Hendrik Goltzius

Hendrik or Hendrick Goltz , known in the Latinized form of its name, Goltzius (1558 - January 1st 1617), is a draftsman, painter and engraver Dutch. Its engravings, very appraisals, resulting from its own drawings or transposing works of its contemporaries, contributed effectively to the diffusion of the Maniérisme in Europe.

Biography

Training and social rise of a famous engraver

Born in 1558 in Mühlbracht (auj. Bracht-amndts-Niederrhein, close to Venlo) in the Duchy from Juliers - to the border of the Spanish Netherlands and the Germanic Empire, Hendrick Goltz belonged to a true dynasty of artists. His/her grandfather, Hubert Goltz the Old man, was indeed already painter, while its great-uncle, Syberdt Goltz was a talented sculptor. The father of Hendrick, Jean Goltz, was also painter (or painter and glass maker) and his other wire, Jean, embraced the career of painter and glass maker. The cousin of Hendrick, Hubert Goltzius (1526-1583) was as for him an artist and a famous antiquist.

Whereas it was old of hardly a year, a fall in burning coals left him the paralyzed right hand (infirmity which it will describe with virtuosity in a drawing of 1588). It however showed an early talent for the drawing and, in 1575, after having initially followed the teaching of his father, it entered like apprentice the workshop of a taken refuge Dutch engraver to Xanten, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, which it followed to Holland, settling with Haarlem in 1577. First of all charged to transpose of the drawings and the tables in engravings for the account with its Masters (Coornhert then a pupil of this last, Philippe Galle), it quickly became able to imitate many artistic styles. About 1579-1580, he married a widowed rich person of which he adopted the son, Jacob Matham (1571-1631). The fortune of his wife enabled him to create her own workshop of engraver, in Haarlem, in 1582. This company was going soon to diffuse its productions through all Europe, thus breaking the monopoly of from Antwerp editors.

Engravings of Goltzius consequently had retentissment considerable through all the continent and constituted a true mine of iconographic innovations for a great number of artists.

It is in 1583 qu ' it became acquainted with a taken refuge Flemish artist with Haarlem, Carel van Mander. This last - which was going to become the first biographer of Goltzius - made him discover the work of Bartholomeus Spranger, whose boldness mannerist was going to have a determining influence on the artistic sensitivity of the young engraver. In collaboration with a local painter, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Goltzius and Van Mander founded a academy of painting intended to make it possible to the Dutch artists to compete with their Italian fellow-members.

The voyage in Italy (1590-1591)

In spite of its success, Goltzius was struck of “Mélancolie” (depression) and, in spite of the alarming deterioration of its health condition, it chooses the voyage like remedy and took the way of Italy to the autumn 1590. Its voyage, which it chooses to make incognito while passing by Hamburg and Munich, returned indeed health to him and allowed him to enrich its artistic resources. This Italian stay, which places Goltzius in the tradition of the artists Romanistes Dutch, was going to exert a determining influence on the evolution of its Article.

Arrived at Rome on January 10th, 1591 after being last by Venice, Bologna and Florence, it was absorbed so much there by the study and the drawing of the masterpieces of ancient Rome (collected in a Carnet of Roman drafts including/understanding drawings with the black stone or chalk white on blue paper and of the drawings to blood on blank paper) which it was not alarmed at an epidemic of plague which devastated the city then. It made in particular an impressive study of back of the Hercules Farnèse which was going to be the subject of a engraving in 1617. This work testifies at the same time to the interest of the artist for the masterpieces of Antiquity and research which it devoted to the anatomy and to returned of the relief. In the same way, the copies (engraved in 1592) which it made of the frescos in trompe-l'oeil realized on Quirinal by Polidoro da Caravaggio, testify to this last concern, the illusion of the relief having been obtained by means of an Clearly-obscure innovative. It also engraved the Isaïe of Raphaël.

It left Rome in April to go to Naples then to Pouzzoles in company of two compatriots. Returned in Rome by the pontifical galères, then by the terrestrial road (a storm having constrained the ship to slacken with Gaète), Goltzius there met many artists and carried out the portrait (with the black stone and the blood one with white appreciations and coloured washings) of several of them (and in particular of its compatriots Jan van der Straet or Giambologna ).

It set out again of Rome on August 3rd, 1591 and returned at his place passing some by Bologna, Venice, Thirty and Munich. Its return to Haarlem however caused a relapse against which Goltzius had to fight by means of woman or the goat's milk consumption and, especially, by the practice of daily walks.

The “masterpiece” (1593-1594)

It carried out between a 1593 and 1594 cycle of six boards - known under the name of “masterpiece of Goltzius” - illustrating the life of the Virgin and the first episodes of the childhood of Christ. It had endeavoured there to reproduce the styles of various Masters such as Dürer, Lucas de Leyde, Baroche, the Parmesan, Raphaël (painter) or Bassan. The feature To last was so well imitated in the board of the Circoncision that the facetious engraver benefitted from it to play a turn with the experts in their making accept the existence of a new work of the German Master. It could prove besides its trickery only while pointing out with the deceived experts that the decoration was that of the Saint-Bavon church of Haarlem and in their announcing the inclusion of a self-portrait to the third plan. It assembled a similar hoax while making pass its Adoration of the magi for an engraving of Lucas de Leyde.

A late career of painter (1600-1617)

Although it used fabrics prepared with oil as of the years 1580 to carry out great compositions with the feather, it is only in 1600, whereas it was already 42 years old, that Goltzius was devoted to the oil-base paint. First of all deeply influenced by art Mannerist refined Bartholomeus Spranger, of which it engraved several famous works, Goltzius very quickly adopted the style plus naturalist specific to the artists of the Académie of Haarlem.

Goltzius had as pupils J. of Gheyn (1565-1629), his/her adoptive son Jacob Matham (1571-1631) like Pierre de Jode (1570-1634) and Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633).

He died on January 1st, 1617 and was buried in the Saint-Bavon church of Haarlem, that one even which had been used as framework with the Circoncision of 1594.

Currency and emblem

Conscious of the value of its art and animated will of independence specific to the creators impassioned and satisfied, Goltzius adopted for currency Eer boven Golt , which means “the honor literally is with the top of gold” or, by pun, “the honor is on Golt”. It illustrated this currency in 1607, on the page of an album preserved at the royal Library of $the Hague, by an emblem representing a cherub or a winged little genius crowned of bay-trees perched on a hermetic Caducée surmounting bags filled with gold coins.

Random links: