Hendrick Goltzius Research Articles

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

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...

'Self-Imaging and the engraver's virtù: Hendrick Goltzius's Pietà of 1598'

'Self-Imaging and the engraver's virtù: Hendrick Goltzius's Pietà of 1598'

Le graveur Jacob Matham et les chambres de rhétorique à Haarlem

The engraver Jacob Matham and the debating chambers of Harlem. The engraver Jacob Matham (Harlem, 1571-1631) took over the Harlem atelier of his father by adoption, Hendrick Goltzius, in 1598. His rapid and successful integration into the town’s circles of notables and intellectuals is attested by several emblems, often inspired by motifs of Goltzius or Karel van Mander. These emblems were commissioned by the town’s leading debating chambers — De Witte Angierken, the Pelicanists and the Wijngaarddranken — or were festive engravings for the Christmas guilds of Saint Hubert and Saint Jacques. These pious, allegorical compositions, along with a curious, unpublished religious engraving made up of pictographic signs, are characteristic of the social and emblematic life of Holland during the first third of the seventeenth century.

Keulen als toevluchtsoord voor Nederlandse kunstenaars (1567-1612)

AbstractIn the latter half of the 16th century a conspicuously large number of Netherlandisch artists emigrated to Cologne. The majority came from the south Netherlands after 1567, forced to leave for political and religious reasons during Alva's reign of terror. Worsening economical conditions were another reason. Cologne offered good prospects for immigrants. Most of the Dutch artists who settled there were engravers, designers and publishers of prints, professions which were much in demand. Skilled native artists were rare in Cologne, and the wealthy, art-loving patricians and prosperous burghers were eager customers. From a different point of view, though, Cologne was not the ideal place for refugees. The city was a bastion of Catholicism, and the Netherlandish emigrants were only tolerated on condition that they showed no signs of their Protestant faith. Protestants were regularly arrested and expelled. Only Lutherans were treated with a modicum of lenience; although they, too, were forbidden to practise their religion, they were eligible for citizenship. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585, when a fresh stream of emigrants descended on Cologne, things became even more difficult for non-Catholics, many of whom were forced to leave the city around 1600. Adriaan de Weert (d. ca. 1590) went to Cologne in about 1567. Despite being a Lutheran (in 1579 he was arrested during a sermon), he joined the Cologne guild of painters and was granted citizenship in 1577. De Weert's work is best known from prints after his designs engraved by his close friend Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert (fig. 2). Coornhert, who had fled from Haarlem to the Rhineland in 1568, also invented subjects for the two friends' prints, and moreover inspired a few moral-philosophical prints after De Weert which were probably engraved by Hendrick Goltzius (figs. 3 and 4). Their prints reflect a personal, unorthodox and anti-clerical view of religion (fig. 2), and are unlikely to have been published in Catholic Cologne. Isaac Duchemin, who like De Weert came from Brussels, made prints of De Weert's more conventional designs (figs. 1 and 6). A later Duchemin print after his own design (1612; fig. 15) shows a horde of ignorant donkeys practising the arts, lampooning the situation of the arts and sciences in Cologne in a period when the last dissident artists and scientists had died or been expelled and the heyday of culture was over. Frans Hogenberg, who was banished by Alva in 1568 and sought admission to Cologne in 1570, was another active Lutheran. During the aforementioned gathering in 1579 he, too, was arrested, but let off with a fine. Hogenberg may originally have had Calvinist sympathies; a print made while he was still in Antwerp (fig. 7) depicts Predestination. He joined the Cologne painters' guild, and was a highly productive engraver and publisher until his death in 1590. Notably his town views and history prints of contemporary war activities and other political events (figs. 8 and 9) were held in high esteem. Crispijn dc Passe the Elder opted for his baptist faith after the fall of Antwerp (1585) and was compelled to leave the city. After a brief sojourn in Aachen in 1589 he moved that same year to Cologne, where he published and engraved a large number of prints. Some were his own designs (fig. i 3), but more often those of Maartcn de Vos, his wife's uncle (figs. 11-12). Despite his friendship with such well-known Protestants as Carel Utenhoven and Matthias Quad, De Passe seems to have been careful to keep out of trouble. His prints catered to the taste of a conservative, Catholic elite, and he endeavoured to gain the favour of prominent citizens of Cologne by dedicating prints to them (fig. 14). However, the city grew increasingly intolerant of the Protestant immigrants. During a campaign to flush them out, especially the baptists, De Passe was registered in 1610 and along with all the other baptists had to leave the city in 1611. He settled in Utrecht, where his prints were published from 1612 on. Catholic Dutch artists also emigrated to Cologne. The public's hostile attitude towards Willem van Tetrode's work (his recently completed high altar in Delft was destroyed in the iconoclasm of 1573) induced the sculptor to seek commissions from Cologne patricians a successful venture, as it turned out. The Catholic painter Geldorp Gortzius of Louvain became Cologne's favourite portraitist (fig. 10). He lived there from 1579 until his death in 1619), holding an administrative post and living in financial circumstances which he would never have enjoyed in the south Netherlands, where there was fierce competition among the many painters.

Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library

Within its chronological limits (primarily works by artists born before 1825), the Pierpont Morgan Library's collection of over 9,000 old master drawings is unexcelled in the United States. One of its important strengths is the group of some 800 Netherlandish drawings, among the finest such collections in this country. For many years, scholars have remarked admiringly on the Morgan holdings while lamenting the lack of any publication beyond exhibition catalogues and checklists. The Pierpont Morgan Library and Princeton University Press are now pleased to publish the first definitive catalogue of any aspect of the library's various collections: a comprehensive catalogue of its Netherlandish drawings. This catalogue encompasses over 340 drawings, divided into two sections. The larger section, comprising Netherlandish works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, numbers somewhat over two-thirds of the whole; the second section deals with Flemish works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the first section are drawings by such anonymous but important and gifted artists as the Master of the St. Barbara Legend and the Master of the Death of Absalom. Among works by known artists of the sixteenth century are examples by many of the leading draughtsmen of the period, such as Pieter Bruegel and his son Jan, Otto van Veen, Hendrick Goltzius, Jacques de Gheyn, Abraham Bloemaert, and Jacques and Roelandt Savery. Chief among the seventeenth-century Flemings are Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Anthony van Dyck, each well represented by a series of drawings. Also represented are Frans Snijders, Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Jan Cossiers, and David Teniers. All drawings are fullyillustrated, and there is also extensive reproduction of comparative material.

Memory and the kinship of writing and picturing in the early seventeenth-century Netherlands

Abstract In the Schilder-Boeck (Book on Picturing) of 1604, the groundbreaking text that established the canon of Netherlandish painters, draughts men, and engravers, embedding them within a vernacular theory and history of art, Karel van Mander evaluates three masters of visual memory — Michelangelo, Michiel Cocxie, and Hendrick Goltzius — appraising them in order to unfold the operations underlying canon formation. Van Mander offers a critique of Michelangelo and Cocxie, showing how their mnemonic practice fails to reconcile the competing demands of invention and imitation; to them van Mander opposes Goltzius, who uses memory to resolve originality into imitation, demonstrating that it is possible to fashion images uyt zijn selven (out of oneself) even while zijn selven schier verghetende (seeming entirely to forget oneself).1 In this paper I propose first, to describe briefly van Mander's critique of mnemonic practice; then to suggest how that critique, answered in the life and work of Goltzius, derive...

The "Pen Works" of Hendrick Goltzius

The "Pen Works" of Hendrick Goltzius

Hendrick Goltzius – Engraver, Designer and Publisher 1582-1600

Hendrick Goltzius – Engraver, Designer and Publisher 1582-1600

The Painting Technique of four Paintings hy Hendrick Goltzius and the Introduction of Coloured Ground ElIa Hendriks, Anne van

The Painting Technique of four Paintings hy Hendrick Goltzius and the Introduction of Coloured Ground ElIa Hendriks, Anne van

HENDRICK GOLTZIUS'S PROJECT OF REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING

Art HistoryVolume 13, Issue 4 p. 458-487 Article HENDRICK GOLTZIUS'S PROJECT OF REPRODUCTIVE ENGRAVING Walter Melion, Walter Melion The Johns Hopkins UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Walter Melion, Walter Melion The Johns Hopkins UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1990 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.1990.tb00412.xCitations: 4AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume13, Issue4December 1990Pages 458-487 RelatedInformation

"Man of Sorrows with a Chalice" by Hendrick Goltzius

"Man of Sorrows with a Chalice" by Hendrick Goltzius

"Job in Distress," a Newly-Discovered Painting by Hendrick Goltzius

"Job in Distress," a Newly-Discovered Painting by Hendrick Goltzius

Velázquez'sLas Hilanderas:A New Interpretation

This article presents evidence that Velazquez's painting known as Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) represents the Virtuous Lucretia, a model of chastity and domestic virtue extolled by Livy, Ovid, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, among others. Strong resemblances to Hendrick Goltzius's engravings illustrating “The History of Lucretia” support this interpretation. Perez de Moya's book, Varia historia de sanctas e illustres mvgeres en todo genero de virtudes (Madrid, 1583), in which Lucretia is the first representative of heroic chastity, indicates the interest in such themes and in Lucretia in particular in the culture to which Velazquez was heir.

Glasmålningar i Ulriksdals kapell

Summary Glass‐paintings in the Chapel of Ulriksdal, Royal country seat outside Stockholm by Aron Andersson. In the chapel of Ulriksdal, erected in 1865 by C. F. Scholander, several glass‐paintings from the collection of Charles XV were put in the windows. Generally speaking, their antecedents are unknown, and the author discusses some of the more valuable pieces of the very heterogeneous collection, and attemps to ascribe them to their different masters. A. "The Baptism of Christ” (fig. 1). A rare specimen of the early Gothic glasspainter‐school of Gotland from the end of the 13th century. A comparison with the design and colours of the glass in Etelhem Church, Gotland (fig. 2) makes it clear that Etelhemmaren ("the Etelhem man") must be the creator of this window also. A note that glass‐paintings were sold from Bunge Church, Gotland, to Ulriksdal in 1858 may refer to the window in question, but it cannot be proved, and in Bunge itself there are no relics of glass‐paintings by this master. Etelhemmaren is...