Naval Battle between Trojans and “The Trojans Repulsing the Greeks"; after Giulio Romano

Giovanni Battista Scultori

Impressions of this engraving exist that are printed from dark black to washed out dark grays, such as this. The inking in all of the impression seems to be consistant with little variation in any of the printings - the black impressions are all black and gray impressions, all gray.

Giovanni Battista Scultori (also known as Giovanni Battista Mantovano or Mantuana,) was an Italian Mannerist painter, sculptor and engraver who was known for the level of detail he employed in his preferred mediums, including sculpture, printmaking, and painting. As with his mentor, famed Italian artist and architect Guilio Romano, under whom he trained as an interior decorative painter for Romano’s Palazzo de Te, he took inspiration from ancient Greek artworks, especially reliefs depicting mythological events.

According to the impression in the British Museum this print is certainly influenced by the designs of Giulio Romano, but it appears to have been ultimately an invention by Scultori.

This large engraving is among his most well known, and is likely a scene from Book 14 of Homer’s epic “Iliad,” depicting the battle at sea between the Acheans and Trojans. An impression of this print can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The presence of the chariot of Poseidon (known to the Romans as Neptune) abandoned in the waves at left, suggests that the episode represented here is from Book 14 of Homer's epic poem 'Iliad'. The heroic nude in the foreground may be the lord of the sea, described as leading the Greeks with a long sword in hand. The warrior lying on the ground beneath him, protected by a comrade, could be the Trojan prince Hector, struck down by a stone soon after Poseidon entered the battle.

Inspired by the ships in a fragmentary Greek relief of the second century A.D. (Museo Archeologico, Venice), Scultori, who was also a sculptor and a master of stuccowork, obviously took pleasure in elaborating their decoration.