A Guest at the Palace | “Saint Mark” of Andrea Mantegna

08 April — 06 June 2016
Palazzo Cini. La Galleria, Venezia

Andrea Mantegna, Saint Mark, 1448-49, Tempera on linen canvas, 82 × 63.5 cm. Städel Museum.

The Guest at the Palace initiative, promoted by the Art History Institute of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, was created through collaborations with some of the most prestigious Italian and international museum institutions. Conceived to temporarily enrich the museum holdings of Galleria di Palazzo Cini, the project features the exhibition of particularly important artworks granted on extraordinary loan and hosted for several months in the historic residence of Vittorio Cini, which houses the masterpieces of his remarkable art collection.

From April 8 to June 6, 2014, the Gallery’s permanent collection was enriched by an extraordinary loan: the painting of Saint Mark by Andrea Mantegna (Isola di Carturo, c. 1431 – Mantua, 1506), generously lent by the Städel Museum.

Saint Mark

Saint Mark has been attributed to the very earliest phase of the young Mantegna’s activity in Padua, closely connected with the work he was carrying out in the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua between 1448 and 1449, in collaboration with Nicolò Pizolo. The painting represents an unsurpassed achievement of the artist’s youthful period and a cornerstone of antiquarian-inspired painting in fifteenth-century northern Italy.

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The influence of his master Francesco Squarcione, evident in the rendering of details, merges with a profound commitment to the concept of solid perspective, a constant feature of Mantegna’s art. This places the Saint—absorbed in divine contemplation—within the projecting space of a marbleedicule of classical composure.

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A spatial illusionism marked by noble and restrained gravity—further emphasized by the cartouche attached to the parapet bearing the artist’s signature and invocation to the Venetian patrimony of Saint Mark—makes the Frankfurt painting one of the defining masterpieces of the youth of one of the most brilliant painters of the Renaissance.

Opening hours and admission

It is open every day (except Wednesdays) from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

All editions

May 24 – July 21, 2014

Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute by Agnolo Bronzino

September 5 – November 2, 2014

Adoration of the Shepherds by Lorenzo Lotto

June 17 – September 28, 2015

The Madonna of Pontassieve by Beato Angelico

September 19 – November 15, 2015

Capriccio with a Small Square by Francesco Guardi

April 8 – June 6, 2016