by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Two commanders before the armies meet
Two dense bodies of soldiers face each other across an open centre. Standards rise behind them, mounted figures wait, and elephants stand to the right. The title directs us to an encounter between Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama. Yet the first question about this sheet is not where the generals stand. It is who drew it. The ALBERTINA's current record[1] calls the artist anonymous, describes the design as after Giulio Romano, and lists possible reworking by Peter Paul Rubens as uncertain.
The drawing is Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama, ALBERTINA inventory 451, measuring 27.7 × 41.6 centimetres. Its medium is pen with wash and white heightening on brown paper. The institution gives no secure production date. Those facts are firmer than the older page address, which misspells both historical names and treats Rubens as the sole artist. The address remains a way to find the page; it should not govern the object's public title or attribution.
This is a valuable image precisely because its history is layered. It presents a famous ancient meeting through a composition associated with Giulio Romano's designs for a tapestry cycle. Artists, copyists and printmakers repeated and adapted the subject. The Albertina's qualified catalogue language places this sheet within that chain, while leaving the identity of its hand open.
At a Glance
- Current attributionAnonymous artist after Giulio Romano [1]
- Rubens connectionPossible reworking, uncertain [1]
- DateUndated in current catalogue [1]
- MediumPen, wash, white heightening on brown paper [1]
- Size27.7 × 41.6 cm [1]
- CollectionALBERTINA, Vienna, inventory 451 [1]
Contents
- What happened before Zama?
- Reading the sheet from left to right
- How pen, wash and white create space
- Giulio Romano and Francis I's Scipio tapestries
- Why Rubens's name appears with a question mark
- A sheet with its own collecting history
- Looking again at the pause before battle
What happened before Zama?
The meeting belongs to the closing phase of the Second Punic War. Scipio commanded Roman forces in North Africa; Hannibal had returned to lead Carthage's army. Ancient accounts describe an effort to settle terms before the decisive battle. The summary of Livy's narrative[3] says the generals sought a peace conference, failed to agree, and fought. Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama in 202 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's chronology[4] places that victory in North Africa and connects the resulting peace to the end of Carthage's dominance.
The scene is therefore a threshold, not the battle itself. The armies are present, but the centre of the picture holds a space in which speech or negotiation can occur. That choice is dramatic because viewers know what follows: the attempt to prevent combat fails. A meeting between commanders can carry the weight of an entire war without showing its most violent moment.
The drawing should not be used as evidence of exactly how the historical encounter looked. It was made many centuries after the events and belongs to a Renaissance visual tradition. Elephants, standards and disciplined rows help identify Rome and Carthage and make the episode legible at a glance. They create a historical setting for the artist's audience, not a surviving eyewitness record of Zama.
Reading the sheet from left to right
On the left, upright spears and standards gather behind standing soldiers. Figures closer to us open a route toward the middle. The right side is more crowded with riders, men on foot and the tall forms of elephants. The opposing masses make the open central ground feel deliberate. Our eye must cross it to connect the two forces.
The image does not isolate Scipio and Hannibal as oversized heroes. They appear within the page's crowded negotiation between army groups. Their smallness matters: two leaders can speak, but thousands of armed people await the outcome. The scene's subject becomes the relationship between a fragile conversation and the military pressure behind it.
At lower right, a reclining or seated figure occupies the foreground. It gives depth and a human counterweight to the ranks above. A small reproduction cannot securely explain that person's role, and the Albertina does not name them in its catalogue text. The responsible description is visual rather than biographical: the figure is part of the composition's foreground, not a documented casualty or a named participant in the conference.
The elephants help distinguish the Carthaginian side in a scene with many similar armour-clad bodies. In the reproduction, three raised animal forms stand at the upper right. They are not evidence that precisely three elephants attended a real meeting. They are pictorial signs that let a viewer recognize Hannibal's forces and anticipate the coming battle. The artist makes a complex political encounter readable through opposing visual clusters.
How pen, wash and white create space
The Albertina records pen, wash, white heightening and brown paper. These terms name different parts of the drawing's visual language. Pen lines define soldiers, standards, reins and elephant contours. Wash gives groups depth and varying darkness. White touches bring selected surfaces forward against the toned paper.
The brown support is not merely a background that happens to have aged. A mid-tone sheet allows the artist to work both darker and lighter than the paper itself. White heightening can pick out a body or garment without filling the whole scene with opaque colour. This is particularly useful in a crowded composition where a viewer needs to find figures among ranks, horses and banners.
The horizontal format, 41.6 centimetres wide, supports a long procession of people. The composition spreads across the sheet rather than stacking all action in a narrow central group. That breadth suits a subject drawn from tapestry design, where a room-sized woven image could display many figures while still leaving a gap for the commanders' meeting.
Technique alone cannot decide authorship. Rubens used pen and wash in his own work, as did many artists and copyists who studied Italian designs. The Albertina's medium description tells us how this physical sheet was made; the attribution field tells us what the museum can and cannot currently say about whose hand made or altered it.
Giulio Romano and Francis I's Scipio tapestries
The Albertina connects this subject[1] with designs for a tapestry series associated with Giulio Romano and made for Francis I of France. Its explanatory text cites Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész's 1992 catalogue of Italian drawings. The chain matters: a design can pass through studies, working cartoons, woven hangings, copies and prints. The Albertina sheet belongs to that tradition, even though the museum does not call it Giulio's own hand.
The Louvre catalogues a different drawing of the same conference[2], INV 3719 recto, as a copy after the tapestry composition. Its record says Francis I commissioned the Scipio hanging from Brussels merchant Marc Crétif on 11 July 1532 and that it was complete by April 1535. It describes a set of twenty-two pieces, divided between Scipio's deeds and triumphs. That institutional account supplies the larger project behind the Albertina's brief reference.
The Louvre sheet is larger, 38.9 × 57.4 centimetres, and is a separate object. It cannot be substituted for the Albertina image simply because both show the generals. Indeed, the existence of another copy makes the attribution problem easier to understand: a well-known tapestry composition could be drawn more than once, in related materials, by different hands. The current Albertina attribution is an attempt to place one specific physical sheet within that broad circulation.
The Albertina also mentions an engraved version by Marco Dente da Ravenna with variations. A print fixes a design in ink for distribution to many viewers; a drawing remains a unique sheet bearing marks, collections and possible reworking. The relationship between them should be described as a relation among versions, not proof that the engraved plate was made from this exact Albertina sheet.
Why Rubens's name appears with a question mark
The current Albertina catalogue gives three different roles: anonymous artist, after Giulio Romano, and possibly reworked by Peter Paul Rubens. The word “possibly” is decisive. It does not mean Rubens is the accepted maker of the whole drawing. Nor does it guarantee that a specific visible patch can be assigned to him. It records an unresolved proposal about later intervention on a sheet based on an earlier design.
The museum's attribution history explains why older labels can disagree. It lists a traditional attribution to Perino del Vaga, an identification as after Giulio Romano, an older Rubens-after-Giulio attribution associated with Jaffé and Mitsch, and a later opinion recorded as Rubens probably not. Such a list documents changing scholarly judgements. It is not a ballot in which the most named scholars automatically establish an artist's hand.
The sheet itself carries an old handwritten “Pierino” inscription at the upper right, according to the Albertina. That might help explain a traditional association with Perino del Vaga, whose nickname was Pierino, but a handwriting note made at an unknown earlier point is not proof that he drew it. Collection marks and inscriptions are historical evidence about how a drawing was labelled and handled; they must be weighed separately from the forms on the paper.
This route sits inside a Rubens collection on the site because of its inherited label and the possible connection the Albertina still records. A truthful page can retain that discoverability while telling a reader that Rubens's involvement is uncertain. The more cautious label also makes the image more interesting: it shows how a Renaissance composition could acquire new names through collecting, study and later artistic intervention.
A sheet with its own collecting history
The Albertina lists Prosper Henry Lankrink, Gottfried Winckler of Leipzig, and Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen in the sheet's provenance. It also records marks associated with Lankrink and Duke Albert. Those marks identify the drawing as a physical object that passed through collections, beyond the Scipio composition it depicts.
The catalogue references a Leipzig auction in 1815 for the Winckler collection. This provides a point in the sheet's later history, not a full chain back to Giulio Romano's sixteenth-century workshop. The maker and date remain uncertain, so the provenance should not be used to fill the gap by assumption. A drawing can be collected by known people long after its creation without those later owners solving who first made it.
The Albertina's inventory number 451 is the cleanest way to keep the object distinct from every other version. The Louvre's INV 3719 recto[2] is a related conference drawing; its size and collection history differ. The Marco Dente engraving is another version in another medium. Similar subject matter does not collapse those records into one artwork.
The Albertina's online record provides a larger view of the sheet and its technical description. Those details help identify the drawing beyond what can be seen in a small reproduction.
Looking again at the pause before battle
Start at the narrow open centre and move out to each army. Follow the upright lances on the left; then find the riders and elephants on the right. Return to the people standing between them. The drawing sets negotiation inside a field of pressure. Its long, low format gives both forces room while keeping their leaders within reach of one another.
The story's outcome is known: talks failed and Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama in 202 BCE. The image holds the preceding instant open. It asks a viewer to think about the possibility of peace at the edge of a major battle, even though the Renaissance audience would recognize a celebrated Roman victory in the larger Scipio cycle.
The exact modern object is an undated, anonymous drawing after Giulio Romano, ALBERTINA 451, 27.7 × 41.6 cm, with possible Rubens reworking left uncertain. That attribution may be less familiar than the route's bold old label, but it is more informative. It separates the ancient narrative, the Renaissance tapestry invention, the later drawn version and the unresolved question of Rubens's hand.
Rubens artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Albertina does not identify Rubens as its secure maker. It catalogues the drawing as anonymous after Giulio Romano, with possible reworking by Rubens marked uncertain.
It depicts the meeting of Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama. Ancient accounts describe failed peace talks before Scipio's victory in 202 BCE.
No. The title identifies a conference before the battle. The soldiers, horses and elephants show the armies waiting around that encounter.
The Albertina records pen, wash and white heightening on brown paper. The sheet measures 27.7 × 41.6 cm.
The composition relates to Giulio Romano's Scipio tapestry designs for Francis I. “After Giulio Romano” describes the design relationship; it does not identify Giulio as the artist of this particular sheet.
No. The Louvre's INV 3719 recto is another copy of the tapestry subject and measures 38.9 × 57.4 cm. The image shown here matches the Albertina's inventory 451.
Discussion
Look across the open space between the opposing groups of soldiers.
Share an observation about the drawing or a reliable source that adds to its history.
Reader Insights
How do the standards and elephants help organize the scene?
What does the Albertina's qualified attribution allow us to say about Rubens?
How does this sheet differ from a finished tapestry or a printed version?
Join the Conversation
Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.
References
- ALBERTINA, Scipio und Hannibal vor der Schlacht bei Zama , inventory 451. View source
- Musée du Louvre, Gestes de Scipion: la conférence de Scipion et d'Annibal , INV 3719 recto. View source
- Livy, Periochae 26–30, translated at Livius.org. View source
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, chronology of Western North Africa, 1000 BCE–1 CE. View source
