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The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court. by Andrew Martindale Review by: Wendy Stedman Sheard Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 79-82 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2861460 . Accessed: 10/05/2014 08:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and Renaissance Society of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Renaissance Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 94.246.102.234 on Sat, 10 May 2014 08:47:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court.by Andrew Martindale

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The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen atHampton Court. by Andrew MartindaleReview by: Wendy Stedman SheardRenaissance Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 79-82Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2861460 .

Accessed: 10/05/2014 08:47

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and Renaissance Society of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Renaissance Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 94.246.102.234 on Sat, 10 May 2014 08:47:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 79

painstaking demonstration that geometric grid structures underlie all of Domenico's compositions, and that Domenico's compositional devices accord with his exploration of light and color to articulate the didactic content of his images. This entails a stimulating discussion of the complex relationship between naturalism and irrationality in Do- menico's work.

Professor Wohl's book is nonetheless disappointing, in two im- portant respects. First, it rarely goes beyond developmental ques- tions to tackle those contextual problems offered by the individual paintings. Typically, his iconographic reading of the St. Lucy altar- piece seems based wholly on internal evidence, with no attempt at liturgical investigation nor placement in the evolution of the sacra con- versazione. Discussing, for example, symbolic elements of the setting (p. 70), the author gives neither sources for his interpretation nor any indication of whether Domenico's procedure was standard or excep- tional; such silences imply a specious uniqueness for many aspects of Domenico's work.

Second, and partly at the root of the first problem, is that this book contains a great deal more material than the dissertation on which it is based but has not been successfully reorganized. The dissertation built outward from a formal analysis of the St. Lucy altarpiece. The book prefixes the same structure with a historical biography that is largely deduced from analysis of Domenico's paintings so as to re- construct his career. This muddled first chapter relies on many of the conclusions reached later in the book, while it never presents a clear run-down of documented information. Neither is there a systematic division of material between text chapters and catalogue entries. Pro- fessor Wohl's monograph is therefore difficult to use, but it contains a great deal of valuable information and much convincing argument on specific problems. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS Jeffrey Ruda

Andrew Martindale. The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court. London: Harvey Miller, 1979. 8 color pls. + 276 black and white illus. + I93 pp. $9I.

The series of catalogues of the English Royal Collection is here by augmented with a monograph on Mantegna's nine large canvases

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80 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

(2.78 X 2.79 m. with variations) depicting the Gallic Triumph ofJu- lius Caesar, known familiarly as "the Triumphs." The book is di- vided into text, catalogue, appendixes and illustrations (including material drawn from the artist's other work and ancient Rome that facilitates desirable comparisons). The color reproductions of five of the paintings and three details (plate facing p. I12 with erroneous caption) are of excellent quality, while the black and white illustra- tions range from good to excellent, with occasional lapses. The highly useful and informative appendixes deal with hieroglyphics and symbolism in the Triumphs, with their inscriptions, chief textual sources, and the main printed and documentary evidence.

Now at last, in the catalogue, we have a complete and systematic account of each canvas. The condition, contents, and textual and vis- ual sources of each are described with exemplary thoroughness. The extant related drawings and engravings receive the same detailed treatment. Such painstaking inspection of the Triumphs as objects, each helmet, sword and cuirass being minutely examined with a range of sources in mind, allows Martindale to extend the work of Blum, Tasmassia, and others who have investigated Mantegna's use of motifs from classical antiquity. Despite his unprecedented knowl- edge of the visual appearance of ancient Rome, Mantegna did not al- ways employ the correct image even when he knew what it was. His sophisticated antiquarianism gave to his painted recreations of the past the greatest degree of historical truth yet seen, it is true; yet tem- pered with fantasy and whimsy, his employment of classical imagery needs to be seen as an extension of expressive aims. Martindale real- izes that for both the artist and his viewers, antiquity was a starting point for the creation of a visual spectacle intended to be spellbinding in its immediacy and force, and that even in their greatly altered state, the canvases as now set up in the Orangery at Hampton Court Palace still exert a compelling effect on visitors.

In his eleven chapters of text, Martindale places the paintings in their artistic, cultural, and archaeological context and traces their af- terlife from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Three ma- jor problems surrounding the Triumphs remain to be solved conclu- sively: Who commissioned them? When were they painted? For what location? The answers to all three are inevitably interdepen- dent, and they may never be known, owning to the meagerness of the evidence. Still, the recent meticulous cleaning of the paintings under the direction ofJohn Brealey (i962-i974) has shown that so

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REVIEWS 81

much more of Mantegna's original painting survives than had been feared, that a thorough investigation of this neglected masterpiece is warranted beyond any doubt.

Addressing the first question, Martindale contrasts the intellectual interests shared by Mantegna and the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga (r. I444-I478) with the relative paucity of comparable stimulation available between Lodovico's death in I478 and May or early June I488, when Mantegna left for a twenty-eight-month stay in Rome. The period of this close relationship coincides with both the dates of contemporary literary sources for the Triumphs and the first printed editions of Latin translations of the classical literary works on which Mantegna drew, all handily enumerated here. Lodovico Gonzaga, his son Federico (r. I478-I484), and grandson Frandesco II (r. I484-51i9) are evaluated as potential patrons. Martindale concludes that Lodovico's intellectual distinction and preeminence as a patron, together with the understanding shared with Mantegna, make of him by far the likeliest candidate.

The dating evidence during Mantegna's lifetime, all of it drawn from letters, relates to the period of Francesco II's marquisate and thus has unavoidably, but very possibly erroneously, tended to as- soicate the Triumphs with him as their patron. A letter of August I486 records the fact that something had been accomplished on them-enough to show off to Duke Ercole I d'Este. Letters of I489 and I492 by and to Mantegna and Francesco indicate that the paint- ings were not yet finished, but that Francesco wanted them finished. The earlier of these letters shows that no agreement existed between Mantegna and Francesco before the artist went to Rome as to how many paintings would ultimately be executed-Mantegna even seems unsure whether he will be allowed to continue work on them after returning, and is above all concerned for their physical safety. A tenth composition recorded in an engraving, and two later paintings by Lorenzo Costa portraying a sacrifice and spectators following the procession, warrant the deduction that the original scheme called for at least twelve. Thus (although Martindale fails to make this point) the exchange of letters with Mantegna in Rome may be held to mili- tate against Francesco's candidacy as patron. Most earlier writers have believed that Mantegna did not begin the series before I479/80,

but Martindale, discounting stylistic differences from the Camera de- gli Sposi frescoes, inclines to believe that work could have begun im- mediately after the earlier program was completed in I474.

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82 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

One of Martindale's most important contributions bears on the is- sue of intended location. This is his observation that in all nine can- vases, the light is depicted as coming from the same direction. Given Mantegna's expert illusionism, this can mean only that they must have been intended to hang on the same wall, rather than be disposed around a room. Allowing for the type of architectural framing to which Andreani's i598 engraving alludes, any wall capable of receiv- ing the nine canvases which were finished had to be 28 meters long. Martindale proposes the Corridoio del Passerino, originally a gallery over 6o meters long in the Corte, a large rambling Gonzaga palace in which Pisanello had earlier painted Arthurian legends. The martial virtues exemplified by Caesar would have provided an antique paral- lel to the knightly virtues of Pisanello's decoration.

If one accepts Martindale's premise that Lodovico commissioned the Triumphs, thinking of the Corridoio del Passerino as their intended location might make sense. But if on the other hand Federico is taken seriously as their patron, his architecturally distinguished palace, the "Domus Nova" (I480-I484), becomes the logical setting. The fact that his premature death prevented completion of the interior of this palace certainly should not disqualify it as the Triumphs' intended site. Although Francesco is spoken of by Giovanni Paccagnini as a lover of literature and art, in Martindale's book he is presented only as a recalcitrant teen-ager who is being urged to give his studies a sec- ond chance. Given Francesco's preoccupation with warfare during his brief reign, a program celebrating military triumph would seem a logical one to decorate a great hall in his own palace.

Overall Martindale's monograph helps fill a pressing need for more detailed and systematic studies of particular works or programs of Renaissance art, investigated with a view to reconstructing all re- trievable elements of their contexts. STONY CREEK, CONN. Wendy Stedman Sheard

Pietro Bembo. Volgarizzamento des Dialogs de Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzagia Urbini Ducibus. Ed. Maria Lutz. (Kdlner Romanistische Arbeiten, Neue Folger Heft, 57.) Geneva: Librairie Droz, i980.226 pp. SF. 3 5.

Within two years the eulogies of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1482-I5o8), by two of his most illustrious cour-

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