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22/9/2008

Mantegna 1431 - 1506

Musee du Louvre, Paris

In September 2008, the Louvre opens a major retrospective of the work of one of great masters of the Italian Renaissance: Andrea Mantegna. 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.

Renowned for his indomitable personality, Mantegna was an avid antiquarian who moved in sophisticated humanist circles, for whom he embodied the Renaissance ideal in northern Italy as early as the mid-15th century. Mantegna’s characteristically severe style, which applied a rigor and consistency never seen before his time, emerged from an enthusiastic admiration for classical antiquity, the artist’s vast ornamental vocabulary and his cherished ideal of virtue, the scrupulous reproduction of nature by way of an exacting—and often bold—use of perspective, but also found inspiration in Flemish painting and evinced a genuine fascination with sculpture. Throughout his lifetime, Mantegna resolutely adhered to the principles developed in the early years of his career, endowing his oeuvre with a very particular stylistic harmony. He brought the same seeming effortlessness, the same inventive spark to works executed in several distinct art forms, sometimes experimenting with new techniques in order to convey his ideas and artistic aspirations with the greatest precision possible.

The exhibition is organized essentially along chronological lines, divided into the key phases of Mantegna’s career. However the conception of the retrospective also embraces several specific themes that will draw the attention of visitors: the relationship that existed between the painter and his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini, his activity as a supplier of models and designs for engraving, decoration projects and decorative objects, the dissemination of his inventions and, more generally, the transmission of his art to succeeding generations.

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 humour as well. Exhibition curators: Dominique Thiébaut, Curator in Charge, Department of Paintings, Musée du Louvre and Giovanni Agosti, Professor of Modern Art History, Università Statale di Milano.

Exhibition catalogue, Mantegna, edited by Giovanni Agosti and Dominique Thiébaut, 480 p., 400 illustrations, about €45. Exhibition album, Mantegna, 48 p., 60 illustration, €8.
The publication of these works was made possible thanks to the generous support of ArjoWiggins. Récit de Mantegna by Giovanni Agosti, 148 p., 1 color insert, 14 cm x 21 cm, about €19. Co-published by Musée du Louvre Editions and Hazan.

Special evening event with the participation of the exhibition’s curators and designers on Friday, October 17 at 7 p.m.

Visits for teachers (guided tour of the exhibition followed by a presentation of educational objectives) on Wednesdays, October 1 and 8, at 2:30 p.m.

Conference in the Auditorium du Louvre for high-school and university students on Wednesday, October 22.

A pair of events in the series Voices of Youth within the exhibition by the students of Université de Paris X Nanterre on Fridays, November 21 and December 5 in the evening from 6 p.m. and on Wednesday, December 17 from 4 to 7 p.m.

This exhibition is organized by the Louvre and the Réunion des musées nationaux.

Press relations: Charlotte Lacombe
+33 (0)1 40 20 53 14 / F. 84 52 charlotte.lacombe@louvre.fr
Coralie James +33 (0)1 40 20 54 44 coralie.james@louvre.fr

Image: Andrea Mantegna - Isola di Cartura (Vénétie), 1431 - Mantoue, 1506. La Vierge de la Victoire, 1496

Press opening: Tuesday, September 23, 2008, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., Napoleon Hall.

Auditorium du Louvre
- General entrance via the Louvre pyramid or the Carrousel arcade
- Priority entrance via the Passage Richelieu
Hours: Open daily except Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 8 p.m. on Saturdays and 10 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Admission fees: Mantegna exhibition only: €9.50. Permanent collections + Mantegna exhibition: €13; €11 after 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays. Free admission for youths under 18, the unemployed, and holders of the “Louvre Jeunes”, “Louvre Professionnels”, “Louvre Enseignants”, “Louvre Etudiants Partenaires” or “Amis du Louvre” cards.

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