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Original fileLieutenant Colonel: Officers and Soldiers of Emperor Rudolf II's Guard
Luitenant-kolonel Officieren en soldaten uit de lijfwacht van keizer Rudolf II (serietitel), NG-2011-72-1
after Hendrick Goltzius
About This Work
A high-ranking officer in elaborate 16th-century military attire stands in a landscape, holding a long-handled halberd. He wears a heavily textured, slashed doublet with puffed sleeves and a wide lace collar, exemplifying the flamboyant Mannerist aesthetic. In the background, soldiers are visible in a valley, while the foreground shows a rocky outcrop under a vast, clouded sky.
This print belongs to a series dedicated to the military officers of Emperor Rudolf II, whose court in Prague served as the most significant center for alchemy and Hermetic philosophy in the late Renaissance. As a leading figure of Haarlem Mannerism, Goltzius’s work was central to the aesthetic of the Rudolfine 'theatrum mundi,' where social and military order reflected a larger cosmic hierarchy under the patronage of the 'Hermetic Emperor.'