Bellona Leading the Armies of the Emperor against the Turks (1600): Art, History and Details

Bellona Leading the Armies of the Emperor against the Turks (1600) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan Muller (Dutch, 1571–1628); Bartholomaeus Spranger (Flemish, 1546–1611).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Jan Harmensz. Muller engraved Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, on two plates, depicting her before a flag with the double-headed eagle of the ruling Habsburg family, symbolizing conflicts with the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922). A student of Hendrick Goltzius’s, Muller expanded his teacher’s system for light and shadow to create visually extravagant, sculptural figures. His exaggerated style was influenced by the Habsburg court in Prague (in the present-day Czech Republic), where he worked with court artist Bartholomaeus Spranger, known for his nudes. Bellona’s legs and the clouds behind her show a moiré pattern—a distorted optical effect resulting from lines crossed at sharp angles. Many engravers, including Goltzius, considered moiré to be unsightly and avoided it.

Object facts

• Title: Bellona Leading the Armies of the Emperor against the Turks
• Date: 1600
• Creator attribution: Jan Muller (Dutch, 1571–1628); Bartholomaeus Spranger (Flemish, 1546–1611)
• Culture: Netherlands, early 17th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving (printed from two plates)
• Dimensions: Image: 66.2 x 50.3 cm (26 1/16 x 19 13/16 in.); Sheet: 70.8 x 51.2 cm (27 7/8 x 20 3/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1985.142

Collection credit

Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.