Hendrick Goltzius

By the 1580s, Hendrick Goltzius had radically altered the engraver’s formulas for producing shape, volume, and tone. Rather than a single contour around the figure, here lines terminate to form the figure’s outline. Lozenges made from crossed swelling lines on Apollo’s body are interspersed with dots to moderate the transition from dark to light. Also evident is the s-curve, a mark used by Albrecht Dürer, but now swelled to follow the complicated volumes of clouds and activate the surface with swirling movement. Goltzius’s inventiveness as a calligrapher is also on display in the inscription around Apollo’s head, which describes the Sun God’s ability to dispel shadows and illuminate the globe.

The exaggerated musculature of the sculptural Sun God and the twisting bands of clouds around the figure were inspired by the style of Bartholomeus Spranger, court artist to Emperor Rudolf II at Prague, whose drawings were sent to Haarlem.