Mantegna: The Triumphs of Caesar Exhibition Catalogue

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Andrea Mantegna’s series of nine monumental canvases depicts a triumphal procession of the Roman general Julius Caesar. The paintings were the crowning achievement of his service as court artist to the ruling Gonzaga family in Mantua between 1460 and 1506. In this book, Guido Rebecchini and Caroline Elam discuss how Mantegna transformed the visual arts in Mantua through his frescoed evocations of court life, allegorical mythologies, innovative altarpieces, pioneering engravings and the Triumphs themselves. 

Mantegna supplemented the scarce representations of triumphs in ancient relief sculpture with descriptions found in literary sources. The procession of figures and animals encompasses the spectrum of his expressive range, from festive humour to grim foreboding. These dynamic paintings are as compelling today as they were to their original viewers, and to subsequent admirers as diverse as Rubens, Goethe and Degas. 

Authors

Caroline Elam has written extensively on architecture, art and patronage in the Italian Renaissance. Her book Roger Fry and Italian Art (2019) includes essays by Fry on Mantegna.

Guido Rebecchini is Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art at the Courtauld, London. His research focuses on the court of Mantua, Medicean Florence and papal Rome in the sixteenth century.