Italian

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.