Andrea Mantegna, Dormition (or Death) of the Virgin, c. 1462, tempera on panel, 21.26 × 16.54″ / 54 × 42 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:07] We’re at the Prado in Madrid, and we’re looking at a small Andrea Mantegna. It’s “The Dormition of the Virgin.” The painting that we’re seeing is only the bottom two-thirds of the original.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:15] Right, so it would have had a top that showed the vaulting of the architecture, the bottom half of which we see in this panel. It would have also shown Christ receiving the Virgin’s body.
Dr. Zucker: [0:25] That actually sort of raises the question, what does “dormition” mean? This was the moment when the Virgin was readying herself to die, and invites the apostles to be with her.
Dr. Harris: [0:36] This is an apocryphal story.
Dr. Zucker: [0:38] Right, not in the Bible itself. I think actually Mantegna has played fast and loose even with the apocryphal version, because we’ve got this set in a kind of classical environment, yet out the window, or past the porch…
Dr. Harris: [0:50] It’s Mantua.
Dr. Zucker: [0:51] Yeah. We see this incredibly accurate rendering of an actual place in Italy.
Dr. Harris: [0:54] Apparently, this is a very, very early, maybe the first truly topographical landscape of a part of Italy.
Dr. Zucker: [1:02] I have to tell you that one of the aspects of this painting that I love is the precision with which Mantegna renders the folds and the textures of the drapery, especially in the two front figures in that green and that blue, but then also the figure in red that’s leaning away from us.
[1:21] If you look at it, it is almost as if there’s static electricity that makes the cloth cling to the body, that exposes it. You’re mentioning the classical architecture…
Dr. Harris: [0:00] It’s clearly like a classical sculpture.
Dr. Zucker: [1:31] This is classical sculpture being brought to life again.
Dr. Harris: [1:34] I’m looking also down at the floor, where we see the tiles forming the orthogonals of the linear perspective, not sure exactly where the vanishing point would be, but the lovely feet, and their sense of weight, and the shadows. We have this sense of light coming from the right, illuminating the columns and casting shadows that move out from the figures toward the left.
[1:59] There’s a real sense of light and weight and space here that is incredibly convincing.
Dr. Zucker: [2:05] It’s true. Look at the way that the floor brightens in that little negative space between the feet of the figure standing behind Mary. And while mentioning Mary, she seems so minor in comparison to the rest of the image. She’s so pale and frail, but small in comparison to the much more vigorous figures around her, and also of course the scale of the architecture.
Dr. Harris: [2:28] We do have a sense of them surrounding her, and this moment that’s about to happen of her death, and the figures grieving for her.
Dr. Zucker: [2:37] We see the figures on the left standing, holding a palm frond, the symbol of death, but I’m actually…
Dr. Harris: [2:41] Not only a symbol of death, but of the triumph over death.
Dr. Zucker: [2:46] Right. Of course, Christ would have received her into heaven, had the painting not been cut in two. I love, on the right, the way in which the figures are singing, and the way in which the candles are not held perfectly vertically, but are responding to the movements of the body, just ever so slightly, to make this sense of movement, and rhythm and change, even in this very stable environment.
Dr. Harris: [3:08] And that figure who leans over her bed, who almost is our counterpart in the painting.
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