1596
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Triumph of Julius Caesar is a 1596 by Andrea Andreani, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Here’s the rewrite: This woodcut shows a long parade of Roman soldiers, elephants, and spoils of war. Rich blacks and whites make the scene pop off the page. It’s a copy of a famous Mantegna painting done one hundred years earlier. Andreani used old Roman books to plan the details. He cut the image into wood blocks, then inked and pressed them like stamps. The prints look like paintings but feel different. This print reminds me of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts. Check them out next.
Commissioned by Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, this series of chiaroscuro woodcuts reproduces Andrea Mantegna’s Triumph of Julius Caesar, painted a century earlier. The scenes imaginatively portray the triumphal procession of the renowned Roman general and consul Julius Caesar following his successful defeat of Gaul in 52 BC. Each section of the continuous frieze shows elements typical of these parades, sanctioned by the Roman Senate and described in ancient texts. The printed suite’s frontispiece features a portrait bust of Mantegna, and the text below it boasts that the famous paintings attracted…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Andrea Andreani (1540–1623) was an Italian engraver on wood, who was among the first printmakers in Italy to use chiaroscuro, which required multiple colours.
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