The Emperor Commodus as Hercules (after the antique)

Like many northern European artists in the sixteenth century, the Dutchman Hendrick Goltzius traveled south to Rome to study classical sculptures firsthand. Forty-three carefully observed drawings after antique statuary survive from his trip, recording over two dozen monuments; they appear to have been part of a plan for a portfolio of reproductive engravings. In the end, however, Goltzius engraved only three plates, which were not printed until shortly after his death. This engraving—commonly believed to represent the second-century Roman emperor Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, in his preferred guise as Hercules—is an eighteenth-century impression in red ink. It may have been printed this way to mimic Goltzius’s original drawing in red chalk, which also happened to be a medium very pleasing to Rococo tastes.