Mantegna: The Triumphs of Caesar – you can hear the trumpets and smell the elephant dung

National Gallery, London
The full glory of ancient Rome blazes once more in this grand, yet very human, exhibition of paintings on loan from the royal collection

More than 500 years ago, Andrea Mantegna, court artist to the Gonzaga family who ruled the north Italian city state Mantua, painted his dream of ancient Rome. In nine large, crammed canvases, he depicted scenes from a Roman victory pageant, or triumph. When the Gonzagas finally ran out of cash, these nine square pictures were bought by the avid art collector Charles I and installed in Hampton Court Palace, where they’ve spent the best part of four centuries, most recently in an outbuilding in the gardens. Now six of them have been loaned for “about two years” by Charles III to the National Gallery. This means you can see them for free, in a museum packed with Renaissance art with which to compare them. It’s a new lease of life for these masterpieces.

The glory that was Rome blazes all over again in this grand, yet very human, recreation of the triumphs granted to Julius Caesar for his conquests in Gaul. Smoky colours and brooding faces, empty armour and paraded elephants fill the twilit cavalcade. Characters in the crowd hold you: a Black standard bearer, a melancholy youth pondering what it all means, an old slave bent double under the booty he’s carrying. What fascinates Mantegna about the Roman empire is its human and natural plenitude. We see the wealth of empire – the statues, tableware, siege machines and animals brought as tribute to Rome. It’s both a parade for Caesar and a summing up of all such rites, a distillation of the military might and scale of this lost empire.

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