Dutch draughtsman, printmaker, print publisher and painter. He was an important artist of the transitional period between the late 16th century and the early 17th, when the conception of art in the northern Netherlands was gradually changing. Goltzius was initially an exponent of Mannerism, with its strong idealization of subject and form. Together with the other two well-known Dutch Mannerists, Karel van Mander I and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, he introduced the complex compositional schemes and exaggeratedly contorted figures of Bartholomäus Spranger to the northern Netherlands. These three artists are also supposed to have established an academy in Haarlem in the mid-1580s, but virtually nothing is known about this project. In 1590 Goltzius travelled to Italy, thereafter abandoning Spranger as a model and developing a late Renaissance style based on a broadly academic and classicizing approach. Later still, his art reflected the growing interest in naturalism that emerged in the northern Netherlands from c. 1600. In fact, Goltzius’s ability to emulate the style and technique of different artists and to adapt to current trends earned him distinction as a ‘Proteus of changing shapes’.
SOURCE: Oxford Art Online. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T033104?q=hendrick+goltzius&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit. Accessed: 18th January, 2017.
