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Like many northern European artists in the sixteenth century, the Dutchman Hendrick Goltzius traveled south to Rome to study classical sculptures firsthand. His forty-three surviving drawings after antique statuary from this trip appear to have been intended for a portfolio of reproductive engravings. In the end, however, Goltzius engraved only three plates, which were not printed until shortly after his death. This engraving—said to represent the second-century Roman emperor Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, in his preferred guise as Hercules—is an eighteenth-century impression in red ink. It may have been printed this way to mimic Goltzius’s original drawing in red chalk, a medium very pleasing to Rococo tastes. |
