Getty Museum
Bust of an Angel
Creator
Hendrick GoltziusDutch Artist · 1558–1617
All works by this person →Hendrick Goltzius had a "compulsion to make ostentatious display of his virtuosity," a scholar once wrote. If Goltzius showed off, who can blame him? After all, he had the use of only one hand: his right hand had been maimed in a fire, and he was completely unable to extend his fingers. Goltzius arrived in Haarlem at age nineteen. Two years later, he married a rich widow who helped him set up a wo
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1609
- Medium
- Black chalk, oiled black chalk, heightened with white chalk
- Culture
- Dutch
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
The large head of an angel in profile nearly fills the sheet of paper on which it is drawn. The grand scale of the image as well as the broad handling of the chalk are characteristic of Hendrick Goltzius's tendency to explore concerns more usually associated with painting in his later drawings. The figure in this drawing closely resembles the Archangel Gabriel in Goltzius's painting in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow; like this drawing, the painting is signed and dated 1609. This drawing was not made in preparation for the painting, however. Like several other large imaginary heads and figures Goltzius produced in this period, it was probably made as a finished work of art in its own right.
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