Tantalus, from "The Four Disgracers"

Hendrick Goltzius

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This extraordinary tondo is one of the most daring works to have resulted from the brief collaboration between Goltzius and the painter Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem. The common bond of the series of four fallers is that each one tried to enter the realm of the gods and was punished for his hubris. Although he worked from Cornelisz's designs, Goltzius should be given just as much credit as the painter for the striking nature of these scenes. His bold, meshed, swelling strokes lend the figures a powerful presence and masterfully evoke the reflections of light and shadow on their rippling muscles. The sense of confusion surrounding the falls of Ixion (54.601.338(65)) and Tantalus (seen here) into their hellish surroundings is heightened by repeated patterns of swirling lines. The four seemingly varied poses are in fact more or less the same pose (one leg bent down, the other raised; one arm raised, the other lowered) viewed from different angles.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art