GOLTZIUS, Hendrick
(b. 1558, Mühlbrecht, d. 1617, Haarlem)

Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert

c. 1590
Engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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 (Dürer, 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.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.