Two Male Heads after the Antique, the Sons of Laocoön

Surviving drawings in other collections prove that Hendrick Goltzius studied firsthand the famed Laocoön group, an ancient Roman sculpture unearthed to great fanfare in the early 1500s. The monument was widely revered as an ideal representation of human torment, made more famous by printed representations.

Goltzius created this red-chalk drawing at least a decade after his visit to Rome in 1591, employing specific motifs for his own expressive ends. Extracting the faces of Laocoön’s sons from the sculptural ensemble and reversing their left-to-right order, Goltzius blended the red chalk to emphasize the protruding volumes of the neck muscles. By applying greater pressure, he reinforced the contour lines of the figures, particularly around the sides of their faces.