Pietà (Lamentation of the Virgin)

Hendrik Goltzius was known as an artistic chameleon, so brilliant an imitator of past styles that his prints could be mistaken for those of previous masters. His celebrated engraving of the Pietà—which has been called the pinnacle of Goltzius’s artistic development and a prime example of his masterful engraving technique—is an open homage to Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), one of the artists he most admired, and at the same time an affirmation of Goltzius’s own virtuosity. The composition of the figures may derive from the Pietà of Michelangelo (1475–1564), which Goltzius would have seen on a visit to Rome in 1590.