Retábulo de San Zeno

Mantegna built this altarpiece for the church of San Zeno in Verona in the late 1450s, and it still stands there today. He was fascinated by perspective and by the sculpture of ancient Rome, and both show. The carved frame is designed as a classical facade, and the painted architecture behind the enthroned Virgin opens back so convincingly that the row of saints and the real columns of the frame seem to share one space. But look for the small scenes along the bottom and you are looking at copies. In 1797 Napoleon's forces carried off the central panel and the three little predella paintings. The main scene came back to Verona in 1815. The predella never did. Those originals are still in France, one in the Louvre in Paris and two in a museum in Tours, which is why the strip beneath the altarpiece in Verona is filled in with stand-ins.