Antonio da Pavia
Duchy of Milan · Renaissance
The story
Almost everything certain about Antonio da Pavia comes from his own hand. He signed the altarpiece now in the Brera and added where and when he painted it: Mantua, 1514. Two or three other panels carry his name or his monogram, among them a Madonna enthroned in the civic museum in Mantua, and beyond those the catalogue is a matter of attribution.
He came from Pavia in Lombardy and worked in Mantua, where Mantegna had been court painter until 1506. The earlier pictures owe most to the Venetian lagoon and painters like Andrea da Murano, while the later ones take up Mantegna's hard, sculptural drawing. The Italian biographical dictionary places him at the Palazzo Te, the Gonzaga villa outside Mantua, around 1528, though nothing recognisably his has been found there. Neither the year of his birth nor the year of his death is known.
