The story
In 1452 a painter from the Padua countryside, barely into his twenties, finished a fresco over the main door of the Basilica of Saint Anthony and signed it in Latin capitals with the year. Andrea Mantegna showed two Franciscan saints holding up a wreath around the monogram of Christ, Anthony of Padua on the left and Bernardino of Siena on the right. Bernardino, the preacher who had spread devotion to that very monogram, had been made a saint only two years earlier.
The fresco now hangs indoors, in the Museo Antoniano off the cloister of Blessed Luca Belludi, a companion of Saint Anthony. The museum was set up in the late 19th century to keep objects tied to the saint and his cult, closed in 1940 and reopened in 1995 for the 800th anniversary of his birth. Its rooms hold altarpieces by the Venetian painters Carpaccio, Piazzetta and Tiepolo, 15th-century woodcuts, 18th-century vestments woven in Lyon and a 16th-century German incense boat in gold. Since 2015 two more rooms have been given to Donatello's work for the basilica, shown in casts and photographs, including a plaster bust of his bronze horseman Gattamelata that visitors are allowed to touch.
