Hendrick Goltzius

In the period between 1586 and 1590, the brilliant Dutch draughtsman Hendrick Goltzius ‘discovered’ Bartholomeus Spranger, the artist at the heart of the aesthetic revolution that began at the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II. For a brief while, their drawing styles are almost indistinguishable, and this fine, previously unrecorded study, probably made as a design for a print, must date from those few years in the late 1580s. The combination, seen here, of dynamic poses, fine, calligraphic pen lines, broad brown washes and dense patches of white heightening is anticipated in slightly earlier drawings such as the Getty Museum’s spectacular Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan¹, but is most similar to the present work in drawings such as the four print designs of Heroes of the Old Testament, in the Rijksmuseum, where the summary, linear treatment of background motifs is also closely comparable.² This is an important and highly appealing addition to the corpus of drawings by Goltzius.

1. Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 84.GG.810; H. Leeflang and G. Luijten, Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), Drawings, Prints and Paintings, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Toledo Museum of Art, 2003-4, cat. no. 132 

2. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. nos RP-T-1900-537-540 ; Leeflang/Luijten, op. cit., cat. no. 30