The Great Hercules or 'Knollenman' (1589): Art, History and Details

The Great Hercules or 'Knollenman' (1589) 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:

The exaggerated and unnatural musculature of this figure may suggest that the Netherlandish artist Hendrick Goltzius had never studied a real human body. Indeed, he pulled from a mixture of sources including classical sculpture, Italian art, and his imagination. Goltzius ushered in Mannerism in Northern Europe, a style that featured exaggerated forms and metaphorical and allegorical subject matter. Known for his skill with an engraving burin, he transformed the technique, creating engraved lines that taper and swell to emphasize volume and form to extreme effect.

Object facts

• Title: The Great Hercules or 'Knollenman'
• Date: 1589
• Creator attribution: Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558–1617)
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 56.3 x 40.1 cm (22 3/16 x 15 13/16 in.); Image: 54.2 x 40 cm (21 5/16 x 15 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1995.38

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

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.