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Italian

The Elephants, ca. 1470-1500

Description

Maker

  • Unknown
  • After Andrea Mantegna, 1431-1506, Italian, designer

Culture

Italian

Title

The Elephants

Year

ca. 1470-1500

Medium

Engraving, trimmed within platemark

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • engraving

Supports

  • Light weight cream laid paper

Dimensions

Plate: 28.3 x 25.9 cm (11 1/8 x 10 3/16 inches)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Prints

Credit

Mary B. Jackson Fund

Object Number

47.023

Projects & Publications

Publications

The Brilliant Line

Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650
Read Online

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Brilliant Line

September 18, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Giovanni Antonio da Brescia was one of Andrea Mantegna’s collaborators. He employed a signature return stroke, or zig-zag, to create continuous tone on his figures (evident on the ox’s back). The gray areas visible on the modeling of the central male figure suggest the use of a drypoint needle or a finer burin.

This print is based on one of a series of nine canvases made by Andrea Mantegna around 1500 portraying Julius Caesar’s Gallic triumph in a frieze-like format. Drawn from a variety of literary sources, principally Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius, the Triumphs were less an accurate rendition of an historical event than a celebratory re-creation of an imagined Roman triumphal procession. The paintings were made famous in the Renaissance due to prints like this one that reproduced the original canvases.

Prints and Drawings with a Classical Reference

December 15, 1965 - January 9, 1966

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is The Elephants with the accession number of 47.023. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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