Two Male Heads after the Antique, the Sons of Laocoön
c. 1605
Medium
Red chalk on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
16 × 25.2 cm (6 5/16 × 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
drawings (visual works)
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
224216
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Surviving drawings in other collections prove that Hendrick Goltzius studied firsthand the famed Laocoön group, an ancient Roman sculpture unearthed to great fanfare in the early 1500s. The monument was widely revered as an ideal representation of human torment, made more famous by printed representations. Goltzius created this red-chalk drawing at least a decade after his visit to Rome in 1591, employing specific motifs for his own expressive ends. Extracting the faces of Laocoön’s sons from t...
About the Artist
Hendrick Goltzius · 1558–1617
Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617) was the most celebrated engraver of the Northern Renaissance and a pivotal figure in Dutch Mannerism. Born near the German-Dutch border, Goltzius transformed printmaking into a virtuoso art form through his revolutionary 'swelling line' technique, where the burin was manipulated to create lines of varying thickness that produced unprecedented tonal effects and three-d...