Andrea Mantegna

The piece by Andrea Mantegna named the Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph, Elizabeth,

and John the Baptist in my eyes can been as a representation of the everyday modern family.

This work of art is located at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth and is in the European

exhibition. This piece was created during the 15th century in Italy, between the 1485 and 1488

(the absolute date of the creation is unsure).

There are 3 things in this painting that absolutely stood out to me. First is the way the mother is

holding the baby, and how the baby is the centerfold of the entire painting. I felt as this was the

way of symbolizing the baby’s arrival into the world, and how everything and everyone attention

is to be shaped towards the baby, in its needs and

wants. Also you see that baby is a boy, you can
tell this by the penis.

I felt as if this was the artist way of showing us how men were truly the

dominant forces in this time period, and every new baby boy was seen as royalty because they

would be able to go on and make kids of their own and keep the family name alive.

The second thing I noticed was the way brother was looking at his new brother being born. This

could be either seen as joy or as envy it’s really hard to tell because his facial expression is half-

half and on the cusp of either or. It could be joy because he finally has a little brother something

he has always wanted someone he can play with and teach to do stuff. Or on the other hand it can

be seen as envy, envy that he has a little brother. Now he won’t always have the undivided

Jeremy Kabongo Writing Assignment #2 9/22/2014 Madrid

attention of his mother he’ll be forced to share it. He may have to give up some of his toys (if

they had toys in 15th century, I’m assuming).

The last thing that can be noted in this picture is the man and woman in the background. As you

see in this painting for the most almost everyone and everything besides the back drop and man

in the background are created with a certain radiance of brightness. You see the man in

the
background with not much of a look a joy, a look of almost anger, anger as if maybe the boy
isn’t his or a certain malice as if he wants to harm either the baby or the mother. Also look at
woman behind the mom, she doesn’t look thrilled either. Maybe she may have lost a baby of her
own in a death or miscarriage or maybe she may have never been able to conceive in the first
place.
One major factor that sticks out in the painting is the colors, they are very bright but it’s weird
that because this is supposed to probably represent a joyous but yet the back drop is just purely
black, maybe it’s to emphasize the focal point or a foreshadow for something that may happen in
the future. For the most part this painting is asymmetrical, if you were to cut it in half it wouldn’t
be proportional to the other half. There is a pretty fair sense of unity, and by that I mean
everything ties in together well nothing co-exist with each other. The use is shape is more
noticeable than the lines because everything in this is relatively 3D.
Overall I felt Mantegna did a good job making this painting relative to society (even if he didn’t
intentionally mean to). It shows that just cause someone is family doesn’t mean they are always
happy for you in your time of joy, it shows the realness of every day. It captures the sense of
everyday life