Hendrick Goltzius Mülbracht (Bracht-am-Niederrhein) 1558 - 1617 Haarlem

Hendrick Goltzius was one of the greatest virtuoso draughtsmen and engravers of late 16^th/early 17^th-century Holland.  His prints and drawings include biblical and mythological subjects, landscapes, and studies of human figures, animals and plants, all treated with a rich variety of compositional approaches and a highly original range of artistic techniques.  Indeed, E.K.J. Reznicek, author of the definitive catalogue raisonné of the artist's drawings, once described him - one must assume affectionately - as an artistic duizendpoot ("millipede").

Although Goltzius did not study the features of his own face with anything like the intensity or regularity of a Rembrandt, this was nonetheless clearly a subject that interested him.  The earliest of his six known self-portraits is the magnificent drawing in metalpoint, on prepared tablet (tafelet), executed around 1586-90 and now in the British Museum (see E.K.J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, 2 vols., Utrecht 1961, cat. no. 254). In this unusually finished half-length portrait, Goltzius presents himself as the confident, elegantly attired artist, who stands by a table, holding the tools of his trade.  The British Museum drawing is also notable because the artist's use of a grey-green wash over the metalpoint drawing represents his first use of colour in a portrait drawing.  

Next in the sequence comes the very moving and intense coloured drawing of circa 1590-92, in Stockholm (Reznicek, op. cit., 1961, cat. no. 255).  There, the image is very much more personal than in the earlier British Museum drawing;  the face is depicted in great detail, with an emphasis on the artist's piercing blue eyes and striking russet beard which parallel the present work, but with a much less formal overall approach to the composition, the collar and doublet being sketched in in the most cursory manner. The Stockholm drawing dates from the same moment as the series of fine portraits of artists that Goltzius made during the course of his journey south through Germany and Italy, but is the artist's only portrait drawing of this period which exhibits such a colouristic, and informal, approach. 

Around 1593-5, Goltzius drew the most ambitious and impressive of his surviving self-portraits, the large, coloured oval drawing, now in the Albertina, Vienna (Reznicek, op. cit., 1961, cat. no. 256).  This is one of the artist's greatest portraits of any sitter, in which he captures his own striking features with exceptional bravura, contrasting the natural colours of his face, eyes and beard with the cool black and white shades of his clothing, and modifying his technique with extreme subtlety between each of the areas of the drawing. 

Within the series of the self-portraits, the Albertina drawing is the one that is compositionally the most similar to the present work - the pose is almost identical - but the dramatic difference in scale and other aspects of the overall approach mean that the visual effect of the two drawings remains radically different.  Most importantly, we see in the present drawing a twist of compositional originality entirely characteristic of Goltzius, which marks this out from his other self-portraits.  In many respects, the drawing is highly reminiscent of a miniature:  the execution is refined, it is small in scale and drawn on a vellum support, and there is considerable emphasis on colourism.  But at the same time, the artist has, by placing himself both within and in front of a fictive drawn circle, hinted at compositional devices associated with the very different, three-dimensional, monochrome medium of the portrait medal.  Few other artists of this period could have toyed with the boundaries of various media and genres in this way, and the desire and ability to do this lie at the heart of Goltzius's genius. 

Two further self portraits by Goltzius are known, both executed in metalpoint.  The first is a drawing of 1605, in the British Museum (Reznicek, op. cit., 1961, cat. no. 257).  The second is a small drawing of 1615, in Berlin (Reznicek, op. cit., 1961, cat. no. 258), in which the artist returned to the idea of portraying himself in a medal-like composition, with great refinement, but without any of the deeply surprising and original colouristic elements seen in the present drawing.

On the basis of the apparent age of the sitter in each of these six self-portraits, it seems likely that our drawing dates from around 1605, when Goltzius would have been in his late forties.  The authoritative, almost stern expression, and clear pride in his own appearance fit well with a man of this age.  Despite its small scale, this drawing is an impressive and imposing portrait of this great artist, depicted when he was at the very height of his powers, in a highly original manner that is itself proof of his imaginative and artistic abilities. Its discovery in the early 1970s added not only an important drawing to the group of surviving self-portraits by the artist artist, but also a significant new dimension to our understanding of this aspect of his work.