ner, on
which is inscribed Caesar's notable despatch, 'Veni, vidi, vici;' 'I
came, I saw, I conquered.'

Another of Mantegna's best pictures is in distemper--in which, and on
fresco, Mantegna chiefly painted,--and is in the Louvre, Paris. It is
the Madonna of Victory, so called from its being painted to commemorate
the deliverance of Italy from the French army under Charles VIII., a
name which has acquired a sardonic meaning from the ultimate destination
of the picture. This picture--which represents the Virgin and Child on a
throne, in an arbour of fruit and flowers, between the archangels,
Michael and St Maurice, in complete armour, with the patron saints of
Mantua and the infant St John in the front, and the Marquis Ludovico of
Mantua and his wife, Isabella D'Este, kneeling to return thanks--was
painted by Mantegna at the age of seventy years; and, as if the art of
the man had mellowed with time, it is the softest and tenderest of his
pictures in execution. A beautiful Madonna of Mantegna's, still later in
time, is in the National Gallery.

When Mantegna was sixty years old he took up the art of engraving, and
prosecuted it with zeal and success, being one of the earliest painters
who engraved his own pictures, and this accomplishment spread them
abroad a hundredfold.

Domenico Ghirlandajo was properly Domenico Bicordi, but inherited from
his father, a goldsmith in Florence,[3] the by-name of Ghirlandajo or
Garland-maker--a distinctive appellation said to have been acquired by
the elder man from his skill in making silver garlands for the heads of
Florentine women and children. Domenico Ghirlandajo worked at his
father's craft till he was twenty-four years of age, when, having in the
mean time evinced great cleverness in taking the likenesses of the
frequenters of Ghirlandajo the elder's shop, the future painter
abandoned the goldsmith's trade for art pure and simple. He soon
vindicated the wisdom of the step which he had taken by giving proofs of
something of the strength of Masaccio, united with a reflection of the
feeling of Fra Angelico.

Ghirlandajo was summoned soon to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel,
afterwards to be so glorious; but his greatest works were done in the
prime of his manhood, in his native city, Florence, where he was chosen
as the teacher of Michael Angelo, who was apprenticed to Ghirlandajo for
three years.

While still in the flower of his age and crowned with golden opinions,
bein