You are probably wondering what influence the Dead Christ by Mantegna could have in the making of a vagabond but let me tell in my personal case it was immense.

I saw the Dead Christ by Mantegna for the first time in Italy when I was studying architecture at the Politecnico di Milano.

In 1997 when I went to Italy I was officially a library rat. I loved to read and the library was a second home to me. I was hoping to find the meaning of life through intense reading and one day I found a picture of the Dead Christ by Mantegna in an Art book.

The unusual angle used by Mantegna to paint the scene caught my attention together with a side note saying, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. ‘Funny,’ I thought, ‘it is not far from here. Why not going there to see the original?’

I visited the Pinacoteca di Brera a few days later and found the painting in one of the galleries. Now let me ask you to observe the picture above, what do you think is the size of the original painting? I never checked the exact dimensions beforehand and imagined it to be fairly large. Let me tell you that it is not. It was half the size I had imagined (68 cm × 81 cm to be exact).

The size of the painting doesn’t diminish the strong message it carries within. However as I walked around the room something else caught my attention. I knew the painting had been painted to be displayed in a chapel, something that the Pinacoteca is far from resemble. In my opinion the design of the gallery was not doing a great job to project the strong message of the Dead Christ. The painting was a mere picture hanging on a white wall surrounded by other Renaissance paintings. It didn’t have the flair it alluded in a book.

I came home slightly disturbed by my experience. I started questioning how a painting could seem so intense in a book and look so misplaced in a museum.

By now I suspect you know where this post is going. I am not saying that reading doesn’t enrich the spirit, but it can certainly distort reality. Reading helps people to find the information they need but it can hardly compete with the full experience that going places can provide. Soon after my experience at the Pinacoteca I started travelling around Italy to see art in their original locations. My post about the the Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints by Giovanni Bellini describes one of these experiences.

Before my experience at the Pinacoteca I used to see places on television and go wow! After my experience at the Pinacoteca I learned that the wow places are often not far away as they seem. If you make an effort to see it you will most likely see it. This is the legacy of Mantegna to me. And it strikes me I came to this conclusion because I didn’t like to see one of his painting lost in a Museum.

Following the footsteps of Mantegna I travelled to Mantua to see his house and Padua to see the St. Christopher’s martyrdom (subjects of future posts). Mantegna is also the artist that made me understand the importance of being able to see what people are talking about with my own eyes and make my own judgments.

This post is a personal tribute to Mantegna. A tribute to an old master whose work, despite being more than 500 years old, was able to convert a library rat into a vagabond, roaming Italy in search of experiences to fulfil his senses. Surely other experiences contributed to my personal metamorphosis but as time goes by much has been forgotten. However my experience at the Pinacoteca still lingers.