Francesco Squarcione (born c. 1395, Padua [Italy]—died after 1468, Padua) was an early Renaissance painter who founded the Paduan school and is known for being the teacher of Andrea Mantegna and other noteworthy painters.
Squarcione was the son of a notary of Padua. From an early age he began to collect and draw copies of ancient sculptures. According to the 16th-century historian Bernardino Scardeone, who is the main source of information on Squarcione, he traveled widely in search of these objects and may have even visited Greece. After returning to Padua, he began teaching, taking his first student in 1431. He was associated in 1434 with the influential Tuscan painter Fra Filippo Lippi during the latter’s stay in Padua. In 1440 Squarcione purchased a house in which he displayed his collection of antique sculptures and architectural fragments. Squarcione’s two extant panel paintings, a Madonna and Child in Berlin and the polyptych St. Jerome and Saints (1449–52) in the Civic Museum of Padua, show the influence of the Florentine early Renaissance style, especially that of the sculptor Donatello, who worked in Padua from 1443 to 1453. The only record of Squarcione’s mature style is contained in a cycle of frescoes of scenes from the life of St. Francis on the exterior of San Francesco at Padua (c. 1452–66). Such compositions as can be reconstructed confirm the traditional view of Squarcione as one of the channels through which the early Renaissance style of Florence diffused in Padua.
More significant than his painting, however, was his establishment of a private school, a place for learning that differed from the traditional workshop and apprenticeship. According to Scardeone, Squarcione had 137 pupils. One of the noteworthy features of his school was his inclination to adopt the more skilled students and enlist them in painting for him. Among the artists he taught or influenced were Mantegna and Marco Zoppo (both of whom he adopted and both of whom rejected his authority), Giorgio Schiavone, and Cosmè Tura. Squarcione’s school was renowned as one of the most advanced in the area, although later scholars credit his students rather than Squarcione with innovation. The claim that he was one of the first to understand linear perspective has also been challenged and seems unlikely.