MANTEGNA's CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI III: OCULUS and CEILING

 MANTEGNA's CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI III: OCULUS AND CEILING

We have examined the painted walls of the "most beautiful room in the world,"
as it was known in the 15th century, the Camera degli Sposi, painted between 1465 and 1474 by Andrea Mantegna.

But the most spectacular effects or optical illusions that Mantegna created for this room were on the ceiling.

As we showed in the first entry on this room, he imagined the room as a military tent with an opening at the top, much like the hole in the Pantheon in Rome.

 

The inside of the top of the tent he decorates with faux medallions of portraits of eight early Roman emperors, as though they were the predecessors of the military leader living in the ducal palace, Duke Ludovico Gonzaga, who was a condottiere.

The Emperors are set in chronological order in a circle, starting with Julius Caesar, then Octavian (Augustus)
 


Octavian to TIBERIUS, then
CALIGULA and                                   CLAUDIUS

 

then NERO,

finishing up with GALBA and                     OTHO.

 

Mantegna was a meticulous recorder of archaeological truth, and these fake bas-reliefs are meant to reproduce actual busts of the emperors such as those in this

collection:

 

You can see after a comparison how closely he followed actual sculptures
in painting these on the ceiling of the fictive tent. He keeps the emperors in chronological order in the encircling of his oculus: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, and Otho. He wants the viewer to see how closely he can imitate in paint what he has seen in statuary. His deep attention to history and realistic facial features is undercut by his own
creativity and skill, however, because when people come into this room, they
skip past the emperors and are lured in and transfixed by the central image in the middle of the ceiling, the oculus that opens to the sky:

Up in the top of the ceiling Mantegna has painted a parapet through which we see the blue sky and clouds. 

The parapet itself is perforated and little winged children poke their heads through the holes. 

 

Above them and leaning over the parapet are women from the Gonzaga court, along with other putti and a peacock.

And, as if this trompe l'oeil (fooling of the eye) were not enough triumph for the artist, he depicts two of the putti standing on the small ledge molding of the parapet, from the back and from the front, but both from below looking up (di sotto in su, in Italian) to give an exhibition of his skill at foreshortening:

 

As we saw in the tricks that Mantegna played on the spectator in the painted walls of the room, he continues to manipulate the viewer on the ceiling by seducing us into his fictive world. But that fictive world is not always serene for the viewer. He asks us to become alarmed that these small naked children might pee on us or worse, above from the parapet. Not only that, but when we first enter the room, we are aware of the peacock on the ledge because he is the largest object on the parapet seen from the door. But the closer we get to the peacock, we see a boy with a stick who will, in the next moment, cause the peacock to fly down on us.

At that point we are made aware of another possible menace to our safety from the balcony above. The women who are circling around the parapet to look down on us are also gathered around a large potted plant sitting precariously on a stick over the parapet's edge. 

 When we are looking at the peacock, we don't see

this plant, but as we approach the bird, we are made aware that these women have their hands on or close to the stick, and that they could, in the next instant, move the stick, and the entire potted plant would come down on our heads!!!!!!

The realism is so great from this optical illusion that visitors to the room move away from the scene towards the walls when they realize the pictorial peril coming from above.

 

Some of the women, including this dark-skinned woman dressed in a turban, seem to laugh in anticipation of the "dirty-joke." 

We wish as viewers to be entranced and we are, but then the artist turns the tables, so to speak, on us, and demonstrates the real power of his illusion by forcing viewers to acknowledge that the artist is the one in control. We can laugh
at his conceit (in two meanings) and laugh at ourselves for being taken in (trompe') by the realism of the image, but the artist has the last laugh in the end.

When the viewer also realizes that these women on the parapet would have looked down upon the occupants of the bed in the bedroom, the conceit is even more intense. Imagine on one's wedding night looking up from the bed to see people looking down on you, and not just looking but threatening other possible
interruptions to love-making! A practical joke on all newly-weds, as the name of the room now implies: CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI. It is only because of Mantegna's archaeological truth conveyed through foreshortening, trompe d'oeil,
and the di sotto in su view that we are convinced of the realism of the parapet on the ceiling that opens up to the sky.
And it is that realism portraying a fiction that makes this ceiling oculus the painter's tour de force.

The "most beautiful room in the world" lives up to its name because the painter paints a world of human beings living together in architectural closeness or in beautiful landscapes and posed in elegant stances with colorful clothing. The beauty of his painting is nourishing.

 

 

 The creatures who inhabit the oculus at the top of this elegant world, however,

remind human beings that for all our seriousness, our condition is sometimes laughable. 

MANTEGNA's CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI II B: RIGHT SECTION, NORTH WALL

MANTEGNA's CAMERA DEGLI SPOSI II B:  RIGHT SECTION, NORTH WALL

While the family portraits take up large parts of the North and West Walls in the
Camera degli Sposi, completed by Andrea Mantegna for the Gonzagas between 1465-74, the right section of the North Wall represents a mysterious, menacing event, perhaps connected to the family, perhaps not.
The right section shows a staircase down from the level on which we view the family. Standing near the top of the staircase are three courtiers; one in black hair faces the family, and two of them block the staircase as guards facing two men and a boy represented on the far right.

 
The closer we look at these figures, however, the more apparent it is that the two men facing away are not just blocking the entrance of the figure who is trying to climb the stairs. The two men in white tights position their legs to keep the figure in red hat who looks out at the viewer from coming up the stairs. The one at the back at the top of the stairs sticks out his knee to hold the space at the top of the stairs, the one closest to us sticks out his left leg to complete the thwarting of entrance.

It is not just that they wish to prevent him getting to the family space, they are saying with their body gestures, "You are not coming any further at all!"
The guard closest to us also reaches out his right arm to suggest a way for the visitor to exit, but behind the visitor the man with his son sticks out his white-tight knee with a strange look on his face. The boy gestures as if to show fear of what will happen next. The front two men are preparing to push the visitor-figure backward over the knee of the third in the corner to do the visitor harm. The boy moves to get out of the way of the next moment when the entrant will be pushed backward. The guard in the dark tunic uses his right arm out to indicate that if the man coming up the stairs puts his other foot any further, he will be pushed right off the stairs and into the space of the spectator, a drop of about five feet!

The teeth of the boy are showing, as in menace and fright and worry.
The visitor-figure whose left leg is already going up one stair looks out in surprise, and perhaps fear, directly at the viewer of the scene. Is he asking for help from the helpless spectator? At first glance he seems to be brandishing a weapon with his right arm, and has maybe hidden another under his tunic with his left hand, but upon inspection, he is just cinching the belt on his tunic. But the scene is disturbing nonetheless, and to add to the menace of this corner, in the landscape at the far right back is a half-male in tights that suggests physical threat as well, hard to see in photographs here.

The message of this corner seems to be far more personal than just courtiers keeping intruders from disturbing the private family event. The danger and
threat present in the interaction of these men are Mantegna's personal vendetta
against physical threat he himself has experienced. The face of the man looking
out on the right should be the artist's face, since he stands where earlier artists
put their self-portraits; but this man is a definite person, but not the blond artist whose portraits we have discussed in another blog. Does the artist wish physical harm to this specific person? We know Mantegna had legal altercations with his early teacher, Francesco Squarcione, but this face is too young to be Squarcione. So focused are most viewers on the Gonzaga family that this corner is rarely looked at, but taken together with the menacing visual tricks played by Mantegna on the spectator with his ceiling images, this corner displays Mantegna's world view that the privileged world of the ducal family is provided at the cost of others who would like to rise up the stairs of power but are pushed back. He is showing us the aggression of the courtiers because he knows himself the peril of dependence on the court.

         For readers wishing to see more of this corner, I would suggest the 360 degree view of the Camera online where it is possible to zero in on the image and all of its threats.