The Battle of Zama

After Cornelis Cort · After 1567

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

59 × 42.7 cm (23 1/4 × 16 13/16 in.); Framed: 56.6 × 70.5 × 7.7 cm (22 1/4 × 27 3/4 × 3 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

The Battle of Zama — the decisive 202 BC clash that ended the Second Punic War and broke Hannibal's grip on the ancient world — unfolds here as a churning panorama of cavalry, infantry, and war elephants in the dramatic Mannerist tradition. Cornelis Cort was among the most celebrated printmakers of the sixteenth century, renowned for translating the compositions of Titian, Raphael, and their contemporaries into engravings that circulated across Europe. This oil on panel derives from one of those prints, a practice common in the period: wealthy patrons sought the drama of a celebrated composition but preferred the warmth and permanence of paint over paper. Translating Cort's precise cross-hatched lines into tone and colour demanded genuine painterly skill, and the result bridges two distinct artistic traditions within a single work. Cort's engraving of The Battle of Zama was widely distributed throughout Europe after 1567, helping to cement the Roman triumph over Carthage as a defining image of ancient glory in the Western imagination for generations. The hand-painted oil reproduction captures every detail of the original panel held at the Art Institute of Chicago — the compressed, muscular figures, the haze of distant smoke, and the tonal complexity that honours both the engraver's precision and the painter's craft — making this monumental scene genuinely compelling at close range.