Dutch artist Goltzius finally gets his due

NEW YORK, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Before the Golden Age of Dutch Art (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Ter Borch) there was Hendrick Goltzius, whose paintings, drawings and master engravings were all but forgotten but are now rightfully acclaimed in the form of a magnificent retrospective exhibition.

Some 164 works by Goltzius (1558-1617), an artist influenced by the elegant artiness of the Italian Mannerist school, are on display at the Metropolitan Museum through Sept. 7 and will travel to the Toledo Museum in Ohio in October. This is the first major exhibition of the artist's life work ever mounted and was organized by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Metropolitan and Toledo museums.

In his time, Goltzius' engravings were so popular that even princely collectors had to stand in line to purchase his virtuosic prints of classical gods, goddesses and heroes, Biblical subjects, nature studies and portraits, some of them exquisite miniatures. He was such a celebrity that he had to travel incognito to avoid the unwanted attentions of his admiring public, something no contemporary artist has to worry about.

What Goltzius had to offer was the pumped-up Mannerist style that made his engravings of Hercules look like exaggerations of today's Incredible Hulk. Although his figures were graceful, they had elongated limbs and were posed artificially against constricted backgrounds. Working with a sharp burin on copper plate, he developed swelling and tapering engraving lines that were supremely expressive and became the hallmark of his style.

The engravings in the show include his best and make up half the exhibition. They amply illustrate why Goltzius was the foremost artistic personality of the Netherlands before the advent of Dutch realism in the 17th century.

But it is his drawings that are truly the stars of this show, including a cross-hatched clinical sketch of his deformed drawing hand, severely burned in a fire, that is as involving as Albrecht Durer's beloved "Praying Hands." Goltzius was acquainted with Durer's work and influenced by it.

Goltzius established his own print house in Haarlem after making engravings for publishers in Antwerp, the center for print production in the Low Countries. Before making his only trip to Italy in 1590-91, he already had turned to models of Italian art in pen and ink drawings lightly touched with watercolor. One example is the tableau titled "The Judgment of Midas," displayed along with its engraving.

He deeply impressed artists in Rome with his drawings from antique sculpture and the Renaissance masters. One of the finest is a black chalk study of the so-called Belvedere Torso in the Vatican collection and a red chalk study of the Farnese Hercules. He also sketched gorgeous alpine vistas in ink, portraits of artists he met in Rome, Venice and Florence in colored chalks, and a forceful self-portrait of himself at 32, fashionably mustached and goateed.

The most elaborate portrait drawing in the style of an engraving in the show is titled "Youth With a Skull and a Tulip," Goltzius' last great drawing, depicting a dandy in a plumed hat holding the stem of a tulip like a pen against the cranium of a skull. It was inspired by a self-portrait by Lucas van Leyden, whom Goltzius admired above all other Dutch artists, engraved nearly a century before Goltzius' 1614 work. The sheer physical energy that went into this brown ink drawing covering every inch of the paper surface is impressive.

But 15 years before he drew this work, Goltzius turned his engraving business over to a stepson in order to concentrate on developing his talents as a painter.

Unfortunately, his large and lushly spectacular paintings - 14 out of the 50 he completed are on view - are not as inspired as his drawings and etchings. They tend to be studies of fleshy gods in lustful situations, recalling the work of Peter Paul Rubens but lacking Rubens' tactful sensual artistry. Nevertheless, they were popular with Goltzius' patrons such as Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

One of the paintings, "Danae," showing the naked Argive princess showered with Zeus' gold coins, is inarguably a masterpiece. The artist himself was so pleased with it that he inscribed his name on the lid of Danae's moneybox. The painting was acquired by the Los Angeles County Art Museum in 1984, one of only a few Goltzius paintings to enter an American collection. Another, a study of Christ titled "Man of Sorrows," has been loaned to the show by the Princeton University Art Museum.

By the time Goltzius died at 59, tastes in art were changing, and he was in total eclipse by the end of the 17th century. As the first Dutch artist to draw realistic landscapes, his chief influence seemed to be on landscape painters of the next generation such as Jacob van Ruisdael and his pupil, Meindert Hobbema. Now that Goltzius has been rediscovered, watch for many more of his works to surface and prices for them to soar in the art market.