Recently rediscovered, Andrea Mantegna's masterpiece will be at the center of the auction dedicated to Ancient Drawings at Sotheby's in New York on January 29, 2020. Sotheby's has declared it to be one of the most historically important drawings ever to appear at auction: dated to end of 1480, the drawing is the only known preparatory study for the famous masterpiece by Mantegna, the Triumphs of Caesar – a series of nine monumental paintings depicting the triumphal procession of Julius Caesar and his army through ancient Rome. The auction base estimate is over 12 million of dollars.
Andrea Mantegna was one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance. Its importance was highlighted recently in the exhibition Mantegna and Bellini held at the National Gallery in London and at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, dedicated to his works and those of his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini.
Pen and ink drawing is one study for "The standard-bearers and siege equipment", which is the second canvas in the series. It includes giant statues on carts, a model of Alexandria Tower, and oversized siege weapons.
Sold as an autographed work by Mantegna in 1885, the drawing subsequently passed into private collections and was completely unknown to scholars until shortly before the Mantegna and Bellini exhibition in London and Berlin.
Cristiana Romalli – Senior Director and Italian specialist in the Ancient Drawings department of Sotheby's – through careful research, was able to establish that the main figure on the left side of the composition was modified during the drawing creation process. Under the figure of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine, appearing in the finished drawing, there is actually another completely different figure, identified by Romalli as Helios, the Roman god of the sun, which the artist chose to erase and replace during his composition.
Speaking of drawing, Christian Romalli he declared: “The discovery of a drawing never seen before, more than five hundred years after its creation, is a moment of considerable importance for the study of this complex, intriguing master and great protagonist of the beginning of the Renaissance. Examining it with infrared light, we were able to rediscover the hidden figure of Helios, revealing a major change in composition and this proves the authorship of Mantegna. This modification effectively defined his approach to the finished painting, the one we see today. The exceptional and rare opportunity to spotlight this news, obscured for centuries, is what best defines the amazing world of ancient drawings”.
