Een strijder met zwaard, op de rug gezien

The central figure is depicted with monumental proportions, wearing ornate slashed breeches, a decorative doublet, and a plumed hat. He strides away from the viewer through a rocky landscape populated by other soldiers, including pikesmen and a figure crouching in the foreground. The engraving features the characteristic swelling and tapering lines of the Haarlem Mannerist style to define the textures of the fabric and the musculature of the legs.

Hendrick Goltzius was the leading figure of the Haarlem Mannerists, a circle of artists whose focus on technical artifice and the heroic human form mirrored the intellectual complexities of the late Renaissance. This print is an early example of the virtuosic style that would eventually lead to his more explicitly esoteric and mythological works produced for the courts of Europe.