The marble Hercules that Hendrick Goltzius drew is a statue with a good story of its own. In 1546, workmen digging in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome found a colossal figure of the hero, resting on his club after finishing his labors. The legs below the knee were missing, so a sculptor made replacements. Years later, the original legs turned up in a well on a nearby estate. The two halves were united in Naples, where the statue still stands.
Goltzius saw it in Rome in 1590 and 1591. He was a successful engraver from Haarlem who traveled to Italy under an assumed name, Hendrik van Bracht, apparently to be left alone. His right hand had been badly burned as a child and was permanently disfigured, but he was one of the finest engravers in Europe, and he turned the injury into a particular style of cutting the copper plate with swelling, muscular lines.
The print he made, Hercules Victor, is unusual. Most artists drew the statue from the front. Goltzius chose to show it from behind, all rippling back and legs, one hand secretly gripping something behind the hero's back. The statue's hidden hand holds the golden apples of the Hesperides, the prize of his eleventh labor, and Goltzius makes us look past the muscles to find them. The lines of the engraving follow the swell of the muscles like a map.
At the base, two small figures look up at the giant, a human-scale reminder of its size. The caption plate names the hero.
The Farnese Hercules was copied by countless artists. Goltzius's version is one of the best, because it turns a statue into a drawing with the weight of living flesh.
Goltzius's Farnese Hercules appears on our: