Bellini/Mantegna: Two Masterpieces Compared

Bellini, the Venetian, and Mantegna, from the Padua region, definitely knew each other given that the latter was married to Bellini’s stepsister. “But – as the exhibition co-curator Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa explains – it would be wrong to think of them standing next to each other as they painted the same subject. Undoubtedly the cartoon, whose creation required great artistic virtuosity, “bewitched both of them, but a considerable arc of time – about a decade – separates the two masterpieces.”