Battle of the Sea Gods (right portion of frieze)

Andrea Mantegna

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An artist who was profoundly interested in the world of classical antiquity, Mantegna was also one of the first Italian painters to use engraving as a medium for his original designs. In this engraving, the right half of a two-part frieze, the artist's point of departure is a sarcophagus like the one etched by Mercati at left. From such a source, Mantegna took the sea centaurs with Nereids on their backs and the Triton blowing his horn. Yet Mantegna added to the mix the violence of ancient battle sarcophagi and the muscular physique of the famous Horse Tamer statues on the Quirinal Hill in Rome to create a work of great originality and power. Among the many artists who admired this engraving was Albrecht Dürer, who in 1494 produced a drawing of this print that was one of the starting points for his marvelous Sea Monster.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art