In November, 1441, Mantegna’s name is entered on the registers of the Paduan guild as Squarcione’s foster-child, and seven years later he painted an altar-piece for the ancient church of Santa Sofia. Of this youthful work contemporaries speak with high praise as bearing marks of a practised hand, but it had already disappeared in the seventeenth century, and the earliest painting of Mantegna that now exists is the fresco above the portal of Sant’ Antonio. In this lunette, which bears the date of 1452, the two saints Anthony and Bernardino are represented supporting the sacred monogram; but the figures are too much damaged to be a fair test of the young artist’s style, and the work is chiefly interesting as a proof of the high reputation in which he was already held by his fellow-citizens. It is to the frescoes of St. Cristoforo’s chapel in the church of the Eremitani friars that we must turn in order to form a correct idea of Mantegna’s powers during this time. Here we see him carrying the principles which he had learnt in Squarcione’s workshop to their furthest limits, and with the boldness of genius venturing on new and untried paths. Here too we find him painting side by side with the best of Squarcione’s other pupils, and we have an opportunity of comparing his work with that of artists who had been formed on the same models. This chapel, which stands to the right of the high altar, at the east end of the great Eremitani Church, belonged to the Ovetari family, whose last representative, dying in 1443, had left a sum of seven hundred gold ducats to be spent in decorating its walls with frescoes illustrating the history of St. James and St. Christopher. Squarcione received the commission from the dead man’s heir, and between the years 1448 and 1458, the walls, apse, and ceiling were covered with frescoes by his different pupils. Thus, only a few steps from the garden which encloses Giotto’s Chapel, another great series was painted, to become for the schools of North Italy what the Brancacci Chapel had been for Florence. Less fortunate than the celebrated frescoes of the Carmine, these paintings have suffered much from the damp of the walls, and a great part of the subjects in the apse, as well as several figures in the martyrdom and burial of St. Christopher, are completely destroyed. Other portions are still in good preservation, and afford excellent examples of the peculiarities of the Paduan school and the studies which laid the foundation of Mantegna’s subsequent greatness.