The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus after the Battle of Pydna

The Master of the Battle of Anghiari's Triumph of Aemilius Paullus after the Battle of Pydna, painted around 1450 and now at the Munich Central Collecting Point, is a cassone or spalliere panel depicting a celebrated Roman triumph — the victory parade of the Roman consul Aemilius Paullus following his defeat of Perseus of Macedon at Pydna in 168 BC. This subject was drawn from Plutarch's Lives, which the Florentine humanist circle was actively reading and translating in the mid-fifteenth century, and the choice of this obscure historical triumph speaks to the sophisticated classical learning of the patron.

Tempera on panel with the horizontal panoramic composition characteristic of cassone painting. The triumphal procession moves across the panel length — soldiers, elephants, captured treasure, chained captives — in a crowded frieze derived from ancient Roman triumphal reliefs.