16 MARCH 1996, Page 34

A Perspective of Mantegna

The sword swings at the soldier's hip and on his knees the informer begs forgiveness of the martyr, who needs must stop and bless the man who broke a trust and brought him down this road that leads in only one direction. The crowd presses. They too must bear witness. Acts they have seen before: the traitor's kiss absolved on the way to the execution.

They all rest in the frame of the present.

Beyond the city gate, the tenement whose windows give on the same unbending street: betrayer and betrayed on one descent that draws them in towards a vanishing-point where line and time and space and distance meet.

Stuart Henson