HENDRIK GOLTZIUS (CIRCLE OF) The Head of Laocoön as a Fragment<>.
Pen and brown ink on thin cream laid paper. 375x230 mm; 14 7/8x9 inches. With a study of a sleeping cat in black chalk, verso.
Since its discovery in 1506, the Laocoön group assumed a prominent place as a source and model of artistic inspiration. We know that casts and copies, particularly of Laocoön's expressive head, were readily available during the Renaissance and later.
The current drawing, in the style of the famous Federkunststücke<> produced in the circle of Goltzius, was almost certainly drawn from an actual sculptural arrangement in an artist's studio and not copied from a print. Most prints show the entire group and only one or two engravings exist of the head alone, however it is shown from a different viewpoint and its character as a fragment is concealed.
The verso provides a contrast in style to the artifice of the recto; in an informal moment, a domestic situation has been quickly sketched on the page and provides us with an example of a drawing naer het leven<>, similar to Goltzius's animal studies on a smaller scale and with the much finer technique of silver point.
