The Triumphs of Caesar: 4. The Vase-Bearers

Of the nine canvases, this is the best preserved, so it comes closest to showing how Mantegna's colour and detail first looked. Men carry precious vases and plate, and young attendants lead oxen to sacrifice, dressed up with ribbons and garlands. Trumpeters blow long horns hung with banners marked SPQR, the Senate and People of Rome. Much of this does not come from accounts of Caesar at all. Plutarch describes an earlier triumph, held in 167 BC by the general Aemilius Paullus after his victory over Macedon, more than a century before Caesar's. In it young men carried vessels of gold and silver, and oxen with gilded horns and garlands were led to the sacrifice. Mantegna seems to have borrowed that scene for Caesar's parade. Behind the marchers, the landscape holds the ruins of a city.