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Original fileFries met de bestraffing van Niobe
after Hendrick Goltzius
About This Work
This elongated engraving illustrates the tragic fate of Niobe, who boasted of her fourteen children to the goddess Latona. The sequence shows Apollo and Diana descending from the heavens with bows to slaughter Niobe's sons and daughters, culminating in the grief-stricken mother turning into a weeping stone. The figures are rendered with the muscular tension and dramatic poses characteristic of the Haarlem Mannerist style.
The myth of Niobe served as a powerful allegory for hubris (pride) and the inevitable divine retribution that follows the overestimation of human achievement. This print is dedicated to Federico Cesi, the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, highlighting the connection between Mannerist art and the intellectual circles of the early scientific revolution and Neoplatonic thought.