Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna, a carpenter's son, was apprenticed at eleven to the Paduan painter and collector of antiquities Francesco Squarcione. He brought an archaeologist's eye to painting: figures as hard as carved stone, accurate Roman architecture and daring foreshortening. From 1460 he was court painter to the Gonzaga in Mantua, where he frescoed the Camera degli Sposi with its painted oculus open to the sky. He married Jacopo Bellini's daughter, making Giovanni Bellini his brother-in-law.