THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR: DRAWINGS, 1490-1500.
Mantegna, as we have already mentioned, returned to Mantua in the summer
of 1490, and during the rest of that year and the whole of the following
one he devoted himself without interruption to his “Triumphs,” which he
finally completed in February, 1492.
This famous series consists of nine pieces of fine twilled linen, upon
which Andrea painted in tempera the triumphal procession of Julius Cæsar
on his way to the Capitol, after the Conquest of Gaul. The whole formed
a frieze eighty feet long, and the separate compartments, each nine feet
high, were originally divided by pilasters adorned with warlike ornaments.
In the first piece, the trumpeters marching at the head of the procession
open the pageant with a burst of warlike music, closely followed by
standard-bearers carrying pictures of Cæsar’s victories, smoking censers,
and a large bust of Roma Victrix. In the second, the gods of the captive
cities are borne in chariots, a colossal Jupiter and Juno foremost, then
a fine Cybele, and after these come trophies of armour, battering-rams,
and other warlike implements, lifted high on men’s shoulders. The
costlier part of the spoil follows in the third and fourth compartments,
where strong men bend under the weight of vases filled with gold and
treasures, and white heifers garlanded with flowers ready for sacrifice,
are led by veiled priests and beautiful fair-haired youths in their white
tunics and red girdles. In the fifth picture another band of trumpeters
heralds the next division, and four large elephants, hung with gold
chains and draperies, bear on their backs baskets of flowers and young
children, who fan the flames of lighted candelabra. More trophies follow
in the sixth compartment; the armour of captive princes is borne aloft
on poles, and so great is its weight that one old soldier, exhausted by
the load he bears, sits down to recover breath. In the next picture we
reach the most interesting part of the procession—a train of captives who
advance with slow and sorrowful steps, but not without an air of noble
fortitude on their faces as they meet the jeers of the populace. Men and
women of all ages are among them, proud chiefs, matrons of royal blood,
sweet-faced maidens, a young bride with the myrtle wreath on her fair
brow and a coral necklace round her throat. Close to her we see a mother
bearing her youngest born in her arms and leading a boy by the hand, who
cries to be taken up, while the old grandmother bends down to soothe him
with caresses.
In the eighth picture, immediately following this touching group, come
the jesters and hideous buffoons, who mock the prisoners with their
laughter and ape-like grimaces, and a troop of musicians singing and
dancing to the sound of timbrels. After these we have another company of
_signiferi_, this time bearing the eagles of the victorious legions and
the she-wolf of Rome. Their faces are turned backwards, and their eager,
expectant gaze prepare us for the coming of the conqueror, who appears in
the last picture seated on a richly sculptured biga with sceptre and palm
in his hand, and a laurel crown, which a winged Victory is in the act of
placing on his brow. At his feet children shout for joy, and wave laurel
boughs in his path; the multitude press round his chariot wheels and a
gaily-clad youth, with eager enthusiasm in his upturned gaze, lifts aloft
a banner bearing Cæsar’s well-known motto, _Veni, vidi, vici_, to meet
the victor’s eyes.
This subject now forms the last of the series but Mantegna’s original
scheme included a tenth picture which he afterwards abandoned, probably
because the hall for which the “Triumphs” were intended was not large
enough to contain more than nine.
An engraving, however, remains in which a body of Roman citizens,
followed by the first ranks of the advancing legions, are represented
marching in the conqueror’s progress; and the great procession, after
reaching its culminating point, is thus brought to a tranquil close.
Goethe, who knew the “Triumphs,” not indeed in the original, but from
Andreani’s engravings, and who wrote a masterly criticism on the series,
was the first to feel the need of a final scene to satisfy the eye, and
to point out that this must have been the artist’s original design.
Such, then, are the principal parts of this magnificent work, in which
the love of antiquity, which was the ruling power of Mantegna’s genius,
found its highest expression. It was a sentiment common to many artists
in this age of revived learning, but while other men, like Botticelli or
Piero della Francesca, saw pagan themes through the colouring of their
own medieval fancies, he alone entered thoroughly into the true spirit of
ancient art.
A glance at the “Triumphs” is sufficient to show us how profoundly
Mantegna had studied classical authors and how much freedom he had
acquired in dealing with his subject.
[Illustration: PART OF THE TRIUMPHS OF JULIUS CÆSAR. BY MANTEGNA.
_At Hampton Court._]
Those ancient Romans are no strangers to him; he has lived among them
and mingled with them as freely as with men of his own day, the folds
of their draperies, their very gait and countenance are all familiar
to him. The same intimate knowledge of Roman times reveals itself in a
hundred details; in the temples and viaducts of the background, in the
mythological reliefs which adorn chariots, shields and breast-plates, in
tablets bearing Latin inscriptions, in the triumphal arch under which
Cæsar passes as he goes on his way. And here we may notice that Andrea,
in one of the reliefs of this arch, has again introduced the “Twins” of
Monte Cavallo, which during his visit to Rome he had doubtless seen with
his own eyes in their time-honoured place on the Quirinal hill.
In the execution of the “Triumphs” we observe the same high degree of
finish, as in all his later work; the drapery hangs in the small folds
of Greek sculpture, but without stiffness or formality; while the light
and transparent colouring is admirably adapted in its softly-shaded
tints to the general character of the subject. Evidently in this it was
Mantegna’s intention to imitate as closely as possible the style of
ancient painting. Unfortunately most of the pictures have suffered from
repainting, and at the present day it needs a very minute examination to
appreciate the delicacy of the fragments that have been left untouched.
Both in the plastic tendency of form and in the principles of perspective
which Mantegna has here successfully applied, we see the result of his
earlier studies, modified and restrained by the experience of the thirty
years which had passed since the days when he painted the Eremitani
frescoes. Nothing can surpass the manner in which the whole of the
splendid pageantry of the “Triumphs” is subdued and governed by the laws
of composition, till every figure moves in perfect rhythm and harmony of
line. We have only to look at the episode of the “Triumphs” by Rubens (in
the National Gallery) to see how the subject, released from the severe
restraint of Mantegna’s art, could degenerate into a Bacchanalian feast
of wild beasts, revellers, and dancing women. But for all its sculptured
tendencies and likenesses to a classic frieze, this great series is no
procession of marble statues, cold and rigid in their antique beauty.
The forms which pass before us in the long array are animated with life
and warmth, their faces glow with the fire of human passion in all its
endless varieties. Tender and youthful, or worn by age and care, exultant
with the joy of victory, or bowed down to earth by a cruel fate, they
are men and women like ourselves, and appeal to us by the instincts of
a common humanity. In the well-known words of Goethe, “The study of the
antique supplies form, nature gives movement and the last touch of life.”
For more than a century the “Triumphs” of Mantegna remained in the hall
of the palace for which they had been intended, and were seen there both
by Vasari and the historian Mario Equicola. On festive occasions they
were sometimes moved to the Castello di Corte, and in Andrea’s lifetime
they were used as stage decorations when the comedies of Plautus and
Terence were performed at the Court of Mantua.
Several separate episodes of the “Triumphs” were engraved by Mantegna
himself, and the complete series became generally known by the
publication of the large wood-cuts by Andrea Andreani at the close of the
sixteenth century.
In 1628, a short time before the sack of Mantua, the pictures themselves
were sold to Charles I., with several other masterpieces of the Gonzaga
collection. After that monarch’s death on the scaffold they were again
sold by the Parliament, but Cromwell bought them for £1,000.[3] Charles
II. placed them in the palace at Hampton Court. There this precious
series still remains, irreparably injured by frequent removal and
repainting, but still in beauty and completeness both of design and
execution one of the most remarkable works of the Italian Renaissance.
The exact date of the completion of the “Triumphs” is fixed by a fresh
grant of land which Francesco bestowed upon Mantegna in February, 1492,
with an express mention of the great work which he had at length brought
to a happy termination. “If the Marquis had loved him before, he loved
him still more now,” says Vasari, and in reality Andrea seemed to have
attained the highest pitch of honour and good fortune. For once his
affairs were prosperous. In 1492 he sold his small property at Padua,
and two years later furnished his own beautiful house in the quarter of
St. Sebastian. At the same time he came to a final settlement with his
Buscoldo creditors and exchanged land with his old enemy Aliprandi. His
son, Lodovico, obtained a good appointment as overseer and agent to the
Marquis at Cavriana, while Francesco, who was the least satisfactory
of the two and frequently caused Andrea anxiety, embraced the artist’s
profession and became his father’s assistant. Lastly, his only daughter,
Taddea, was married, on the 4th of July, 1499, with two hundred and sixty
ducats as her dowry, to Viano Vianesi, whom he styles “uomo prudente” in
his letters.
Besides these children by marriage Andrea had one other son, Gian’ Andrea
by name, born in his old age after the death of his wife Niccolosia, and
whom in his will of 1504 he mentions as being still a child.
His improved circumstances seem to have softened his temper, and the only
complaint we find in his letters to the Marquis at this time is that
the stones which he had prepared for building in his yard are stolen in
broad daylight, one of the thieves whom his son had caught in the act of
carrying away his spoil under his mantle being an officer of Francesco’s
household.
We hear occasionally of his suffering from attacks of illness, but as
a painter his powers were at their best, and many of his finest works
belong to the period between his return from Rome and the close of the
fifteenth century.
Among classical subjects are the two beautiful pictures now in the
Louvre, originally executed for the Marchioness Isabella’s “studio of
the grotto,” a room which Andrea, Perugino, and Costa were all employed
to decorate, and which became a complete museum of both antique and
Renaissance art. Andrea painted several panels for this apartment at
Isabella’s command, some we are told in imitation of bronze-reliefs,
and one in which the prophet Jonah, is represented in the act of being
cast into the sea; but the “Wisdom Victorious over the Vices” and the
“Parnassus,” both in the Louvre, are the only works of the series which
have come down to posterity. Both closely resemble the “Triumphs” in
style of modelling and in delicacy of finish. One is an allegorical
composition, such as Botticelli might have painted, in which Minerva
and Diana, led by Wisdom bearing a torch, are driving out a tribe of
Vices under the forms of centaurs and satyrs, while Justice, Force, and
Temperance hover in the air, about to return to earth.
The form of the avenging goddesses is essentially classic in type, and
the trees of the background show that loving care in each leaf which
entitles Mantegna to a foremost place among the foliage painters of the
age. The other, perhaps the most poetic of all Andrea’s conceptions,
brings before us a pleasant landscape where the Muses dance hand in hand
to the music of Apollo’s lyre, while Mercury leans on the neck of Pegasus
hard by, and Mars and Venus pause from their embraces to listen to the
enchanted sound. Brighter tints than Andrea generally employs enliven
the scene, and in the light fluttering drapery and measured stop of the
dancing nine there is a grace and charm of movement which no contemporary
painter ever surpassed.
These groups of dancing nymphs became a favourite motive with Mantegna,
and form the subject of one of his engravings as well as of a finished
drawing, exceedingly graceful and charming in design, now at Munich.
Classical subjects at this time occupied a great part of his thoughts,
and some of his finest engravings, the “Battle of the Sea-Gods,”
“Hercules and Antæus,” and the “Bacchanalia,” belong to this period.
Closely related to these are the beautiful drawings of the British Museum
to which Mr. Comyns Carr recently called attention, the “Mars, Diana and
Venus,” which in ideal beauty of form yields to none of Andrea’s designs,
and the long frieze-shaped composition of “Calumny,” after the pattern
of Apelles’s last picture, which these artists of the early Renaissance
delighted to recall.
Several other precious drawings by Mantegna belong the Christ Church
collection, Oxford. Chief among them is the original composition for his
celebrated engraving of the “Entombment,” and a fine example of another
of his favourite subjects, “Hercules killing the Lion,” inscribed _Divo
Herculi invicto_. Many more are in the hands of private collectors, and
a whole volume containing twenty-six sheets of mythological subjects was
exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, by Miss Hannah de Rothschild
(now Lady Rosebery).
Among the other drawings of remarkable merit now scattered over Europe,
we will only mention the “Judgment of Solomon” in the Louvre, the
“Sagrifizio,” which forms the chief ornament of the Verona Museum, and
the well-known “Judith” of the Uffizi (see page 37), which once belonged
to Vasari, and bears the date of February, 1491.
It was not in the nature of Mantegna’s art to cast off a hasty sketch,
or to leave to the world faces of rare loveliness drawn in a few pencil
strokes as it were at random on the paper. Whether he was engaged on the
cartoon of an altar-piece, or on a simple pattern of a cup or fountain,
all he achieved was marked by the same patient, untiring labour, the
same minute care, above all by the same feeling for beauty in every
detail. Many of us remember that exquisite design for a chalice which
attracted general attention in one of our last winter exhibitions. It is
true the perspective of the Cup was faulty, but this defect was scarcely
noticed in the beauty of the work, with which every part of the chalice
was covered. Scenes from the life of Christ, cherub heads and elaborate
scroll work adorned the border of the Cup. Apostles and prophets were
figured on its base, while the stem was studded with rows of lovely
babies and angel heads, executed with a grace and delicacy which rendered
the whole a perfect marvel of decorative art. And so it is with his
larger drawings, whether classical or religious in subject. Each hair in
the head of his “Judith” is distinctly drawn, there is the same attention
to form in the folds of her falling drapery, or, to take another
instance—the fair faces of the youth and maiden in the procession of the
_Sagrifizio_. Both are designs in the best spirit of classical art, and
remind us of the finest Greek sculpture.
We have said that pagan themes occupied much of Mantegna’s imagination
during the years immediately following the conclusion of the “Triumphs,”
but the three large altar-pieces which also belong to this period
must not be passed over. In the first place we have the “Madonna
della Vittoria,” now in the Louvre, perhaps the noblest of all his
religious pictures. This altar-piece was painted by order of the Marquis
Francesco to commemorate his pretended victory at Fornovo, where he had
encountered the French, but, far from being victorious, had lost the
greater part of his army, and narrowly escaped with his life. A curious
circumstance characteristic of the manners of the times is connected with
this painting.
[Illustration: THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA. BY MANTEGNA.
_In the Louvre, Paris._]
A Jew of Villafranca, Daniele Norsa by name, in the year 1495 bought
a house in Mantua which had a Madonna painted over the door, and
fearing any accidental misfortune to the picture might excite popular
displeasure, prudently obtained leave from the bishop to remove the
sacred image. Even this step was turned to his prejudice, and on
Ascension Day his house was attacked by the mob and narrowly escaped
destruction. The Jew appealed to the Marquis for protection, and
ultimately his case was brought before a tribunal, which condemned him,
by way of reparation for the supposed insult to the Virgin, to place a
new picture painted by Mantegna in one of the Mantuan churches. In the
meantime the battle of Fornovo took place, and Francesco, who in the hour
of danger had vowed to erect a church in Mantua to the Virgin, resolved
to gratify popular feeling and give greater effect to the fulfilment of
his vow by placing the building on the spot where the Madonna’s honour
had been slighted. Accordingly he bought Norsa’s house, and on the
anniversary of the battle, July 6th, 1496, the votive Madonna painted
by Mantegna for the occasion was placed above the high altar of the
newly erected church with great popular rejoicing. Three hundred years
afterwards the French carried off this picture, which was originally
intended to celebrate the victory over their nation, in triumph to Paris,
where it still remains.
Few perhaps of Andrea’s larger works are as generally and deservedly
popular. The mild Virgin, in blue hood and mantle, sitting under her
leafy bower hung with fruit and coral and gay with twittering birds, is
familiar to all visitors to the Louvre. Both mother and child stretch
out their hands in blessing towards the kneeling Marquis, whose life-like
portrait excited the universal admiration of contemporaries. Opposite
him, the venerable form of St. Elizabeth is seen kneeling at the side of
the young St. John, who stands on the carved pedestal of the Virgin’s
throne, and in the background are the patron saints of Mantua, Andrew and
Longinus. More beautiful than either of these are the two warrior saints,
Michael and George, who stand in full armour on either side, holding the
hem of the Virgin’s mantle, and who, with their noble features, manly
forms, and flowing masses of fair locks, are perfect types of Christian
chivalry—in other words, of that union of strength and tenderness which
is held to constitute the heroic character.
The “Virgin” of the National Gallery, long in the possession of
different Milanese families, bears a close resemblance, both in style
and execution, to the “Madonna della Vittoria,” and was probably painted
about the same time. Here the Virgin is seated under a red baldacchino
between St. Mary Magdalen and the Baptist, who stand erect against a
background of dark green orange-trees and silver-clouded sky. The face
of the Magdalen is lighted with the glad enthusiasm of her love, and in
the foliage we notice the same careful finish as in the bowers of the
“Parnassus” and in the leaf-painting of all Mantegna’s works.
To the same period and class of picture belongs the “Glorified Madonna”
which Andrea painted for the monks of Santa Maria in Organo of Verona,
now in the Casa Trivulzi at Milan. Here the Madonna is enthroned on the
clouds, with four life-sized saints; a landscape of tall lemon-trees is
behind her. A troop of singing boy-angels hover in the air, after the
fashion of the Camera degli Sposi frescoes, and one bears a scroll with
the inscription:—
“A Mantinia p. an. gracie 1497, 15 Augusti.”
[Illustration: VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND THE MAGDALEN. BY
MANTEGNA.
_In the National Gallery, London._]
The small blue-mantled “Madonna” of Bergamo, and a good portrait of a
Gonzaga in the same collection, may have been painted towards the close
of the century, to which period the engravings of the “Triumphs” and
several other subjects are assigned. Finally, among the labours which
occupied the last months of 1499, was the commission to design a monument
of Virgil for the chief square of Mantua. The plan originated with the
Marchioness Isabella, who consulted the learned Latinists, Pontanus and
Vergerius, at Naples, as to the best mode of carrying her scheme into
effect. They suggested Mantegna as the natural person to furnish a design
for the monument, and he entered warmly into a project so well suited to
the spirit of the age. We can hardly imagine a commission more congenial
to a painter so imbued with Latin traditions as Mantegna, and the statue
which he designed was worthy of the occasion, as the drawing recently
discovered in the collection of M. His de la Salle abundantly proves.
Virgil is represented crowned with laurel and holding the Æneid in his
hands, while winged boys on the pedestal at his feet support a tablet
with the words:—
“P. Vergilii Maronis a æternæ sui memoriæ imago.”
Unfortunately, Andrea never had the satisfaction of seeing this design
executed in bronze or marble. Whether Francesco’s treasures were expended
in wars, or whether Isabella’s intention was only a caprice of the
moment, the scheme was abandoned, and Mantua remained without a monument
of her greatest son.
[Illustration]