Hendrick Goltzius
Dutch, 1558-1617
after Bartholomeus Spranger (South Netherlandish, 1546-1611)

The Holy Family,
1589
Engraving

Museum purchase
1996.9.1

A virtuoso who refined the gleaming swell and taper of the engraved line to the point of gracefully relentless genius, Goltzius was influenced by the poetically contorted compositions of Spranger. Goltzius' dynamic sensuality does not, however, contradict the touching piety of the divine family. Joseph seems to anxiously watch for danger, while the Virgin simultaneously communes with her child and presents His body to the viewer. The pear in her left hand symbolizes the Incarnate Christ and alludes to His loving nature. And indeed, the Virgin literally points to the gendered embodiment of Christ's humanity, thus giving evidence of the fusion of the Divine and the human. The power of the Virgin was seen as second only to that of her Son. Though Mother and Son are divine virgins, their gender is revealed as part of their paradoxical power (one thinks also of the Circumcision of Christ, which foreshadows the Crucifixion). Though supremely chaste, Virgin and Child are far from neuter, at least at this period. This is not Victorian religiosity.


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