Seven Deities: Nox (Night) (1588–1590): Art, History and Details

Seven Deities: Nox (Night) (1588–1590) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558–1617).

The work and its context

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

Goltzius, famous as an engraver and painter, was the most important advocate of chiaroscuro woodcuts in the Netherlands. Nox is part of a group of seven oval portraits of gods and goddesses shown in their habitats. Accompanied by an owl and rooster, Nox rides in a chariot pulled by bats. Behind her, the sun shines on the orb of the earth and the personification of Sleep dozes contentedly. Because the earliest impressions of Nox, and other Goltzius chiaroscuros, were printed in muted shades like the grays of this impression, the artist may not have had a role in later editions, in which much brighter colors were used. Due to the popularity of these colorful prints, some of Goltzius's chiaroscuro woodcuts—as well as those by other artists like Albrecht Dürer—were reprinted by the Antwerp publisher Willem Jansz, later called Blaeu.

Object facts

• Title: Seven Deities: Nox (Night)
• Date: 1588–1590
• Creator attribution: Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558–1617)
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: chiaroscuro woodcut (in gray and black)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 34.9 x 26.4 cm (13 3/4 x 10 3/8 in.); Image: 34.6 x 26.2 cm (13 5/8 x 10 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Chiaroscuro
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1990.86

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “Acquisitions: 1990.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 2 (February 1991): 30–45.
• "1992 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 6 (1993): 215-95.

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.