The Triumph of Caesar

We are grateful to Mr. Everett Fahy for confirming the attribution having examined the painting in the original. Mr. Fahy (private communication, 3 December 2001) notes that the present work can be linked to another panel -- of near identical dimensions and similarly inscribed -- depicting The Triumph of Scipio (formerly in the Gambier-Parry collection; sold, Sotheby's, London, 20 November 1988, lot 1). Since the edges of both panels have not been trimmed, they are unlikely to be, as Callman (loc. cit.) suggests, fragments cut from a cassone. More probably they were simply removed from some other piece of furniture or wainscoting into which they were once inserted.

In both works, the artist sets the procession before a capriccio of Roman monuments, which, in the present composition, includes the Pantheon, the church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli and the Colosseum. The same view of Rome recurs in another Triumph of Scipio, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Commenting on the 'high quality' of the present work, Mr. Fahy has suggested that it was probably commissioned by the Pucci family of Florence, whose coat-of-arms included the blackamoor, seen here in the procession.