The Triumphs of Caesar: 1. The Picture-Bearers

The procession starts here, with trumpets. Mantegna painted nine canvases, each nearly three metres square, as one continuous march celebrating Julius Caesar's triumph over Gaul, and this is its head. Trumpeters and standard-bearers lead the way, followed by men holding up painted banners of battles, so the Roman crowd could see what had been won. A young Black soldier in yellow robes and decorated armour strides forward while looking back over his shoulder, towards the next canvas. For about 40 years he was not there to see. Between 1910 and 1921 the painter and critic Roger Fry worked on this canvas on and off, and he repainted the soldier as a white man. Fry's paint came off in a restoration begun in the 1960s. The Triumphs belong to the Royal Collection and normally hang in the Lower Orangery at Hampton Court Palace, and six of them are shown at the National Gallery while that gallery is refurbished.