Grove Dictionary of Art on Camera Picta

Ludovico’s principal commission from Mantegna was an historiated portrait gallery for the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua; this mural decoration took the artist nearly ten years to complete. The so-called Camera Picta (1465–74), also known as the Camera degli Sposi, shows the Marchese and his consort, Barbara of Brandenburg, together with their children, friends, courtiers and animals engaged in professional and leisurely pursuits, illustrating the present successes and alluding to the future ambitions of the Gonzaga dynasty. The gallery represents the culmination of a series of secular decorative schemes for palace interiors in northern Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, and the illusionism of the painted vault (see Illusionism, fig. 1) establishes its status as the progenitor of Correggio’s ceilings and those of the Baroque. The Camera Picta is a room with a square plan (8.1×8.1 m). An inscription, simulating graffiti, on the embrasure of the north window, 1465.d.16.iunii, indicates the date of the official commencement of the decoration.

Mantegna devised an integrated scheme according to which the room is conceived as a pavilion, open on the sides and topped by an elaborate architectural framework perforated by a Classical oculus. As custom and practical considerations dictated, the ceiling must have been painted first. Inset within the classical intersecting ribs are roundels with simulated marble busts of the first eight Caesars. The roundels are surrounded by wreaths supported by putti strongly reminiscent of those painted by Castagno on the soffit of the arch of the chapel of S Tarasio in S Zaccaria, Venice. The oculus represents a tour de force of di sotto in sù illusionism. Winged putti, drastically foreshortened, play among the openings in the balustrade while women courtiers and domestics look into the room with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

Over the fireplace on the north wall is the so-called Court Scene. Ludovico is shown surrounded by members of his family and to the right stand retainers wearing the Gonzaga colours. The Marchese is shown in conversation with his secretary, Marsilio Andreasi, while his dog Rubino rests comfortably under his chair. This image of the reigning marchese is that of an active paternalist governor, head of a secure dynasty. The figures stand before and behind the painted piers, which are crowned by real stone corbels from which the ceiling vaults spring. Mantegna subtly combined fictive elements with real ones, adapting viewpoints so that the spectator is constantly under pressure to believe the illusion and enter into the fiction of the represented scenes. Although it has been claimed that the Court Scene illustrates a specific historical moment (Signorini), it is more likely that it should be understood as an idealized group portrait of the ruler and his family. In 1470 the ambassadors of the Duke of Milan were taken to see the room and they witnessed that this wall was already completed.

Andrea Mantegna: The Meeting Scene (Lodovico Gonzaga meets Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, his son (detail), Camera Picta, Mantua, 1465-74

On the west wall, adjacent to the Court Scene (which is painted largely in secco, hence its poorer state of preservation), is the Meeting Scene, representing an open-air encounter between Ludovico and his second son, Cardinal Francesco. Again it is unlikely that a specific moment is intended since among the other figures in the scene are the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, who never visited Mantua, and Christian I, King of Denmark and brother-in-law of Barbara of Brandenburg, who was in Mantua in 1474. A Classical city, exquisitely executed, dominates the landscape background behind the figures. In the lunettes are Gonzaga devices and above them are painted simulated reliefs set against painted gold mosaic backgrounds showing scenes from the stories of Arion, Hercules and Orpheus, which symbolically allude to Gonzaga virtues. Above the doorway in the west wall are putti bearing an inscribed stone slab in which Mantegna dedicated ‘this slight work’ (OPVS HOC TENVE) to Ludovico and Barbara. It is dated 1474. Despite the proclaimed modesty, Mantegna was doubtless counting on the viewer’s awareness that ‘tenue’ could also mean ‘subtle’ or ‘fine’ and a few centimetres away amidst the foliage decoration of the pilaster on the right he introduced his self-portrait.

Andrea Mantegna: Camera Picta (Camera degli Sposi), Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 1465-74

In 1470 the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, sent two ambassadors to Mantua to discuss a renewal of the contract under which Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga had served for twenty years as lieutenant general of Milan. In their first report home, the Milanese envoys recount how they were received by Ludovico and how they were showed the Camera Picta, which was still unfinished at the time.

Afterwards [Lodovico] began talking about light matters and, after chatting for a while, showed us a room he is having painted where are portrayed al naturale his lordship, Madonna Barbara his consort, Lord Federico, and all his other sons and daughters. While talking about these figures, he had both his daughters come, namely the younger, Madonna Paola, and the elder, Madonna Barbara, who seemed to us a pretty and gentlev lady, with a good air and good manners.

© 2002 Mikael Hörnqvist

Renässanshumanismen