O Batismo de Cristo

Mantegna spent his last years preparing the chapel in Sant'Andrea where he would be buried, and this Baptism was one of the paintings still in his studio when he died in 1506. He chose the subject himself. The chapel is dedicated to John the Baptist, the saint shown here pouring water over Christ, and the pairing let Mantegna set his own tomb beneath a scene of cleansing and renewal. He did not finish it. The passages that feel thinner and drier were carried to completion by his son Francesco, a lesser hand. Above the tomb hangs a bronze bust of the old master, so that the man who arranged all of this is present in the chapel too.