Madonna and Child with saints Jerome and Louis

Andrea Mantegna painted this small panel around 1455, when he was in his early 20s and working in Padua, years before he became court painter to the Gonzaga in Mantua. He had just married into a famous artistic family, his wife the daughter of the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini, and you can see the connection here. The way the Madonna and Child sit behind a low parapet, under a hanging garland of flowers, with two saints crowded close, comes straight from Jacopo's example. For a while people doubted this was really Mantegna's work. What points back to him is the hard, sculptural clarity of the faces and the sharp figures set against a deep, open background.