Hendrick Goltzius
Dutch, 1558-1617
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-1588), English Nobleman, Governor-General of the United Provinces in 1585-87
INV-4166
Hendrick Goltzius
Dutch, 1558-16171586
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-1588), English Nobleman, Governor-General of the United Provinces in 1585-87
Hendrick Goltzius Dutch, 1558-1617 →engravingprint
Date
1586
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/sheet, trimmed within platemark: 6.1 × 5.2 cm (2 7/16 × 2 1/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Morris Woolf
Like the related genre of painted miniatures, small-scale portrait prints require close inspection and delicate handling. The round format of these prints invites comparisons to oval miniatures and cast medallions. In the case of Goltzius’s portrait of Dudley (and other examples from the artist’s oeuvre), the print matrix—a gold plate—was itself a work of art, and only a handful of impressions were pulled so as to preserve the surface of the soft precious metal. The double status of the print matrix also explains why the text appears reversed in the print; on the face of the gold plate, the letters would still appear in the correct direction.
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