Battle of Sea-Gods, Left Half of a Frieze
1470/1500
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper, discolored to grayish brown
Dimensions
28.3 × 41.5 cm (11 3/16 × 16 3/8 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
4285
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Andrea Mantegna’s Battle of the Sea Gods may be the first print with a unified composition occupying more than one sheet. Unlike the Andrea Andreani Triumph of Caesar (1926.452.2–9) and the engravings after the same Mantegna paintings by his own workshop, this mythological frieze has only one seam and no disguising columns. Albrecht Dürer drew a copy of the right half of the frieze in 1494, already establishing the seminal importance of the work in the Renaissance.
About the Artist
Andrea Mantegna · 1431–1506
Andrea Mantegna was born around 1431 near Padua, in the Venetian Republic, the son of a carpenter. At approximately age eleven he was taken into the workshop of the Paduan painter and antiquities collector Francesco Squarcione, who enrolled him as a guild member and immersed him in the study of Roman sculpture and classical Latin. Though Mantegna later claimed that Squarcione had exploited his lab...