Those ancient Romans are no strangers to him; he has lived among them and mingled with them as freely as with men of his own day, the folds of their draperies, their very gait and countenance are all familiar to him. The same intimate knowledge of Roman times reveals itself in a hundred details; in the temples and viaducts of the background, in the mythological reliefs which adorn chariots, shields and breast-plates, in tablets bearing Latin inscriptions, in the triumphal arch under which Cæsar passes as he goes on his way. And here we may notice that Andrea, in one of the reliefs of this arch, has again introduced the “Twins” of Monte Cavallo, which during his visit to Rome he had doubtless seen with his own eyes in their time-honoured place on the Quirinal hill. In the execution of the “Triumphs” we observe the same high degree of finish, as in all his later work; the drapery hangs in the small folds of Greek sculpture, but without stiffness or formality; while the light and transparent colouring is admirably adapted in its softly-shaded tints to the general character of the subject. Evidently in this it was Mantegna’s intention to imitate as closely as possible the style of ancient painting. Unfortunately most of the pictures have suffered from repainting, and at the present day it needs a very minute examination to appreciate the delicacy of the fragments that have been left untouched. Both in the plastic tendency of form and in the principles of perspective which Mantegna has here successfully applied, we see the result of his earlier studies, modified and restrained by the experience of the thirty years which had passed since the days when he painted the Eremitani frescoes. Nothing can surpass the manner in which the whole of the splendid pageantry of the “Triumphs” is subdued and governed by the laws of composition, till every figure moves in perfect rhythm and harmony of line. We have only to look at the episode of the “Triumphs” by Rubens (in the National Gallery) to see how the subject, released from the severe restraint of Mantegna’s art, could degenerate into a Bacchanalian feast of wild beasts, revellers, and dancing women. But for all its sculptured tendencies and likenesses to a classic frieze, this great series is no procession of marble statues, cold and rigid in their antique beauty. The forms which pass before us in the long array are animated with life and warmth, their faces glow with the fire of human passion in all its endless varieties. Tender and youthful, or worn by age and care, exultant with the joy of victory, or bowed down to earth by a cruel fate, they are men and women like ourselves, and appeal to us by the instincts of a common humanity. In the well-known words of Goethe, “The study of the antique supplies form, nature gives movement and the last touch of life.”