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LRB Cover Vol. 2 No. 12 · 19 June 1980 share email letter cite print
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Mantegna’s Classical World

Charles Hope

Charles Hope is a
lecturer in Renaissance
Studies at the Warburg
Institute. A book by
him on Titian will be
published shortly.
MORE BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR
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RELATED ARTICLES
20 DECEMBER 2012
Charles Hope
Luca Signorelli
8 APRIL 2010
The ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the
Queen at Hampton Court by Andrew Martindale
Harvey Miller, 342 pp, £38.00, October 1979, ISBN 0 905203 16 X
When the Archduchess Joanna of Austria made her official entry into Florence on 16
December 1565 as the bride of Francesco de’ Medici, one of the first things she saw, at
the gate of the city, was a painting showing the famous artists of Tuscany. In the
distance was Cimabue holding a small lantern, and nearby Giotto with a larger lantern,
surrounded by his immediate followers; towards the foreground there were two groups
of 15th-century artists, and finally, at the very front and in the full light of day,
Michelangelo and his companions, the great masters of the modern period from
Leonardo da Vinci to the immediate past. The basic arrangement was obviously derived
from Vasari’s Lives, published in 1550, although there were some surprising differences
in the detailed classification. As a scheme it reflected the conventional attitude of
Italians in general to the art of their predecessors, the belief that the masters of the 14th
and 15th centuries had worked to a greater or lesser degree in the dark, and that
perfection had only been achieved in the High Renaissance.
A few days earlier Joanna had been in Mantua, where, like other distinguished visitors,
she would certainly have been shown the nine canvases by Andrea Mantegna illustrating
the Gallic triumph of Julius Caesar, which then as now were usually called the Triumphs
of Caesar. But it is unlikely that anyone in Mantua would have told her that these
pictures were primarily of historical interest, or that they were aesthetically inferior to
the more recent work there by Giulio Romano and Titian. Indeed, throughout the 16th
century the name of Mantegna, alone among his contemporaries, repeatedly appeared
in lists of the greatest modern painters; and it was principally on the Triumphs that his
reputation was based. These were virtually the only group of pictures from the early
Renaissance widely known through reproductions, a complete series of woodcuts of
them being published as late as 1599. When the works of Botticelli and Piero della
Francesca had largely been forgotten Mantegna’s Triumphs retained their status as one
of the supreme masterpieces of Italian painting.

Colm Tóibín But after the sale of the Gonzaga collection to Charles I in 1629 they suffered
Lorenzo Lotto increasingly from neglect. As the result of a series of disastrously misconceived
restorations, culminating in the bizarre decision to immerse them completely in paraffin
5 APRIL 2001 wax, the canvases eventually became all but invisible. Fortunately, in 1962, a new
Peter Campbell campaign of restoration was undertaken by John Brealey, under the supervision of
Titian
Anthony Blunt. The results were remarkable. Although the pictures now displayed in the
Orangery at Hampton Court are obviously little more than shadows of their former
13 APRIL 2000
selves, and one could not be restored at all, enough has survived to give a fair idea of
their original appearance. Considering the earlier condition of the Triumphs, it is not
Nicholas Penny
surprising that previous writers on Mantegna paid relatively little attention to them.
Nymph of the Grot
Only now, with the publication of Martindale’s book, is a full and well-illustrated
account of their history finally available.
2 JULY 1998

Nicholas Penny Martindale himself describes his book as ‘an extended catalogue entry’, and this gives a
Correggio very fair idea of its strengths and limitations. Drawing in part on unpublished
documents he examines in detail the dating, purpose, style and later history of the

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10 JUNE 1993
pictures, with a long discussion of the tedious but very relevant question of Mantegna’s
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use of antique visual sources. His text contains a vast amount of information, which is
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stated accurately and judiciously. But, as compilers of catalogues tend to do, Martindale
Anthony Grafton has deliberately restricted the scope of his inquiry, so that his account of the various
Signs of spring possible patrons, to take one example, is simply inadequate. In the same way, his
scholarly caution and scrupulousness are sometimes excessive. This emerges not only in
3 SEPTEMBER 1987 the guarded tones in which he advances his own ideas, but also in such things as his
Nicholas Penny habit of retaining all the abbreviations and original punctuation in 15th-century texts.
Mantegna’s Revenge There may be a case for doing so with manuscripts, although it does not conform to
modern practice, but to reproduce 27 lines of Latin exactly as it was printed in 1472 is
unnecessarily hard on the reader, especially when he is then told that the passage is
RELATED CATEGORIES irrelevant. More serious, however, is Martindale’s occasional deference to the views of
scholars whose work is manifestly ill-informed.
Art and architecture,
Painting, 1400-1599, 1400- This applies particularly to the discussion of Mantegna’s use of literary sources. Various поменять
прокси
1499, 1450-1499, Europe, writers have drawn attention to the accounts of triumphs by Appian and Plutarch, and
Southern Europe, Italy, some have also argued that he consulted a contemporary text, Valturio’s De Re Militari.
Classics, Classical
But one name conspicuously absent from most of the scholarly literature is that of
civilisation
Flavio Biondo. It is an astounding omission, since Biondo was easily the most learned
15th-century writer on Roman civilisation, and his Roma Triumphans includes the
fullest contemporary study of ancient triumphs. The book was actually published in
Mantua, so Mantegna must have known it. Martindale recognises this, but seems
unwilling to appreciate the importance of his observation. He speculates, for example,
that the artist carried out further research in Classical texts, like some diligent graduate
student. But there was no reason for Mantegna to question Biondo’s competence and
nothing in the pictures to prove that he looked beyond the pages of Roma Triumphans.
Again, Martindale is at a loss to explain how he ‘picked his way through the profusion of
texts’ provided by Biondo. The answer is self-evident. He read the section devoted to
triumphs, which are conveniently examined in chronological order; noting Biondo’s
remark that they became increasingly elaborate from the time of Caesar onwards, he
concerned himself only with Caesar’s triumphs and those of his predecessors. From the
small number of relevant texts it was easy enough for Mantegna to establish the basic
elements of a triumphal procession and their correct sequence. For the actual
representation of such details as armour and military insignia he turned to drawings of
Classical monuments, of which he had an unrivalled knowledge. He was of course an
artist, not a modern archaeologist, so he did not follow his texts with slavish accuracy,
and he committed some obvious anachronisms. But no one before him had ever
produced such a vivid, elaborate or faithful reconstruction of the Classical world.

For Martindale this does not seem to be enough. Besides unnecessarily complicating the
problem of the written sources he also suggests that the Triumphs contain hidden
symbolism, even though nothing in Biondo or any ancient writer would indicate that
this type of imagery was appropriate to the subject. For example, he provides a long
analysis of the old theory that the frieze decorated with objects associated with pagan
sacrifice on the arch behind Caesar’s chariot is really a hieroglyphic inscription.
Martindale is well aware that in the 15th century the use of hieroglyphs was regarded as
an Egyptian rather than a Roman practice, but does not stress the point. Nor does he
mention a remark of Alberti (whom Mantegna had known) to the effect that sacrificial
objects were used simply as a form of frieze decoration on Classical buildings. This
passage quite adequately accounts for their presence in the painting.

The documentary evidence about the Triumphs is distinctly sparse. They are first
mentioned in 1486, when the Duke of Ferrara saw ‘the Triumphs of Caesar which
Mantegna is painting’ in the Palazzo della Corte, the old Gonzaga palace which by then
had largely been replaced as a family residence by the nearby Castello. Progress on the
pictures was interrupted by the artist’s visit to Rome in 1488 – 90, and in 1492 he was
certainly still working on them. There is no record of their completion, but in April 1506,
five months before Mantegna’s death, preparations were being made to install the entire
series in a special room in the new Palazzo di San Sebastiano. Between 1497 and 1507
there are various references to painted Triumphs of some kind being used for
decoration at theatrical performances, the most informative being a report of a
Ferrarese visitor in 1501, who described a temporary theatre decorated with ‘the six
pictures of Caesar’s triumph by the hand of the singular Mantegna’ and some smaller
pictures of the Triumphs of Petrarch, also said to be by Mantegna. This is the only
reference to Petrarchan Triumphs by Mantegna, and it is likely that the attribution was
wrong, especially as another artist is recorded as painting a Triumph of Fame
apparently in 1492. Without going into details, the simplest reading of the documents
implies that Mantegna’s pictures were always in Mantua, whereas the Petrarchan
Triumphs were divided between the rural palaces of Gonzaga and Marmirolo, and were

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brought into the city when required for court festivals. It is worth noting that in 1501 the
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n12/charles-hope/mantegnas-classical-world
Ferrarese visitor saw only six sections of the Triumphs of Caesar, and he apparently ၒ ၔ
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row of eight arches,
 suggesting that more could have been shown had they been available. Moreover, in
1505, during the preparations for another court festival, arrangements were made not
only to obtain ‘the canvases’ from Gonzaga, but also ‘those which Andrea Mantegna has’.
Three months later Isabella d’Este wrote to her husband, the Marquis Francesco
Gonzaga, urging him to grant Mantegna a favour, and adding: ‘If we want him to live
and finish our pictures it is necessary that Your Excellency should satisfy him.’ But at
this time, so far as is known, if the artist was working for Isabella at all it was on only
one picture, and there is no record that he had been given a new commission from
Francesco since he had completed the Madonna della Vittoria in 1496. From these
various pieces of evidence one could argue that by 1501 Mantegna had completed only
six of the Triumphs, and four years later had still not delivered them all.
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Martindale scarcely considers this possibility. Like earlier writers he thinks that the
Triumphs were completed by the mid-1490s. His main argument is based on the style of
the pictures, which shows some striking inconsistencies. The nine canvases are clearly
divided into three groups of three. Canvases I-III, showing the front of the procession,
have no landscape or architectural background, but there are individual elements, such
as a bull, which link one picture to the next, creating a continuous composition.
Canvases IV-VI are linked to one another, not only by devices of the same kind, but also
by a distant landscape with buildings. In this second group of paintings Mantegna was
at pains to avoid the frieze-like character of the first three, and he used various devices
to give a greater impression of depth – for example, showing the procession initially
receding slightly from the foreground and then approaching it again. The individual
compositions have a subtlety he never surpassed, while the vitality and naturalness of
the figures are unequalled in the work of any other painter of the 15th century. But, as
Martindale puts it, ‘one gets the distinct impression that something has gone wrong’ in
canvases VII-IX, which bring the series to a close with Caesar on his chariot. Once more
the figures are arranged in a simple, densely-packed frieze; the spaciousness and wealth
of invention so evident in the middle group of pictures are here conspicuously absent, as
is the powerful forward momentum that dominates all the preceding scenes. All three
pictures in this last group have elaborate backgrounds, but the transitions between them
are clumsily handled. Architecture is more prominent than ever before, especially in
canvas VII, where a massive structure is placed immediately behind the procession; and
buildings of the same kind also appear in an unexecuted design by Mantegna, the so-
called ‘Senators’, which shows the figures who should have followed Caesar’s chariot.

The existence of this design indicates that at some point Mantegna was planning to
continue the series, so one might suppose he painted the pictures in roughly the order
they are numbered above. This is the view of Martindale, who argues that canvas VII
and the ‘Senators’, with their distinctive use of architecture, embody the artist’s latest
ideas for the Triumphs. He suggests that the other compositions pre-date Mantegna’s
trip to Rome, and thinks that this visit led to a fundamental reappraisal of his approach.
Whereas he had previously made no effort to show a historically realistic setting, the
direct experience of Rome, with its wealth of ancient architecture, apparently caused
him to feel that his enterprise would be incomplete without some indication of the
triumphal route. In his last two scenes he tried to provide this, but the problem of
incorporating monumental buildings proved insoluble because of the low vanishing-
point he had already adopted. As a result, he became discouraged and simply
abandoned the whole project.

There are several objections to this theory, not least the fact that the buildings in the
compositions which supposedly post-date the visit to Rome do not look like anything
Mantegna could have seen there. Indeed, the only clearly identifiable architectural motif
comes from a Roman arch in Verona. Moreover, even if Mantegna had problems with
the background this does not explain why he handled the procession itself here so much
less competently than in canvases IV-VI. Finally, since the preliminary designs for
canvas VII and the ‘Senators’ have higher vanishing-points than any of the actual
paintings or the other related drawings, it is likely that, far from reflecting the artist’s
latest ideas, they were produced at a very early stage, before he painted anything at all.

Everything points to Mantegna having started work with the rear of the procession, not
the front. It is easy to see why he should have done so. From the outset he must have
realised that the Triumphs would involve years of work, but he must also have expected
his patron to display individual pictures or groups of pictures as soon as they were
ready. In these circumstances it was only logical to begin with Caesar and the figures
preceding the chariot. This section made sense on its own, but without Caesar the rest of
the procession was meaningless. At this early stage Mantegna also gave some thought to

Sci-Hub thehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n12/charles-hope/mantegnas-classical-world
figures behind the chariot, the ‘Senators’. But his next priority, presumably, was toၒ
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 would not have been an awkward transition if it were hung beside canvas VII. This is
something which Mantegna seems to have planned when he painted the picture: the
preliminary design shows part of a group of vase-carriers which would have continued
in canvas IV, but in the actual painting the whole group is shown in canvas III. After his
difficulties with the backgrounds of canvases VII-IX it is not surprising that in his next
pictures Mantegna chose to dispense with landscape and buildings entirely. We can see
from the preliminary drawings that initially there was to be no background setting in
canvases IV-VI either. But when the artist finally came to paint this group he changed
his mind, confident now of his ability to overcome the difficulties he had encountered in
the early pictures.

Considered in this way, the discrepancies between the three major parts of the поменять
прокси
Triumphs can be easily explained. Rather than suffering some crisis, as Martindale
believes, Mantegna displayed an increasing mastery as the work proceeded, just as one
would expect of a great artist. The sequence of events just proposed fits very well with
the chronology indicated by the documents. In terms of style, the closest parallels to
canvases IV-VI appear in paintings from the last decade of Mantegna’s life, such as
‘Parnassus’ and ‘Minerva expelling the Vices’ in the Louvre and above all the
‘Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome’ in the National Gallery, which was
commissioned only in 1505.

Although it looks as if the Triumphs were finished towards the end of Mantegna’s life, it
is not immediately obvious when they were begun. The answer to this problem depends
on one’s view of the identity of the patron and the likely circumstances of the
commission. There are three people who could have initiated the project: Ludovico
Gonzago, who died in 1478, his son Federico, who died six years later, and Federico’s
son Francesco, who outlived Mantegna by 13 years. Martindale’s choice is Ludovico,
since he ‘alone is known without doubt to have had the cultural interests and the
academic attainments which would have enabled him to play a part in the creation and
planning of the Triumphs’. This is certainly true, but not necessarily relevant. The idea
that Renaissance patrons were primarily concerned with the learned content of
paintings, that they gave the artists detailed instructions and closely supervised their
work, is an art-historical cliché, largely based on the behaviour of one person, Isabella
d’Este. But Isabella was a notably pretentious and domineering woman, and the pictures
she commissioned are for the most part laboured allegories of a rather obscure and
unusual kind. In terms of their subject-matter, the Triumphs are not in the least
obscure, nor very unusual. At this period, palaces in north Italy were full of paintings
both of triumphal processions and of famous men and the notable events in their lives.
In the Palazzo della Corte at Mantua, for example, there was a loggia of Caesar and
Pompey, and Filarete, in his architectural treatise, recommended ‘the stories of Caesar...
and Alexander’ as suitable themes for palace decoration. But one aspect of the Triumphs
is unexpected. In commissioning decorative schemes of this scale aristocratic patrons
generally chose to glorify themselves and their family, as Ludovico Gonzaga had done in
Mantegna’s earlier project, the Camera degli Sposi (although Pisanello’s still earlier
frescoes in Manrua are an exception in this respect). In the Triumphs there are no
allusions to the Gonzaga family at all. If these pictures glorify anyone other than Caesar
himself, they are a glorification of Mantegna, in that they display to perfection his
special gifts as an artist – his mastery of foreshortening, his love of packed, minutely
detailed compositions and, above all, his extraordinary empathy with the material
culture of ancient Rome.

There are two plausible ways of envisaging how the commission came about. Either the
patron was sufficiently imaginative to think of a subject ideally suited to the abilities of
his court painter, or Mantegna himself had some hand in the choice. Whichever
alternative we choose, it looks as if the Triumphs were seen as an opportunity for
Mantegna to produce a masterpiece. Historians are generally reluctant to concede that
this kind of consideration was an important factor in the behaviour of Renaissance
patrons, but in this case I think it makes sense. By the 1480s Mantegna was regarded in
north Italy as the greatest painter alive; his work was in demand and the Gonzaga family
were well aware of their good fortune in having him in their service. What better way
could have been devised for employing him in his later years than allowing him to
produce something which was both entirely suitable as decoration for a palace and also
likely to exploit his talents to the full?

Against this background, Ludovico’s qualifications as the original patron no longer seem
so compelling, especially as it is difficult to believe that Mantegna spent almost thirty
years on the Triumphs. Federico, too, certainly liked and admired the artist. He was also

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aware of the desirability of choosing subjects which would appeal to Mantegna: asၒ
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 good idea to take whatever you can get from them.’ But because he employed Mantegna
on another, quite substantial project in the last months of his reign, I believe that the
Triumphs are more likely to have been commissioned by Francesco. Aged only 18 when
he succeeded to the title, he was a straightforward, unintellectual man, a soldier whose
main interest in life was horses. His other commissions were either very conventional –
for example, the Triumphs of Petrarch – or conspicuously unlearned in their
iconography, notably a series of views of famous cities. In fact, he is just the sort of
patron who could have been open to suggestions from Mantegna, who was 35 years
older and had been employed by the family before Francesco was born. Most important
of all, he is known to have taken great pride in the Triumphs, not only telling the artist
that ‘in as much as they are the product of your talent and skill we glory in having them
поменять
in our house,’ but also building a room specially to exhibit them. прокси

If the pictures were commissioned in the way I have suggested, the one remaining
problem of their early history, that of their original location, becomes less puzzling.
Martindale thinks they were designed for the Palazzo della Corte, where the Duke of
Ferrara saw Mantegna working on them in 1486. But the principal members of the
family did not live there, and eight years later another visitor, Giovanni de’ Medici,
probably saw them in the Castello. I suspect that the question of a permanent setting
was not resolved until most of the canvases had been completed. It is possible that only
at a relatively late stage was the size of the final scheme established, for the subject
itself, as well as Mantegna’s use of canvas, allowed a good deal of flexibility in this
respect. When he stopped work on the Triumphs the artist was almost certainly in his
seventies. Very soon afterwards, they were installed at San Sebastiano, and although it is
possible that they were brought out for a court festival in 1507, there is no indication
that this ever happened again.

The creation of the Triumphs of Caesar is one of the most extraordinary episodes in the
history of Renaissance painting. Only now, after centuries of neglect and maltreatment,
can they be recognised once more as among the greatest achievements of European art.
It will take a long time before the pictures recover their former fame, but Martindale’s
book, which is by far the most substantial and detailed study of the subject ever
undertaken, marks an important step in the process. For the present, incidentally,
anyone planning to see the Triumphs would be well advised to check first that the
Orangery is open.

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