Memorabilia aliquot Romanae strenuitatis exempla: The Thematics of Artisanal Virtue in Hendrick Goltzius's Roman Heroes

Abstract

Memorabilia aliquot Romanae strenuitatis exempla: The Thematics of Artisanal Virtue in Hendrick Goltzius’s Roman Heroes Walter S. Melion Published in 1586 with a dedication to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Hendrick Goltzius’s Roman Heroes demonstrates the sovereignty of the engraver’s burin-hand, placing its singular virtues into imperial service. The series, engraved on exceptionally large plates averaging 320 × 230 mm, consists of an allegorical prologue and epilogue—the Roma Triumphans and Fame and History (figs. 1 & 2)—that bracket eight effigies of Roman warriors, exemplars of martial virtus taken mainly from the first decade of Livy’s Ab urbe condita, which chronicles the early history of republican Rome. 1 Depicted in roughly chronological order, the heroes—Publius Horatius, Horatius Cocles, Mucius Scaevola, Marcus Curtius, Titus Manlius Torquatus, Titus Manlius (son of Torquatus), Marcus Valerius Corvus, and Marcus Calphurnius (figs. 3–10)—exemplify military valor offered in pious self-sacrifice to ensure the survival of the populus Romanus. From this unbroken chain of virtue into which the exempla virtutis have subsumed their identities and very lives, issues the history of famous deeds that, as Goltzius’s opening and closing plates imply, leads ineluctably to the latter-day imperium over which Rudolf II presides as Christian imperator and modern paragon of virtue. In this paper, I want to examine how Goltzius, having altered his [End Page 1090] manner of line in the mid-1580s, marked this transit in the Roman Heroes, figuring his burin-hand in and through the hand that is manu fortissimus (most brave by force of arms). He commits his burin to illustrating the sword, applies artisanal virtue to the task of memorializing military virtus, in order to convert virtus into a trope of artifice. Playing upon the ancient notion that the hand is the instrument that secures decus (glory, honor, beauty), both of men and things—enshrined in Ovid’s martial manu vincere (to conquer with the hand) and Virgil’s irenic quale manus addunt ebori decus (the hands ennoble ivory) 2—Goltzius transforms service to the imperial theme into an assertion of his supreme authority as inventor, engraver, and publisher. To justify these assertions, I shall begin by reading the Roma Triumphans and Fame and History, which function respectively as allegorical exordium and excursus, establishing the thematics of virtue that is Goltzius’s primary concern. I then turn to the Roman heroes themselves, who embody valences of the hand already explicit in the texts of Livy and Valerius Maximus. Asking how Goltzius appeals to Rudolf II’s sense that he was ex utroque Caesar, supreme in battle and chief patron of the arts, I conclude by arguing that Goltzius, who positions himself at the threshold between the hand’s instrumentalities, its grasp upon the burin and the sword, aims finally to trump Roman virtue with Dutch virtuosity. He wins the implied paragone of ancients and moderns through his inimitable command of one of the nova reperta (new inventions unknown to the ancients), the art of engraving. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Hendrick Goltzius, Roma Triumphans from the Roman Heroes, 1586, engraving, 318 x 232 mm (Photo: Warburg Institute). Embellished by the imperial arms and the arms of Holland surmounted by their respective crowns, the Roma Triumphans depicts the personification of Rome as Roma aeterna, raised high upon a podium, holding a sceptre-staff in her right hand and a winged victory in her outstretched left hand (fig. 1).3 She sits enthroned upon a trophy that incorporates captured arms and standards, as well as the fasces, the tightly wrapped bundle of rods and an ax that signifies not only the sovereignty of law but also concord, the peaceful rule that, we may presume, results from Rome’s imperious sway. The figure of Roma, which would later be incorporated into other Rudolfine allegories, rises above personifications of the continents Europe, Africa, and Asia. 4 Accompanied by their attributes—the bull (perhaps an allusion to Ovid’s tale of the rape of Europa), crocodile, and lion—they hold urns filled with continental riches which they prepare to offer as tribute. Metaphors of female beauty, these urns distill the shapes of the...