Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

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HAMPTON COURT
the later hand. More trumpets herald the fifth
picture, in which torches and candelabra are held aloft,
and urns carried, while mighty elephants, richly caparisoned,
close the scene. In the sixth, men carry
vases on a stretcher, and behind them others bear
helmets, shields, and breastplates, the arms of the
vanquished. In nothing is Mantegna's mastery of
detail and his appreciation of chaste classical design
seen more clearly than in the armour which is the
chief feature of this picture. In the seventh division
are the captives, stately women, senators,children, with
a wonderful dignity and resignation upon their faces.
Behind are musicians and singers, soldiers with eagles
and the emblems of the Roman state; and last of
all, in a car which still preserves much of the beauty
of the master's touch, comes the solemn Julius proud
and unmoved, fit representative of the state which
conquered the world. Before him a man holds up a
medallionwith the words Veni, Vidi, Vici; behindare
men with incense-burners, and around are boys with
branches of laurel.
No doubt the impressiveness of the whole picture
is due not a little to the size. The small studies
in grisaille at Vienna, undoubtedly not from Mantegna's
hand, but designs for the woodcuts executed
by Andrea Andreani in 1599, are clear and exquisite
themselves as a sculptured frieze, but have not the
dignity and solemn stateliness of this great work; x nor
has the " Triumph of Scipio " in the National Gallery,
1Only eight of the drawings are nowin the Vienna Gallery.