In 1466 he paid a visit to Florence, where he had at least one friend in the learned Abbot of Fiesole, and a letter from Giovanni Aldobrandini, an agent of Lodovico, describes the great respect with which he was received, and the admiration excited by his varied accomplishments. “Not only in painting but in other ways he showed remarkable knowledge and most excellent understanding” is Aldobrandini’s testimony, and we learn from other sources that he took much pleasure in poetry, and even wrote verses himself. A sonnet of his composition addressed to a lady whose name is unknown, and written in the fashionable Platonic style of the day, has been discovered in the Mantuan archives and is given by Moschini. As a collector of antiquities he had acquired considerable reputation, and in 1472 we find the young Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, then at Bologna, begging his father that Mantegna may be sent to him that he may have the pleasure of showing him his cameos, bronzes, and other antiques. Unfortunately the culture and refined taste which made Mantegna so agreeable a companion were accompanied by an irritable temper, and a readiness to take offence, which rendered him the reverse of a pleasant neighbour. The most trifling contradictions were sufficient to excite furious outbursts of anger on his part, and his letters to Lodovico are full of the pettiest grievances. The Marquis, it must be said, treated him with the utmost forbearance, and spared no pains to inquire into the grounds of his complaints, however small. On one occasion he implores Lodovico to punish a tailor who has spoilt a piece of his cloth, on another he has quarrelled with a gardener and his wife who live in the same street, and complains that neither he nor his wife can leave the house without being attacked by insulting words. More serious was the lawsuit in which he found himself involved with the engraver, Zoan Andrea, whom he suspected of purloining his plates, and to whom he administered a sound thrashing. Upon this Zoan Andrea had recourse to legal measures, in which Mantegna seems to have fared badly, since he was again compelled to seek the help of his powerful patron.