57 HENDRICK GOLTZIUS Dutch, 1558­1617 Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, heightened with white bodycolor 41.6 x 31.3 cm (16 x 12 5/16 in.) Cat. I, no. 107; 84.GG.810 In 1583, Goltzius was introduced to the drawings of his contemporary Bartholomaus Spranger. Court painter to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of Prague, Spranger was a figure painter renowned for his mythological compositions featuring deliberately complex, erotic poses. Goltzius had an extraordinary talent for mastering the styles of other artists. So taken by Spranger was he that he not only produced virtuoso engravings after Spranger's drawings but also devised compositions of his own invention based on Spranger's manner. The present drawing is a full­scale model for Goltzius's largest and most complex engraving in the Spranger style, published in 1585. The composition, entirely Goltzius's own, is based on the story recounted in both Homer's Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Apollo spotted the illicit lovers Mars and Venus and informed Venus's husband, Vulcan, who forged a net in which to entrap them, as seen in the right background of the drawing. In the foreground, Vulcan has ensnared the couple and called in Hercules, Apollo, Jupiter, Neptune, and other Olympians to ridicule them. This virtuosic orchestration of two registers of nudes, in a composition of extravagant complexity made to appear effortless, helped secure Goltzius's reputation as one of the premier Northern European figural artists of his day. 72 DUTCH AND FLEMISH SCHOOLS