GOLTZIUS, Hendrick

This print is a masterpiece of an idealised anatomy embodied by the handsome male Olympian: Apollo, in his role as the sun god. On the left he rides in the chariot with which he brings dawn to the world. Lying at Apollo’s feet is the lyre that is his attribute as patron of the arts.

This huge drawing is no sketch for a painting but rather a demonstration of the inimitable skill of a Dutch artist famed in his own lifetime as a magnificent engraver and draughtsman. Cupid hardens his arrows in a fire lit on the altar of love, fuelled by vine leaves and corn cobs - attributes of the deities of vine and fertility without whom, as the Latin poet Terence put it, Venus freezes. Next to him Goltzius depicted himself, wittily likening his engraver’s tool to the all-penetrating arrows of love.

This engraving belongs to a series ‘Roman heroes.’ Calphurnius was the father of St Patrick and a Roman decurio (military officer).

In 1593 and 1594 Goltzius executed a remarkable series of imitations of the styles of renowned printmakers and painters. The series is devoted to the Life of the Virgin, the theme of a famous series of prints by Albrecht D�rer, the first artist to have made a career out of virtuoso printmaking. One of the finest engravings in Goltzius’s series, the Circumcision, emulates D�rer’s silvery brilliance. Van Mander mentioned that Goltzius made one impression look old, to fool collectors into believing D�rer was its author. The self-consciousness of the exercise is clarified by Goltzius’s self-portrait as witness, in the right background, and the event’s setting in Haarlem’s church of St Bavo.

Although the quality of Goltzius’s paintings should not be underestimated, his fame rests on his work as a graphic artist. Notwithstanding his crippled right hand - fire maimed it, and he was unable to extend his fingers - he was an extraordinary technician and unsurpassed virtuoso of the engraver’s burin and the pen. Uncanny sureness and infinite patience never failed him, and he dazzled his contemporaries with his performance. He won acclaim for a series of six engravings of the Life of the Virgin (called by print collectors the Meisterstiche or master prints). Each print was deliberately done in the style of a different northern or Italian master (D�rer, Lucas van Leiden, Raphael, Parmigianino). Not without reason, van Mander called Goltzius the Proteus or Vertumnus of art, who had as many styles as Ovidian heroes have disguises.

He produced numerous impressive likenesses. The forceful characterization and immediacy of the one he made of his teacher Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert must have been an inspiration to young Frans Hals as well as later Dutch engravers. The portrait, unprecedentedly large in scale, is posthumous and is based on a lost drawing made ad vivum.

Goltzius was commissioned by a Haarlem lawyer named Colterman to paint Hercules and Cacus. He also purchased Minerva and Mercury, which Goltzius had painted two years previously. Theory (Mercury) and practice (Minerva) lead to skill and virtue. Virtue is depicted by Hercules, who slays the evil giant Cacus.

This print was executed after a design by Cornelis van Haarlem.

The subject is taken from Greek mythology (Ovid, Metamorphoses). Antiope was a nymph or, according to some, the wife of a king of Thebes. She was surprised by Jupiter in the form of a Satyr while she was asleep, and was ravished by him. The theme was used at different art periods as a medium for portrayal of the female nude.

The subject of the painting can be identified unambiguously by the inscription ANTIOPA on the golden cloth just below the right thigh of the reclining nude, and by the presence of Jupiter’s thunderbolt by the satyr’s left leg.

The Jupiter and Antiope is perhaps Goltzius’s most overtly lascivious painting, and one of the most erotically charged and explicit images in all seventeenth-century Dutch art.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 38 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in C Major (Jupiter-Symphony) K 551

After fleeing the sinful city of Sodom, which God had ordered to be destroyed, Lot and his daughters found themselves alone. Fearing that they would remain childless, the girls seduced their father into sleeping with them. This is shown on the left of the picture, while on the right in the background we can see Sodom burning. Goltzius made a moralistic twist to this erotic bible story by including a fox as a symbol of cleverness and a dog as a guardian of morality.

Goltzius was commissioned by a Haarlem lawyer named Colterman to paint Hercules and Cacus. He also purchased Minerva and Mercury, which Goltzius had painted two years previously. Theory (Mercury) and practice (Minerva) lead to skill and virtue. Virtue is depicted by Hercules, who slays the evil giant Cacus.

This print was executed after a design by Cornelis van Haarlem.

This carefully and lovingly rendered engraving represents Frederick de Vries, the son of Goltzius’s friend Dirck de Vries, a draughtsman and painter who worked in Venice between 1590 and 1609. During his visit to Italy Goltzius twice stayed briefly at De Vries’s home.

Goltzius arrived in Rome in 1591 due to health reasons. However, he produced there a number of large portraits executed in chalks of various colours. Most of these portraits are of artists he met on his travels, both Dutch and Italian. The portrait shown in the picture was identified in the 20th century as that of Pierre Francheville (his Italianized name is Pietro Francavilla) on the basis of the similarities to a painted portrait of the sculptor, who lived in Florence and was the leading assistant of Giambologna.

From the sixteenth century on, a small boy blowing bubbles, mostly with a death’s head nearby, symbolised the brevity of life. Goltzius’s engraving of this motif is inscribed with the words ‘quis evadet?’ - who evades [death]? The print also bears a caption in Latin that likens the transience of human existence, even a child’s, to the fleeting life of smoke or bubble. The purely allegorical ‘homo bulla’ (man as a bubble) of the sixteenth century was later transformed in Dutch genre painting into an ordinary boy blowing bubbles.

Although the quality of his paintings should not be underestimated, Goltzius’s fame rests on his work as a graphic artist. Notwithstanding his crippled right hand - fire maimed it, and he was unable to extend his fingers - he was an extraordinary technician and unsurpassed virtuoso of the engraver’s burin and the pen. Uncanny sureness and infinite patience never failed him, and he dazzled his contemporaries with his performances.

The Goltzius drawings that his contemporaries admired above all were his highly finished pen and inks drawings that simulate the swelling and tapering lines of engravings - they were called ‘penwerken’ (pen works).

This Prophet stands as an excellent example conceived in Spranger’s Late Mannerist style, even though it was modelled on the figure of Ezekiel from Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling (through a print by Giorgio Ghisi).

The print belongs to a series of three numbered plates entitled Loves of the gods. It was formerly attributed to Jan Saenrredam. Plate 1 depicts Jupiter and Juno. The naked couple seated in the clouds, Jupiter wearing a crown, an eagle holding a thunderbolt at right;

In the visual arts, the theme of unequal lovers was commonly the subject of prints, most often with moralizing inscriptions attached. The theme was expressed in two forms, an old woman soliciting a handsome young man or, more commonly, an old man soliciting a pretty young woman.

In 1600, while at the height of his fame as an engraver and draftsman, Goltzius abandoned printmaking and took up painting. He quickly established himself as one of the foremost painters in Haarlem and continued with undiminished prowess until his death.

In the present painting Goltzius sets the large half-length figures against a blank background; they are big and forceful and so crowded into the narrow frame of the composition that they seem to push out into our space. He paints the figures in bold bright colours, and while his brushwork is sophisticated there is nothing subtle about the scene he is painting. The man is old and ugly, with his long grey hair, moles and bulbous nose while the woman is young and firm-fleshed, with pink cheeks and swelling breasts.

Goltzius and his workshop made a number of engravings of Unequal Lovers.

The story of Venus and Adonis is taken from the tenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Venus, the goddess of love, becomes enamoured of the beautiful young huntsman, Adonis. Venus and the young Cupid try in vain to prevent Adonis from going hunting, as the goddess has had a premonition that the hunting party will have fatal consequences, and indeed the hunter is killed by a wild boar.

Goltzius in this painting rendered the two lovers as heroic nudes, positioning them in the immediate foreground in almost symmetrical poses. They form a stable, pyramidal shape the inverse of which is established by the clump of trees behind them. In this painting and in other works from this period Goltzius shows a strong affinity to the style of Rubens.

After training as a glass painter in his father’s studio, Goltzius learned engraving from printer Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert. From 1582 he began publishing prints and eighteen or so years later started painting. Following a journey to Italy (¹⁵⁹⁰⁄₉₁) he moderated his mannerist distortions and turned to portraying grand, idealised scenes, as in this masterly drawing.

What strikes us is the emphasis on the physical and psychological interaction between Venus and Bacchus, depicted close to one another, whilst Ceres holds herself apart. This offered Goltzius an opportunity of portraying the female body from both front and back - in those days a very popular pose and representing the “nec plus ultra” of grace. The fact that Venus, Ceres and Bacchus look so lifelike is because Goltzius began at this time to use live models. The representation of Bacchus, the god of wine, in the company of Venus, the goddess of love and Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, is a reference to the old Greek saying: “Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes”. This proverb, taken from The Eunuch, a comedy by Roman author Terence that was frequently staged in Goltzius’ time, had become a popular maxim. As frequently happened in the 16th century, this classical theme took on a profane interpretation, which can be paraphrased as “Eating and drinking is part of the game of love”.

This composition is an extraordinary combination of different drawing techniques. The god’s and goddess’s naked bodies are contoured with strong brown ink brush strokes and sharp black chalk lines. These are then coloured in with ink and body-colour in grey, white, brown and pink tints, next to zones of stumped black and red chalk. The result is an attractive “pictorial tapestry”, full of light and colour nuances. The sketchy nature of certain items like the baldachino and the putti to the upper left relates to the purpose of the drawing. This is a composition sketch anticipating Goltzius’ only known grisaille, dated 1599 and now conserved in London, done in grey and white oils on paper on top of a black chalk underdrawing. As with many of Goltzius’ compositions, a print of this work was also published by the famous engraver Jan Saenredam.

This painting is a nocturnal Nativity scene showing strong Italian influences.

The painting is signed with the monogram and dated lower centre: HG/ A.1607.

Outside in the distance a group of shepherds are awakened by a burst of light surrounding an angel announcing the birth of the Child. In addition to these external sources of light, the Christ Child is imbued with a divine light, which emanates as a flickering halo visible mainly at the top of his head.

The Goltzius drawings that his contemporaries admired above all were his highly finished pen and inks drawings that simulate the swelling and tapering lines of engravings - they were called ‘penwerken’ (pen works). Dazzling examples of these virtuoso performances depicting Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would Freeze are at the British Museum, London, and the Hermitage, St. Petersburg). They illustrate the popular adage that without food (Ceres, the Roman god of agriculture) and wine (Bacchus), love (Venus) is left cold. Venus’s need for the assistance of food and drink for invigoration was one of Goltzius’s favourite themes, he represented the subject in various ways and media at least ten times. His most stunning illustration of the proverb is now at Philadelphia.

Drawn with elaborate pen lines in ink that give the effect of an engraving, half-nude Venus is seen close-up accompanied by an adoring young satyr bearing fruit and a smiling old one with his hands full of luscious grapes, obvious representatives of Ceres and Bacchus. Handsome Cupid who turns sympathetically to us, holds a large flaming torch that warms as well as illuminates the figures. Unlike most of Goltzius’s penworks which are done on paper or parchment, this one is on canvas with a grey-blue oil ground that is an integral part of the scene’s nocturnal effect. Unique is the conspicuous addition of flesh tones in brush and oils that are literally and figuratively warmed by the vivid red, orange, and yellow flames of Cupid’s torch, also done in oil paint. The mixed media makes the work hard to classify. Is it a pen work or a painting?