Talk by Professor Stephen Campbell

Andrea Mantegna circa 1460: Imitation and the Force of Images

Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506) is examined as an artist with a distinctive consciousness of tradition. Tradition in his work encompasses the future of art, which he seeks actively to shape with his virtuoso demonstrations of the principles of painting and through his engravings. His art is also a meditation on its own place in relation to the past and present—the signa and imagines of antiquity, the icons of the medieval church, and the modern practice of older contemporaries like Donatello. Such meditations are all motivated by an extraordinary concentration on one aspect of images in particular—their force or effectiveness in the world.