Trivulzio Madonna

Mantegna signed this on a little scroll held by one of the angels, and he dated it precisely: the 15th of August, 1497, the feast of the Virgin's Assumption. He was in his mid-sixties by then, long settled as court painter to the Gonzaga in Mantua, and this altarpiece was an outside commission, made for a church in nearby Verona. Its name comes later, from the Trivulzio family who owned it for generations. The Madonna sits high on a bank of cloud thick with the faces of cherubs, four saints ranged below her on the grass. Mantegna loved hard stone and cut-glass edges, but here he lets the greenery and the vine overhead grow soft, almost like tapestry, around the figures.