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

ANDREA MANTEGNA 191
masterpiece though it is of historical accuracy and
skilful arrangement. There are other copies of the
" Triumph of Cæsar," but Ihave not seen them.
The Vienna work, in the clearness with which every
scene can be traced and every design understood,
and the Hampton Court pictures for their size
and magnificence, may well represent to us what
Mantegna meant in what was probably his greatest
memorial of old Rome. The severity, the power
of it all, is what impresses: the virile domination,
the invincible air of mastery. The soldiers
may keep tune to the soft music of flutes, but
we see that they have come from sterner music.
They remind one irresistibly of " Coriolanus " or of
Handel's marches and songs of triumph. One would
think that Charles I., keenest of Shakespeare's lovers,
read his " Julius Cæsar " in the light of this picture.
The stately Romans who triumph in it are each of
them men such as the Brutus who loved not Cæsar
less but Rome more, or the Coriolanus to whom
Rome's honour and his own pride were one; and
Handel may surely have looked on it when he wrote
" See the conquering hero comes."
How differently the classical age appeals to different
men may be seen if we turn from the magnificent stateliness
of the fifth of these pictures to Rubens' imitationof
it in the National Gallery. To theFleming the
glory of triumph means luxury and joy: to the staid
master of thePaduan school it is stern simplicity even
in its greatest success.