Born in 1431 at Vicenza, we find Mantegna[73] enrolled at the tender age of thirteen in the painters’ guild at Padua. He is described as an adoptive son of Squarcione. Mantegna was scarcely twenty-four when he engaged with other fellow pupils to decorate a chapel in the Church of the Eremitani, the subject being the legends of St. James and St. Christopher. In the six panels assigned to Mantegna, his quality and superiority are already manifest. His style is severely archæological and Roman. He endeavors honestly to reconstruct the times of the apostles. But his method is more severe than that of the Romans themselves. The line moves with the slow authority of an engraved contour. The relief is dry and harsh. There is little sense of difference between living forms and sculptured figures. The landscape is built in spiral strata as if worked out of metal. Here transpires clearly the influence of Jacopo Bellini, which is as evident also in the ornate architectural settings. The colors are at once dull and garish, the textures scrupulously studied after Squarcione’s precepts. A most strenuous art this, and with all its pedantry full of power and dignity. [Illustration: FIG. 217. Mantegna. St. James led to Execution. Fresco.—_Eremitani, Padua._ ] Certain innovations in perspective should be noted. In the fresco, St. James led to Execution, Figure 217, Mantegna avoids the usual conventional perspective, which tilts the picture towards the spectator; and treats the group as if it were on an actual stage set at the height of the fresco. Thus no ground is seen; the projecting floor cuts off the feet of the figures; and all vanishing points are precisely set at the level of the spectator’s eye below. The aim is to create illusion. [Illustration: FIG. 218. Andrea Mantegna. Madonna with Saints.—_San Zeno, Verona._ ]