The Farnese Hercules
Engraving c1592
Size of original & reproduction 411 x 288mm, 16¼ x 115/8 inches
Goltzius was the outstanding printmaker of Northern Mannerism. In his lifetime he was as famous as a painter as an engraver, and to a strong sense of composition he added a virtuoso engraving technique, unexcelled in the depiction of surface form and texture.
He made great use of lines that swell and narrow, whilst curving at the same time. Almost the whole surface of the statue is cross-hatched (that is, there are intersecting lines in different directions), and further variations of tonal shading are achieved by dots in the spaces between the intersecting lines.
Although the whole image is made from lines (and dots) the overall result is almost wholly tonal in effect. Even the outline edge of Hercules’ body is not defined by a line along the contour for most of its length; the cross-hatching just stops and under close examination (for example of the edges of the leg to the right) the edge of the body consists of a series of jagged ends of lines.
Goltzius has been much criticised for leading printmaking away from exploring the possibilities of image-making through lines that are seen as lines to image-making with lines so numerous they are seen as volume, tone or shading.
Certainly his techniques were taken up over the next three centuries by hosts of artists and craftsmen who mostly produced work of little or no artistic value, and most of the work of real artistic importance using this system was produced in the fifty years of so after the date of this print. But Goltzius can hardly be blamed for this, and the brilliance of his achievement speaks for itself.
The two tourists at the base both give a scale to the statue, and emphasise that the statue is a statue and the scene takes place in a current-day reality. This sets up an interplay between the idealism of the late Roman statue and the realism of the setting. As usual in the Baroque, the ideal is shown as more impressive, but both elements are there.
The statue was set then up in the arcade of the Palazzo Farnese and in reality buildings would have been visible in the background of this view.
Goltzius saw the Farnese Hercules, a Roman sculpture excavated from the Baths of Caracalla, completed in 216AD, on his visit to Rome in 1590-1. He made this engraving shortly after his return to Harlem, based on drawings made in Italy. It was not published until after his death some twenty-five years later.
It shows Hercules holding the apples of the Hesperides behind his back, with the skin of the Nemaean lion draped over his club (invisible from this angle) which from the front can be seen to rest on the rock or tree-stump to his left.
The statue is now in the Archaeological Museum in Naples, and is a Roman copy of a famous bronze Greek original of the C4th BC by Lysippus. In fact the legs were Renaissance substitutions, as the originals were only excavated some years after the rest of the statue. According to Vasari, Michelangelo persuaded the Farnese that the modern ones were just as good.
In 1589, just before his trip to Italy, Goltzius engraved his own composition, known as The Great Hercules, who is too over-muscled and Flemish-looking to be taken wholly seriously
Click image to enlarge
Size of reproduction:
411 x 288mm; 16¼ x 11 5/8 inches
Print price:
£80 €115 $125
£ and € print prices include UK VAT at 17.5%. No UK VAT on Books.
© The Trustees of the British Museum 2006 PD 1854-05-13-104
