MANTEGNA FACADE

Wandering through Mantova (Mantua, to be English about it) near Alberti's Duomo, I saw this intriguing painted house facade and thought how like the great Andrea Mantegna's style it looked. Having just made yet another pilgrimage to see his unbelievably beautiful Camera Picta inside the Palazzo Ducale, I was intrigued. Eventually finding a tiny notice nearby, I was amazed to read that it was not just his style but his own work, or at least his studio's, painted around 1500. Apparently it had become almost invisible before being restored in 1995, so that it's virtually unknown. What a perfect illustration of the insane artistic wealth of Italy, though: an entire house-facade frescoed by one of the greatest artists of all time, more or less ignored. 

The clear, graphic style of the great master is such a joy: his putti holding up the inscription tablet with ribbons; the classical townscape above; the big central panel, top, of Alexander the Great's mercy to the wife and daughters of the defeated Persian Darius; the motto from Cicero about mercy being the finest virtue of princes. How wonderful it must have been originally; now - faded, broken, mysterious - it's pure magic.