of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It stands adjacent to a Benedictine abbey, both dedicated to St Zeno of Verona.
The Camera degli Sposi, sometimes known as the Camera picta, is a room frescoed with illusionistic paintings by Andrea Mantegna in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy. During the fifteenth century when the Camera degli Sposi was painted, Mantua was ruled by the Gonzaga, who maintained Mantua's political autonomy from its much stronger neighbors Milan and Venice by bidding their support out as a mercenary state. By commissioning Mantegna to paint the chamber, Ludovico III Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, sought to give the Gonzaga rule more cultural credibility at a time when other Northern Italian courts such as the Ferrara were commissioning their own “painted chambers”.
The Madonna della Vittoria is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna; the painting was executed in 1496.
The Bolognini Madonna is a 16th century oil on panel painting by Antonio da Correggio.
The Allegory of Vice is an oil on canvas painting by Correggio dating to around 1531 and measuring 149 by 88 cm.
The Mantegna funerary chapel is one of the chapels of the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua. It houses the tomb of the painter Mantegna and his last two paintings - Baptism of Christ and Holy Family with St John the Baptist, St Elizabeth and St Zacharias (1504-1506). Its frescoes from 1507 were painted by his sons Ludovico and Francesco and by a young Correggio. The tomb bears a bronze figure of Mantegna by Gianmarco Cavalli.
The Holy Family and the Family of Saint John the Baptist is a casein tempera on canvas painting with gilding, measuring 40 by 169 cm and dating to around 1504-1506. It was painted by Andrea Mantegna and was mentioned by his second son Francesco as still being in Andrea's studio on his death in 1506. According to Andrea's wishes, both it and Baptism of Christ were assigned to his funerary chapel in the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, where they still hang. The choice of theme is linked to the chapel's dedication to John the Baptist.
The Baptism of Christ is a casein tempera and gold on canvas painting measuring 176cm x 230cm and dating to around 1506. It and The Holy Family and the Family of Saint John the Baptist were painted by Andrea Mantegna for his funerary chapel at the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua - the chapel was dedicated to John the Baptist, hence the choice of subjects. They were both found in his studio after his death by his son Francesco and placed in the chapel, where they still hang.
Nativity with St Elizabeth and the Infant John the Baptist is a c.1512-1513 oil on panel painting by Correggio, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, which acquired it at an auction in Paris in 1913.
David Before the Ark of the Covenant is a c.1515 oil on canvas painting of King David by Correggio, rediscovered as a work by that artist by Giovanni Romano in 1996, an attribution accepted soon afterwards by David Ekserdjian. It is now in a private collection in Turin.