Het Beeld van Hercules Farnese, Op de Rug Gezien by Hendrick Goltzius - Greek Hero

Het Beeld van Hercules Farnese, Op de Rug Gezien

Het beeld van Hercules Farnese, op de rug gezien (The statue of Hercules Farnese, seen from the back ) c1592 by Dutch Artist Hendrick Goltzius (1558 – 1617); an Engraver, Draftsman, Painter and Print Publisher.

This is an engraving of one of the most famous depictions of the mighty Greek Hero Herakles or Heracles; the Farnese Hercules, Roman marble statue, based on ancient Greek Mythology of the son of Zeus, King of the Gods and the mortal woman Alcmene.

The engraving is done from a back view and shows all the bulging muscle of Hercules, as he leans against a stone column of a very large club; while two patrons of the arts look up at the marble creation that stands on a pedestal with the words Hercules Victor.

Het Beeld van Hercules Farnese, Op de Rug Gezien is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image.

Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org

Hendrick was born near Venlo in Bracht or Millebrecht, a village then in the Duchy of Julich, his family moved to Duisburg when he was 3 years old and when he came of age studied painting on glass under his father for a number of years.

He then study under the Dutch Polymath Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522 – 1590), with whom he studied engraving.

In 1577 he then moved with Coornhert to Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, where he would remain for the rest of his life; and for a while in Haarlem he would work with Philip Galle (1537 – 1612), to engrave a set of prints of the history of Lucretia.

Side Note: Lucretia; anglicized as Lucrece, was a noblewoman in ancient Rome, whose rape by Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin) and subsequent suicide precipitated a rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy and led to the transition of Roman government from a kingdom to a republic.

Due to a fire injury to his right hand, that Hendrick suffered as a baby causing it to be malformed, he became adept due to this injury to holding the burin (sharp engraving tool) as he was forced to to draw with the large muscles of his arm and shoulder.

Hendrick was a master of the “swelling line” and also a pioneer of the “dot and lozenge” technique, where dots are placed in the middle of lozenge shaped spaces created by cross-hatching to further refine tonal shading.