The Arts - The Italian Lakes - page 461

Classicism
In 1452 the most important Renaissance treatise on architecture, De Re Aedificatoria (On
the Art of Building; 1485) was written by Genovese polymath Leon Battista Alberti
(1404-72). Like Petrarch before him, Alberti loved the classics and grasped how the les-
sons of ancient Rome were pertinent to the city-states of 15th-century Italy. Regarding
mathematics as the common ground between art and the sciences, Alberti made an effort to
explain his thinking in his earlier publication, De Pictura (On Painting; 1435), which
formed the first scientific study of perspective. He dedicated the treatise to Gian Francesco
Gonzaga, his generous Mantuan patron.
As the Pope's architectural advisor, Alberti had plenty of time to study ancient ruins and
the writings of Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (c 80-c 15 BC). His detailed obser-
vations appeared in the 10- volume De Re Aedificatoria, which was to become the major
reference for Renaissance architects. Eager to put his theories into practice, Alberti then set
about building things. His most notable projects are the church of Santa Maria Novella in
Florence and the soaring cathedral of Sant'Andrea in Mantua.
In Mantua, Alberti was given free rein to create a monumental edifice to house the
Gonzaga's most precious relic, two ampoules of Christ's blood. Alberti recreated an
Etruscan temple with a huge barrel-vaulted nave fronted with a triumphal arch for a facade.
Fittingly, in the first chapel on the left, rests that other great classical artist Andrea
Mantegna (1431-1506), whose outstanding depiction of the Dead Christ (1480) is thought
to have been created for this chapel.
Like Alberti, Mantegna was fascinated with the classical world and experimented widely
with perspective. His painted room, the Camera degli Sposi, in the Gonzaga's Palazzo Du-
cale is the apotheosis of this study. Apprenticed in Padua, he would have come into contact
with the work of Tuscans Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi and Donatello, and in 1453 he mar-
ried Nicolosia Bellini, bringing him into the orbit of the celebrated Venetian Bellini broth-
ers, Giovanni and Gentile. Synergies between their work are evident in Mantegna's gor-
geous, garlanded Madonna in San Zeno Maggiore, in Verona, and the softer, more lumin-
ous Madonna of the Cherubim (c 1485), which sits next to Bellini's Mantegna-esque Pietà
(1460) in the Brera gallery.
Donato Bramante (1444-1514) took his lead from Mantegna, producing the intensely
poignant but restrained Christ at the Column (c 1490). Commissioned by Cardinal Ascanio
Sforza for the Chiaravalle Abbey on the outskirts of Milan, the image demonstrates
Bramante's research into perspective and the volumetric construction of a human body.