1 ANDREA MANTEGNA Italian, circa 1431­1506 Study of Four Saints: Peter, Paul, John the Evangelist, and Zeno Pen and brown ink, traces of red chalk on book held by Saint Zeno 19.5 x 13.1 cm (7 11/16 x 5 3/16 in.) Cat. I, no. 22; 84.GG.91 The four saints occur in the left­hand wing of the triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints, known as "The Altarpiece of San Zeno," painted by Mantegna in 1456­59 for the high altar of the Church of San Zeno, Verona, and still in situ. It is one of the great Renaissance altarpieces, and it marks an important turning point in the history of painting from the late Gothic toward the new style. The figures in all three panels are unified by a common architectural setting—an open­sided pavilion capped by a heavy cornice, the elaborately decorated piers of which occupy what appears as empty space above the figures in the drawing. Visible in the drawing's lower left and right corners are the profiles of the bases of the columns of the frame. The relationship of the figures to the overall format of the space is one of the most important differences in composition between the drawing and the painting, and it shows that the artist was toying with the idea of massing the figures to the left to reveal an open gap to the right rather than spreading them evenly across the whole area, as in the end result. Mantegna is one of the great masters of the Renaissance in northern Italy. He was especially absorbed by the then­current revival of art and letters that occurred throughout much of Italy under the influence of classical models. His mature paintings are imbued with this new fascination for the classical past. Like nos. 8­9, 11­13, 16, 20, 22, 51, 59, 61, and 63, this drawing formerly belonged to the dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, England (see the D collection mark, surmounted by a ducal coronet, that appears in the lower right of this sheet and on most of the other drawings). 8 ITALIAN SCHOOL