Battle of the Sea Gods [left half]

before 1481

Andrea Mantegna

Artist, Paduan, c. 1431 - 1506

Printed with black ink on light tan paper, this horizontal engraving shows a tight group of three muscular men riding imaginary creatures and an old woman standing behind them to our left, all with mouths dropped wide open. The men are spaced evenly across the picture, and they and the woman are all nude. The man on our left faces us and rides a scale-covered creature. The animal has a fish tail at the back and long talons at the front. The dragon-like mouth gapes open, and a forked tongue flicks out over sharp teeth. The rider holds the reins of the snarling creature in one hand and holds a tall staff in the other. The old woman stands behind him with one foot on the creature’s back. Her other leg is hidden by that man’s body. The woman’s long hair flows back from her wrinkled face, and her long, thin breasts droop off her emaciated body. Her jaw drops open, and her gaunt cheeks are hollow. She holds a fluttering cloak in her right hand, closer to us, and in the other, she holds out a sign about the size of a postcard that reads “INVID.” The sign hangs from a ribbon over the head of the man in the middle who engages with the third man to the right. They both ride animals with horses’ bodies and coiling serpents’ tails. The men and steeds face each other, also with mouths wide open and teeth bared. The man in the center holds a bunch of fish up behind his head in one hand. The third man’s cloak swirls behind his head as he lunges forward, thrusting a rod at the man in the middle. The hair, beards, and ears of these two men are formed by leaves. Beyond these two stands a sculpture of a naked man seen from the back. His head is turned to our left to look at the trident he holds in that hand, while the other cradles what appears to be a small dolphin. He stands on a tall base and an oval frame, perhaps a mirror, hangs on the wall opposite him among a bank of reeds. The ground around and under the animals is made of wavy lines to suggest water. A hill to our left and buildings atop a mountain at the center are far in the distance and deep in shadow. The artist used dense areas of thin black lines to build the shadows in the background and on the people and creatures.

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The engravings of Andrea Mantegna were the most influential prints produced in 15th-century Italy. Motifs from his creations appear in works by every major early Italian printmaker, and it was through Mantegna's prints that Albrecht Dürer made his first acquaintance with the southern Renaissance. Mantegna developed a passion for ancient works of art early in his career when introduced to classical antiquity, and their study profoundly influenced his paintings and engravings. The idealized form of his figures, their monumental scale and dynamic movement, as well as their sculptural clarity and definition can all be traced to his involvement with ancient architecture and reliefs.

This print is the left-hand portion of a two-sheet composition, intended to join the right half and create a unified image after printing. The subject appears to be an allegory of the destructive forces of human envy—perhaps between artists—and centers on the emaciated woman at the left. She clearly represents the vice of Envy (her tablet is inscribed with the Latin word for envy), a theme to which Mantegna would return later in a painting for Isabella d'Este's private study. The artist probably borrowed some of the specific motifs in the engraving from a fragmentary ancient relief now in the Villa Medici in Rome. The bold foreshortenings of the forms, the forceful movement of the figures, and the sophisticated light created by the subtle gradations of tone indicate that this is a fully mature invention by Mantegna.

(This text is based on Jay Levenson et al., Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art (Washington, 1973), 165–169, 188–193.)

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    engraving on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    sheet (trimmed within plate mark): 28.6 x 42.6 cm (11 1/4 x 16 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1984.53.1

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Hind 'Engravings', Vol. 5, p.15, no. 5, State only

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

R.S. Holford (Lugt 2243)

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1985

  • Figure Prints from the National Gallery's Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1985-1986, no cat.

1986

  • Graphic Survey Show, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., February 1986.

2011

  • Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Frick Collection, New York, 2011-2012(shown only in Washington).

2018

  • Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronze, cat. by Jamie Gabbarelli, NGA, 2018, no.

  • The Renaissance Nude, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2018-2019.

Bibliography

n.d.

  • Colnaghi, London: 6/12-7/14/84, 59.

1802

  • Bartsch, Adam. Le peintre graveur. 21 vols. Vienna, 1802-1821: vol.13, p.239, 18.

1938

  • Hind, Arthur M. Early Italian Engraving; a critical catalogue with complete reproductions of all the prints described. 7 vols. London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 1938-1948.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, D.C., 1992: 315, repro.

2001

  • Fletcher, Shelley. "A Closer Look at Mantegna's Prints." Print Quarterly 18/1 (2001): 3-41, fig. 45.

2011

  • Luciano, Eleonora, ed. Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington. London, 2011: 30, fig. 14, 153.

Inscriptions

upper center in plate on tablet: INVID / (characters which Hind reads as XCIII); lower left verso in graphite, underlined: a23173; lower center verso illegible inscription in brown ink

Wikidata ID

Q74065750

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