Ignorance and Mercury
Andrea Mantegna
n.d.
Medium
Engraving on paper
Dimensions
29.8 × 44.1 cm (11 3/4 × 17 3/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
4319
About the Artist
Andrea Mantegna · 1431–1506
Andrea Mantegna was born around 1431 near Padua, in the Venetian Republic, the son of a carpenter. At approximately age eleven he was taken into the workshop of the Paduan painter and antiquities collector Francesco Squarcione, who enrolled him as a guild member and immersed him in the study of Roman sculpture and classical Latin. Though Mantegna later claimed that Squarcione had exploited his lab...