Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506)

Mantegna (detail of Minerva expelling the vices from the garden of virtue), a photo by Martin Beek on Flickr.

Via Flickr: Detail of Minerva expelling the vices from the garden of virtue.

In the 15th century Italy the fashionable thing to do was to have a studiolo, which was a type of private study, which would be set aside for intellectual activities. Isabella d’Este, the Marchesa of Mantua, one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance, was a major cultural figure of that time and a patron of the arts. In 1490, she decided to create a studiolo in a tower of the Castello di San Giorgio and she commissioned Andrea Mantegna to paint two canvases to hang in the room, entitled Parnassus and Minerva, which she would have positioned opposite each other in the study. Her biographer wrote:“…It was Isabella’s dream to make this Studiolo a place of retreat from the world, where she could enjoy the pleasures of solitude or the company of a few chosen friends, surrounded by beautiful paintings and exquisite works of art….. In this sanctuary from which the cares and the noise of the outer world were banished, it was Isabella’s dream that the walls should be adorned with paintings giving expression to her ideals of culture and disposing the mind to pure and noble thoughts…”