Posing in the Prints of Hendrick Goltzius and His Circle

In 1586 Hendrick Goltzius engraved the so‐called Roman Heroes, a series of eight figures in the costume of ancient warriors. As the frontispiece describes, the series was intended to impress and flatter the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Juxtaposition of ancient heroes and living rulers had been a staple of Renaissance imagery since early fifteenth century Florence. The priority and mastery of rendering the human body had been fundamental to Renaissance art for at least as long. And since the early sixteenth century, thematic series of single figures had provided engravers with a special opportunity to demonstrate their inventiveness as well as imply the superiority of two‐dimensional representation. In this long development, Goltzius’s series was distinguished by the arbitrariness of his postures, their divorce from specific meaning, and the virtuosity of his system of engraving.

The Roman Heroes inspired a genre of extremely stylized variation upon established, almost banal theme. A few years later Goltzius would return to the most common theme, Christ and the Apostles. Meanwhile, his most refined follower, Jacques de Gheyn, had translated a military company into an absurdly graceful ballet. Right after, De Gheyn took on designs by the leading painter and intellectual Karel van Mander, creating his own strangely muscular series of Christ and the Apostles. Meanwhile, Goltzius’s son‐in‐law, Jacob Matham, interpreted The Vices in a rather amiable, domestic spirit. Whatever the ostensible subject, these series were conceived for the viewer’s pleasure in the possibilities of strict formal variation and sheer technical prowess. They are among the last and most axiomatic demonstrations of Mannerism, the sophisticated, self‐consciously virtuoso style that developed in Italy during the second quarter of the sixteenth century and dominated
European art at its conclusion.