Ovetari Chapel

The Ovetari Chapel (Italian: Cappella Ovetari) is a chapel in the right arm of the Church of the Eremitani in Padua. It is renowned for a Renaissance fresco cycle by Andrea Mantegna and others, painted from 1448 to 1457. The cycle was destroyed by an Allied bombing in 1944: today, only two scenes and a few fragments survive, which have been restored in 2006. They are, however, known from black-and-white photographs.

Antonio Ovetari was a Padua notary who, at his death, left a large sum for the decoration of the family chapel in the Eremitani church. The project was carried out by his widow, Imperatrice Ovetari, who, in 1448, commissioned the work to a group of artists, which included the elder Giovanni d'Alemagna, Antonio Vivarini (a Venetian late Gothic painter) and two young Paduans, Niccolò Pizzolo and Andrea Mantegna. The latter at the time was seventeen years old and had just begun his apprenticeship in Squarcione's workshop. According to the original agreement, the first two artists had to paint the arch with histories of the Passion of Christ (never executed), the cross vault and the right wall (Histories of St. Chrisopther) while the two Paduans would paint the rest, including the left wall (Histories of St. James, son of Zebedee) and the apse.

In 1449 there were the first personal problems between Mantegna and Pizzolo, the latter accusing the former of continuous interferences in the execution of the chapel's altarpiece. This led to a redistribution of the works among the artists; perhaps due to this Mantegna halted his work and visited Ferrara. In 1450 Giovanni, who had executed only the decorative festoons of the vault, died; the following year Vivarini also left the work, after he had completed four Evangelists in the vault. They were replaced by Bono da Ferrara and Ansuino da Forlì, whose style was influenced by that of Piero della Francesca. Mantegna began to work from the apse vault, where he placed three saints, mixed with the Doctors of the Church by Pizzolo. Later Mantegna likely moved to the lunette on the left wall, with the Vocation of Sts. James and John and the Preaching of St. James, completed within 1450, and then moved to the middle sector.

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