39. Andrea Mantegna. Madonna and Child, ca. 1470 – 74. Distemper and gold on canvas, 16 ⅞ x 12 ¼ in. (43 x 31 cm). Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (484)
40. Andrea Mantegna. Madonna and Child, ca. 1475. Engraving on laid paper; sheet, trimmed with plate mark, 10 ⅞ x 9 ⅛ in. (27.7 x 23.1 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Patrons’ Permanent Fund (1998.50.1./PR)
between real and fictive space so much as with creating a quality of verisimilitude based on his experience of portraiture. It is possible to argue that one of these pictures — the Madonna and Child now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (fig. 38) — was painted while Mantegna was working on what might be thought of as the more informal and domestic wall of the Camera Picta, showing the marchese Ludovico and his wife, Barbara of Brandenburg (figs. 26, 27), while the other, in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (fig. 39), is more closely related to the west wall (figs. 25, 28), with its much more formal, tighter organization. In both of these paintings, we feel in the presence of a real mother holding a real child. In one, the Child sleeps, and his little hands move involuntarily as he dreams. In the other, the infant is in the early stages of teething. In both, the affection between mother and child is described in believable and tender terms. Not the least fascinating aspect of these two paintings is Mantegna’s apparent concern over the risks involved in painting a devotional image in such strikingly human terms: of slipping into mere genre painting. He avoided this by maintaining a mood of melancholy and gravity, and also by simulating gold brocade and moiré for the Virgin’s cloak, a [ 36 ]