Saint James Led to His Execution

Andrea Mantegna's Saint James Led to His Execution, painted around 1453, was part of the Ovetari Chapel fresco cycle in the Church of the Eremitani, Padua. This revolutionary fresco cycle was largely destroyed by Allied bombing on March 11, 1944, and is considered one of the greatest art losses of World War II. The scene's dramatic use of extreme low-angle perspective, showing the procession from below, was unprecedented in Italian painting and influenced generations of artists.

Mantegna's revolutionary sotto in su perspective places the viewer at ground level looking up at the procession, with the Roman architecture rendered in strict foreshortening—a technical tour de force that redefined the possibilities of illusionistic fresco painting.