by Andreas Gormans[1]

ABSTRACT: The present contribution deals with Hendrick Goltzius’ magnificent pen drawing (penschilderij) of his right hand from 1588 whose extraordinary appearance according to what Karel van Mander reports originates in an injury of the artist’s extremity when he was a child. Against this background one can conclude that this drawing primarily has to be regarded as an artful highly ambitious document characterizing the way the great Haarlem artist beholds himself. Central point of reference in this act of a manual encoded self stylisation was the hand of the statue of Moses from the tomb of the Della Rovere Pope Julius II. in S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome manufactured by Michelangelo. Launching the paragone in this way the competition surmounts the works of art for it expands into the area of biographical writing because Goltzius in Van Mander’s vita is characterized as divine as Michelangelo in Vasari’s. Last but not least because Goltzius wins the open competition the injury of his hand finally has to be debunked as a component of one of the manifold biographical identities the Dutch artist was able to claim for himself with great souvereignty. So in a way the way Goltzius acts is a form of affected meekness.

The German idiom “watching fingers”, which is easy to understand in nearly every language, implies an act of exact observing and closely looking. Whoever claims this idiom literally gazes at slender extremities, but first and foremost puts oneself in relation to a person who consciously or unconsciously called upon this attention. Still the gazing itself is usually a very intentional action. Therefore the semantic conditioning of this idiom is universal; in short: everybody’s fingers could be watched.

 In particular members of highly competitive social groups did so, notably artists who sighted and controlled one another. Thereby first of all the heroes among them got into the focus, the artistic titans casting long shadows, out of which other artists wanted to emerge, competing with them taking them out and becoming heroes not the less themselves. One of the most significant "providers of shade" in art history was of course Michelangelo. He created magnificent pieces in drawing, fresco and architecture, but due to his self-conception after all in sculpture[2], a domain where he set unachievable standards for rivals such as Baccio Bandinelli[3] becoming a long-lasting reference point.

But not only the works of these artistic titans set standards, but also the hands that formed them came into the limelight. Michelangelo himself should have been convinced about this alliance between ingenium and an energetic hand, a conjunction which already in the middle of the 16^th century looked back on a long tradition[4].Already in his 1503 David he had focused on his own right hand; the addendum to the 1501 design drawing for this giant statue «Davicte cholla Fromba / e io collarcho / Michelangelo»[5]clearly relates the strength of David's slingshot hand defeating the giant to the strength of Michelangelo's stone-drilling hand overcoming the monstrous marble[6].With respect to this intelligent self-reference and the manual presence in this work of him one cannot wonder that the focus onto Michelangelo was sharpened, especially watching the fingers of the divino even more than before.

One who did so, eventually continuing and surpassing the fame of the Italian sculptor genius' hand was Hendrick Goltzius; this draftsman, engraver, and painter was born in 1558 near Venlo, later mainly working in Haarlem until his death in 1617. The medium, in which he was to add his episode to the history of demonstrating the artist’s hand was a drawing showing a hand (fig. 1)[7]whose execution represented a degree of individuality blasting everything what modern art theory had defined before. What Goltzius shows is a border crosser in front of a white setting, free of all diverting negligibilities, a hand like a portrait with its distinctive physiognomy. Next to the risen thumb one finds the kinked index finger which appears as being amputated; beneath this the middle finger in a strained and stiff composure. Together both the index and the middle finger form a conspicuous v-shaped opening whereas the ring finger masks the little finger which finally is buckled too. Moreover Goltzius exhibits a back of a hand like a topography composed of muscles and tendons with rolling hills, plains and valleys, performed in the subtle manner of landscape study, the back of a hand whose modeled blood vessels give the impression as if they want to compete against the ligature of the initials of Goltzius, who puts them at the beginning of the elaborated calligraphic inscription «HGoltzius · fecit. Anno · 1588»[8].In the history of early modern hand depiction Goltzius’ hand is a milestone. If Reznicek is right and the depicted hand is in fact «de hant van Goltzius»[9]it shows both, the hand and the hand writing, the picture of a tool and its work. In this case Goltzius’ hand is an effigy of his genius, a drawing like a prophecy because of the magnificent drawings and engravings it announced.

For this unique appearance Karel van Mander offers an explanation in his 1604 Schilder-Boeck. Due to his Goltzius biography the hand of the Haarlem graphic artist was crippled. When he was a little boy, Van Mander argues, Goltzius fell into the fire in the hearth, burnt his hands badly and as consequence of an inappropriate medical care the tendons of his right hand adhered, never allowing him again to open his hand for the rest of his life[10].So this crippled right hand seems to be depicted; but if Goltzius had drawn with the help of a mirror as it was supposed[11],one would see his left hand and the drawing then would be emphatically alluding to the burn of both hands.

With reference to this anecdote the hand, which thus was «de hant van Goltzius», together with the graphic itself gives substantial significance: In spite of his crippled hand Goltzius was capable of controlling the graver; regardless all natural adversities he found ways fulfilling his profession. Consequently the esteem for a piece of art grows the more contrarious the conditions are, under which it came into existence. Primarily these adversities while being commissioned and creating art works reveals the artists’ true and actual splendor.

Despite the circumstance that both these components, the artist’s drawing and the biographer’s anecdote, fit together harmonically, another alternative explanation must be considered an even greater plausibility. This, at least indirectly, relates to the journey of Goltzius to Italy in 1590, which brought the artist also to Rome. Much is to be argued for the reasoning that the artist from Haarlem referred to the similarly conspicuous v-shaped opening of the fingers of Moses' right hand in Michelangelo’s tomb for Julius II. in S. Pietro in Vincoli (fig. 2)[12];incidentally a masterpiece that Vasari already considered to be a work of art that cannot be compared to anything and that even surpasses ancient sculpture[13].

For this Dutch reference to the Italian good reasons can be found. In vivid expressions Vasari acclaimed Michelangelo as the redeemer of arts entering the stage of world; for him Michelangelo, already in lifetime called il divino, the development of art reached its zenith, the ideal embodiment of the terza maniera. But what was conceptualized as a stunning final chord from the Italian point of view, appeared to be totally different from the Dutch perspective. Looking from Haarlem to Florence Michelangelo’s stylization had to be recognized as a provocation, which was asking for response. For Goltzius who was ten years old in 1568, the year of Vasari’s second edition of his Lives, and only six years in 1564 when Michelangelo died, Vasari’s perception initially had no significance. Yet in 1588, the year of finishing his marvelous hand drawing, the thirty year old Goltzius will have had developed the idea of competing with Michelangelo, accepting the agonal principle as the most effective stimulus of bearing artistic grandiosity. An appropriate arena where the Nordic and the Southerner could meet each other however was but difficult to find. Unlike Michelangelo Goltzius neither was a sculptor nor a fresco painter or architect. The Dutch artist’s territory was that of graphic art. On this field he committed himself to the agonal principles to acquire superiority over his self-chosen competitor without any enmity or damaging purpose. With the well selected motif of the hand as object for this trial of strength, the hand that already Cicero praised for its’ ability to carry out manifold arts[14], Goltzius translocated the contest onto a meta-level. With this decision equal starting conditions were established; the contest’s common criterion was an iconographical one. Thus not rivalry but acknowledgement accompanied the contest, in which Goltzius adopted the archetype in order to surpass it with his own means. With this decision Goltzius did not seem to take advantages; much could be said even for the contrary. While it is impossible to say what the Haarlem artist actually knew about Michelangelo’s own hands and the hands he manufactured, in nearly all respects the hand of the divino represented a strong "opponent", which had to be taken very seriously.

Already with Moses' hand grasping into his beard at the tomb of Julius II. Michelangelo attested himself artistic divinity[15].For one there exist two drawings executed by Federigo Zuccari showing Michelangelo not only with the aforesaid conspicuous v-shaped opening between the index and the middle finger but imitating the whole pose of the Moses statue (fig. 3)[16];for the other the hand grasping into the beard could be interpreted as a sign of being inspired by God[17].Furthermore the London Victoria and Albert Museum preserves a terracotta hand (fig. 4), which together with a hand drawing of Michelangelo is mentioned in the famous collection of the antiquarian and author Pierre Mariette as «la mano di Michelangelo»[18].Whereas this hand drawing was a spontaneous proof the young Buonarroti gave to demonstrate his artistic skills, the terracotta hand again features the conspicuous v-shaped opening of the two fingers Michelangelo’s Moses presents in the tomb of the Della Rovere Pope[19].At the same time the index fingers of the two Zuccari-drawings become individual ostentatious gestures, as if Michelangelo wanted to point out to the beholder that he himself is Moses, or at least like Moses, being commissioned to a godly mission. Finally taking into account the David statue, Michelangelo’s "manual encoded image" could not have been more alluding. What Goltzius exactly could have known about these autonomous and heteronomous images of Michelangelo around the year 1585 is uncertain. But he definitely was well-informed about the Moses-Michelangelo-hand via the Michelangelo-Vita of Vasari.

In this exceptional biography in the correlative passage the hand of Michelangelo and the hand of one of his opus magnum are brought together. The left of Moses disappears in his stomach region whereas the metacarpal bone of the right stabilizes the boards of the Ten Commandments. The praise of the sculptor’s mastership concerns the muscles of the arms as well as the bone structure of the statue’s hands[20].The mastership of the artist’s hand is well pointed out, Vasari even consciously concludes his account with this praise. Following Vasari Moses is able to consider himself a friend of God especially because God has prepared him a body of resurrection with the aid of Michelangelo's hands[21].Consequently the hand of the divino was divine, it was able to give life to dead stone, even eternal life. So it seems that Vasari in this singular contrasting already created the idea of a manual paragone himself; intending to play off the hand of Moses against the hand of Michelangelo, the hand in the masterpiece against the hand of the artist, launching a contest between them. This becomes even more convincing when realizing that Vasari directs his attention less to description than to imagination in order to evoke an as much multifaceted image of Michelangelo’s statue as possible[22].

After having applied the hand of Michelangelo as standard for his own hand and its manufacturing, Goltzius might have intensified his interest in drawings and reproducing graphic art[23], which also showed Michelangelo’s Moses; so for instance the drawing of Daniele Ricciarelli da Volterra (fig. 5) or the engraving of Nicolas Beatrizet, both carried out around 1545[24].Having seen works like these before 1588 Goltzius most likely had become familiar with one of the most important hands of Michelangelo already two years before starting his journey to Rome. What Goltzius could have read in Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo and what he could have seen in works just mentioned must have formed important reference points, which helped him concretizing an image of a hand that surpassed everything that had been before. Something that Goltzius eventually did achieve. At any rate his “michelangelesque” hand was not merely an imitatio of Michelangelo’s hand. As an elaborate drawing, a so-called penschilderij, which in brown or grey ink perfectly imitates the appearance of a copper engraving[25],it was per se a product of an aemulatio that surmounted not only drawings of Da Volterra and etchings of Beatrizet, but also Michelangelo’s Moses-hand itself. While the v-shaped opening of the fingers is the identifying feature of reference to Michelangelo, the exaggerated veining of the Goltzius-hand, its physiognomic mannerism exceeded all insinuations that drawings and etchings of Michelangelo’s Moses foreshadowed. Goltzius should have taken all that for a starting point what he could read in Vasari’s biography, in order to surpass that what he probably had seen in the art of Da Volterra and Beatrizet. In this amalgamation of text and image, of the read and the seen, in this ostentatiously presented rhetoric of sanguiferous veins, Goltzius definitely vanquished Michelangelo; making the juror-spectators to witnesses of his favorable outcome out of this literal hand-to-hand fighting in the self-launched contest.

Goltzius’ personal examination and drawing of Michelangelo’s sculptured masterpiece in Rome in 1591[26], especially his confirming studies of the right hand of Moses might have encouraged the Haarlem artist while continuing further studies on his hand in 1588/89 to consequently adhere to this depiction of his hand[27].After all it is more than striking that exactly this hand with its v-shaped opening of fingers is frequently recurring in Goltzius’ œuvre, almost as a leitmotif; so for example in his Flight to Egypt, the depictions of nearly all apostles, and an execution of Maria Magdalena[28].This frequent recurrence is part of a calculation, which is revealed when becoming aware of the presence of Goltzius’ hand in the hands of his figures. Thus the master’s hand is attending his works in a double sense, at first as personal explicit related hand with recognizable physiognomy, which the artist bestows upon his saints over and over, and then in the sense of an individual unmistakable style. By reason that hand and handwriting, that the artist’s hand and the handwriting which traces back to the former are presented similarly, semantic equivalents and correlations become evident. So for instance the artist’s hand metaphorically stands for style, character, originality, method, and technique; separating the hands means differentiating the artists, which participated in finishing a work of art. Furthermore maniera and manus etymologically belong together the same way that the stylistic originality of Goltzius’ art and his hand mate, just like handelinghen and hant, as Van Mander mentions[29].

So what Goltzius does is reporting the history of finding and surpassing continuation of the artist’s self-manifestation and self-elevation with "manual means", told strategically intelligent in several parts and in the diverse media of drawing and etching. But this form of continuation did not remain the only one. Whereas the Dutchman Goltzius literally watched the fingers of the Italian Michelangelo via graphical mediation, the Goltzius-biographer Van Mander did so as well but with his means of referring to the life of Michelangelo told by Vasari. What the artist had begun and pioneered in the mode of his pen drawing finished in 1588, was consequently proceeded, completed and brought to perfection in the text by his biographer to whom Goltzius was very friendly with for more than two decades[30].For this reason Van Manders Goltzius-vita has to be regarded as a continuation of the ideal conception of an artistic development, which exceeds the one of Michelangelo[31].Moreover, Van Mander retorted Vasari’s speculation that after Michelangelo one would have had to expect a decline of arts and that in general art would have had to be given over to a painful descent[32]with the colorful orchestration of the life of Hendrick Goltzius, which immediately presented several parallels to the life of Michelangelo as reported by Vasari[33].At the age of forty-six, thirteen years before his death, Goltzius was able to read about himself as a «new Michelangelo» in his biography of Karel van Mander. 

Vasari in a unique way introduced Michelangelo as born in Caprese the «new Betlehem» and as elected from the world’s most benevolent rulers in order to put an end to the vast number of vain works and to release mankind from so many errors[34].Already in his lifetime he had been attributed a divinity, which Van Mander sought to attribute to his protégé as well. There was no doubt that such a physically handicapped person bringing forward such magnificent works must have been supported by the dextera Dei, the hand of God that enabled him to do what seemed rather impossible to be done. Moreover, parallel to the striking stylization of Michelangelo, becoming a divina artista, there exists Van Mander’s construction of a christomorphic image of Hendrick Goltzius. On their way from Rome to Naples together with his companion, the silversmith Jan Matthysz from Brussels, and the nobleman Philips van Winghen, the incognito travelling Goltzius several times was asked for his identity. The Haarlemer who at first did not want to be recognized as the admirable Dutch engraver, had to show his handkerchief with its joined initials H and G and have Van Winghen at the same time point at his traumata in form of his unmistakable crippled hand to dispel all former doubts concerning his identity. In doing so Van Winghen became the Doubting Thomas, and the distance they covered became an allusion to the walk to Emmaus. But what is most significant in this respect is that both, the companions and the way, assign to Goltzius the role of Christ, stylizing him as the son of God, making the citizen of Haarlem participate in the divine nature. Facing the handicap Van Mander is mentioning, one further gets the impression that similar to Michelangelo also Goltzius had to bodily suffer from the pain of creating great art. The dripping and biting fresco colors in the eyes of Michelangelo while coloring the Cappella Sistina in Rome directly correspond to the pain, which must have arisen when Goltzius’ crippled hand tried to clasp around his pen or graver. Art material, tools of painting, drawing and engraving reversed into their opposite, becoming tools of torture afflicting the artists. For when the divino was able to imitate ancient sculpture deceitfully true and thus conquered antiquity, Goltzius imitated the graphic art of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden[35]in order to serve a topos, which should demonstrate that even that, what seemingly could not be outperformed, could be outperformed. Two aspects supervene. Goltzius similar to Michelangelo prevented his works from spectators as long as they remained in unfinished conditions; with regard to this and in also other respects one accordingly reads with the biographer, that Goltzius resembles the great Michelangelo[36].Moreover, the melancholy[37]that Van Mander attributed to Goltzius represented the prerequisite for a divine furor, itself the precondition for an artistic ingenuity that Vasari claimed for Michelangelo not the less. Ultimately Hendrick Goltzius is ranked next to Michelangelo, the «principe e monarca» among the artists of Florence[38]as a «monarch» of drawing[39].

When initially the artist watched the fingers of another artist, eventually one biographer watched the quill of another biographer. So Van Mander as well provided a virtuous piece of art with his biography of Hendrick Goltzius, this time literarily a Federkunststück. The bequeathed episode of the hand’s injury in his penschilderij therefore at last has to be relegated into the sphere of artistic anecdotes that basically helped to grant illustrativeness and credibility to the artist’s peculiarity, especially as many elements were borrowed from everyday’s life. On that account the burning episode has to be regarded as a well placed brick within a biographically well constructed apotheosis of the artist. As Van Mander characterizes Goltzius as Proteus who is capable of changing his artistic shape[40]and putting oneself in the position of Dürer, Barocci, Bassano or Van Leyden[41]. Goltzius owns the talent to adopt a different identity. Thus his crippled hand seems to be another form of one of these diverse identities. Consequently Goltzius’ virtuosity cannot neutralize the injury of his hand. His graphic art does not provide healing. Nor does his art reconcile the artist with his destiny. Just because of the fact that the drawn depiction of the hand was able to simulate the appearance of a hand engraved in copper, Goltzius’ hand anatomical resides in no lower stage of perfection than the portrait it has created from itself[42].