Andrea Mantegna (1431-1517) executed nine paintings or cartoons in tempera upon linen, representing the triumphs of Julius Cæsar, which are a portion of the cartoons for a frieze 9 feet high and 80 feet long, painted for Lodovico Gonzaga’s Palace of St. Sebastian at Mantua, they were purchased by Charles I., and are now at Hampton Court. An illustration of this frieze, from an engraving upon copper in the British Museum, is given on page 55; they were also engraved on wood by Andrea Andreani in 1599.
Many beautiful examples of the Cinque-Cento ornament may be found in contemporary printed and illuminated books. The advent of printing in Italy (1465) by the Germans, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannitz at the Benedictine Monastery of Subiaco, near Rome, gave a great impetus to Literature, and printing rapidly progressed in Italy, more especially at Venice, where in 1499 Aldus Manutius produced the Hypnerotomachia, or dream of Poliphilus
RENASCENCE ORNAMENT. [Plate 19.]
with illustrations ascribed to Mantegna. Good reproductions of many of these early illustrated books are given in the “Italian Book Illustrations,” by A. W. Pollard, No. 12 of the Portfolio, December, 1894; and in “The Decorative Illustration of Books,” by Walter Crane.
The study of classical architecture was stimulated by the publication at Rome in 1486, of the treatise by Vitruvius, an architect of the time of Augustus; an edition was also published at Florence in 1496, and at Venice in 1511. In 1570, Fra Giocondo, at Venice, published “The Five Books of Architecture,” by Andrea Palladio (1518-80). Another treatise upon architecture, by Serlio (1500-52), was also published at Venice in 1537 and 1540.
