ay be found here--statuesque, indeed, in style, and stately in
movement, but glowing with the spirit of revived antiquity. The
processional pomp of legionaries bowed beneath their trophied arms, the
monumental majesty of robed citizens, the gravity of stoled and veiled
priests, the beauty of young slaves, and all the paraphernalia of spoils
and wreaths and elephants and ensigns are massed together with the
self-restraint of noble art subordinating pageantry to rules of lofty
composition. What must the genius of the man have been who could move thus
majestically beneath the weight of painfully accumulated erudition,
converting an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of line
composed in the grave Dorian mood?

By no process can the classic purity of this bas-relief be better
understood than by comparing the original with a transcript made by Rubens
from a portion of the "Triumph."[202] The Flemish painter strives to add
richness to the scene by Bacchanalian riot and the sensuality of imperial
Rome. His elephants twist their trunks, and trumpet to the din of cymbals;
negroes feed the flaming candelabra with scattered frankincense; the white
oxen of Clitumnus are loaded with gaudy flowers, and the dancing maidens
are dishevelled Maenads. But the rhythmic procession of Mantegna, modulated
to the sound of flutes and soft recorders, carries our imagination back to
the best days and strength of Rome. His priests and generals, captives and
choric women, are as little Greek as they are modern. In them awakes to a
new life the spirit-quelling energy of the republic. The painter's severe
taste keeps out of sight the insolence and orgies of the empire; he
conceives Rome as Shakspeare did in "Coriolanus."[203]

In compositions of this type, studied after bas-reliefs and friezes,
Mantegna displayed a power that was unique. Those who have once seen his
drawings for Judith with the head of Holofernes, and for Solomon judging
between the two mothers, will never forget their sculpture. The lines are
graven on our memory. When this marble master chose to be tragic, his
intensity was terrible. The designs for a dead Christ carried to the tomb
among the weeping Maries, concentrate within the briefest space the utmost
agony; it is as though the very ecstasy of grief had been congealed and
fixed for ever. What, again, he could produce of purely beautiful within
the region of religious art, is shown by his "Madonna of the
Victory."[204]