ANDREA MANTEGNA. THE RISEN CHRIST BETWEEN
SAINTS ANDREW AND LONGINUS
Size of the original engraving, 15½ × 12¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
SCHOOL OF ANDREA MANTEGNA. ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Size of the original engraving, 15⅛ × 10¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The letter is “proof that, in Mantua, in the year 1475, two professional engravers, one of whom clearly designates himself as such, were at work.... It is clear that Mantegna had a very special interest in the engravings and drawings which had been stolen from Zoan Andrea, and which Ardizone, ‘out of compassion,’ helped to restore, since he sought by force to impede the engraver’s work. His anger can also be explained by the supposition that Zoan Andrea’s engravings were facsimiles of his own drawings which the former had succeeded in obtaining possession of and had used as designs for his engravings; and that being unable to win Ardizone’s assistance in his work Mantegna thought himself obliged to protest, by violent means, against this infringement of his artistic rights.”[10]
[10] Andrea Mantegna By Paul Kristeller. London. 1901. pp. 381-384.
It is probable that to this drastic and effectual method of protecting against piracy his own artistic property we owe the two renderings, both incomplete, of the Triumph of Cæsar. One may well be the series upon which Zoan Andrea and Ardizone were working when Mantegna brought their labors to an untimely close; whereas the second series, although authorized by Mantegna himself, may have seemed to him, not without just cause, so to misinterpret his original drawings as to impel him to abandon the project and, in future, engrave his own designs. The Triumph series naturally remained incomplete, since, like every great artist, Mantegna would hardly feel disposed to repeat, in another medium, a subject which he had already treated. Of the Triumph plates, the Elephants approximates most closely Mantegna’s undoubted work; but the drawing lacks distinction, and there is a feeling of “tightness” throughout the whole plate, which makes it impossible to attribute the engraving to Mantegna’s own hand. The plate which immediately follows—Soldiers Carrying Trophies—was left unfinished. The subject is repeated in the reverse sense and with the addition of a pilaster to the right. This pilaster is probably Mantegna’s original design for the upright members dividing the nine portions of the painted Triumphs, since the procession is supposed to pass upon the further side of a row of columns, the figures and animals being so arranged as to extend over one picture to the next, with a sufficient space between them for the introduction of the pilaster.
