The Triumphs of Caesar: 5. The Elephants

The Roman historian Suetonius wrote that at his triumph over Gaul, Julius Caesar climbed the Capitol by torchlight, with 40 elephants carrying lamps to his right and left. Mantegna took that single line and gave it weight. Four elephants move through this canvas with their riders, baskets of fruit and golden candelabra balanced on their heads, the torches burning above them. He may well have known what an elephant looked like. A letter written in 1479 by the Gonzaga family's doctor records a live elephant that had come from Venice. Mantegna set the animals in perspective so the file seems to stretch back into real space, and the landscape takes up more of this canvas than of the earlier ones. On a hill at the far left, a tower rises straight up, repeating the upward line of the torches.