We have already alluded to Albrecht Dürer’s admiration for his works and anxiety to become personally acquainted with him. A further proof of the fascination which drew him to Mantegna appears in the highly-finished copies of the “Bacchanalia” and “Battle of the Sea Gods,” which Dürer executed with his own hand, and in the St. John of “The Entombment” which, unable to forget, he introduced in his own “Crucifixion” of 1508. Professor Colvin has pointed out how much he learnt from the Italian master in the delineation of passionate movement, and how close is the affinity between the avenging angels of Dürer’s “Apocalypse” and the angry Tritons of Mantegna’s engraving. Nor is Dürer alone among northern painters in his adoption of Mantegnesque motives. Holbein repeatedly availed himself of those episodes of the “Triumphs” which he knew from Andrea’s own engravings in his works at Busle and Lucerne; and a portfolio of Mantegna’s works was numbered among the treasures of art in Rembrandt’s possession. More singular is the admiration which Rubens conceived for an artist with whom he can have had few points in common, yet we find him visiting Mantua in order to study Andrea’s works, and reproducing a scene from the “Triumphs” after his own fashion. We have already seen the great honour in which Andrea was held during his lifetime. That he was equally esteemed by the succeeding generation we learn from the verses of Ariosto, who places him next to Leonardo in his “Orlando.” High as the praise is, we cannot think it excessive, for Mantegna stands half-way between those men who first brought art to life again, and those who carried it to the highest degree of perfection, and he occupies the foremost place among the artists of the mid-Renaissance, who saw how much was wanting before farther progress could be attained, and allowed no difficulties to stop them in their endeavour to acquire knowledge. With this end in view no research was dull, no toil wearisome. He embraced the driest studios with the passionate ardour of his nature, and gave life to the scientific problems which he attempted to solve by the very force of his great zeal.