Mantegna's Pre-1448 Years Reexamined: The S. Sofia Inscription

Abstract

Modern scholarship identifies Andrea Mantegna as an artist of exceptional precocity. This reputation depends on the credibility of a single document: a sixteenth-century transcription of an epigraph on the S. Sofia Altarpiece (now lost) alleging that the artist was seventeen years old in 1448. The analysis presented here disproves the inscription's authenticity, thus reopening the question of Mantegna's birth date. In the light of these findings, the second half of the article reviews documentation on Mantegna's pre-1448 career — a virtually unstudied period in this important artist's activity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Keith V. Shaw

Keith V. Shaw is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation topic is Mantegna's Paduan period. Theresa M. Boccia-Shaw received an M.A. from Syracuse University, with a concentration in the history of Florentine Renaissance art. She is currently Bibliographic Specialist in the Fine Arts Library Slide Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. [mailing address: Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6311]

Theresa M. Boccia-Shaw

Keith V. Shaw is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation topic is Mantegna's Paduan period. Theresa M. Boccia-Shaw received an M.A. from Syracuse University, with a concentration in the history of Florentine Renaissance art. She is currently Bibliographic Specialist in the Fine Arts Library Slide Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. [mailing address: Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6311]