Before Picasso, it is impossible to think of a major European artist of more protean character than Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617). By 1580 he had established a high reputation in Haarlem for miniature portraits in which sensitive faces, soft beards and crisp ruffs are drawn in metalpoint or engraved - in one case engraved in gold - with delicate precision. It is hard to believe that they are the work of the same artist who, a decade later in Italy, made large, bold portraits in coloured chalks of himself, his dog and his new friends. But the style of Goltzius's work is determined not only by the date he made it or the medium he employed, but by its subject matter. He widened the gap between art as observation and as invention. And in the splendid exhibition of his drawings, prints and paintings at the Toledo Museum of Art until 4 January we are more often in the company of gods, heroes and personifications with small heads, large thighs and remarkably elastic anatomy, than among portraits or specimens of natural history (the John Dory, a monkey, a dromedary).

LRB 23 October 2003 | PDF Download