<P> At only 17 years old, Mantegna accepted his first commission, fresco cycles of the Lives of Saints James and Christopher for the Eremitani Chapel, near the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua . Unfortunately the building was mostly destroyed during World War II, and they are only known from photographs which reveal an already highly developed sense of perspective and a knowledge of antiquity, for which the ancient University of Padua had become well known, early in the 15th century . Mantegna's last work in Padua was a monumental San Zeno altarpiece, created for the abbot of the Basilica of San Zeno, Verona from 1457 to 1459 . This polyptych of which the predella panels are particularly notable for the handling of landscape elements, was to influence the further development of Renaissance art in Northern Italy including artists of the school of Verona, Francesco Morone, Liberale da Verona and Girolamo dai Libri . </P> <P> Mantegna's most famous work is the interior decoration of the Camera degli Sposi for the Gonzaga family in Mantua, dated about 1470 . The walls are frescoed with scenes of the life of the Gonzaga family, talking, greeting a younger son and his tutor on their return from Rome, preparing for a hunt and other such scenes that make no obvious reference to matters historic, literary, philosophic or religious . They are remarkable for simply being about family life . The one concession is the scattering of jolly winged cherubs who hold up plaques and garlands and clamber on the illusionistic pierced balustrade that surrounds a trompe l'oeil view of the sky that decks the ceiling of the chamber . </P> <P> While Mantegna was working for the Gonzagas in Mantua, a very different painter was being employed to design an even more ambitious scheme for the Este family of Ferrara . Cosmè Tura's painting is highly distinctive, both strangely Gothic yet Classicising at the same time . Tura poses Classical figures as if they were saints, surrounds them with luminous symbolic motifs of surreal perfection and clothes them in garments that appear to be crafted out of intricately folded and enamelled copper . </P> <P> Borso d'Este's family had constructed a large banquetting hall and suite known as the Palazzo Schifanoia . Borso, according to Tura's personal records, employed him in 1470 to design the decorative scheme for the banquetting hall, to be executed by Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti . </P>

Italian renaissance artists used science and techniques such as to create realistic paintings