Ovetari

The Ovetari Chapel, or Cappella Ovetari, is a 15th-century fresco cycle within the Church of Santa Maria degli Eremitani in Padua, Italy. It is named after the Ovetari family, patrons who funded the project and helped shape the chapel’s artistic program. The cycle is regarded as one of the earliest large-scale narrative fresco programs in northern Italy.

The frescoes were created in the 1440s and early 1450s, principally by Andrea Mantegna and his workshop, with involvement from other Padua-based painters. The program presented biblical and hagiographic scenes and was arranged to interact with the chapel’s architecture. The cycle is noted for its emerging use of linear perspective, architectural illusionism, and solid, classically grounded figures, marking an important moment in the early Renaissance and in Mantegna’s artistic development.

World War II brought extensive damage to the Eremitani complex when Padua was bombed in 1944; most of the Ovetari Chapel frescoes were destroyed. What survives consists largely of fragments and preparatory drawings, with some pieces removed for preservation and study. Restoration and documentation efforts in the ensuing decades have sought to recover and study the surviving material.

Today the Ovetari Chapel is examined as a pivotal early example of Mantegna’s approach to narrative cycles and to the use of perspective within a religious setting. The surviving fragments, together with drawings and historical records, continue to inform understanding of 15th-century Padua painting and collaboration within an artist’s workshop.