In this tour-de-force display of Goltzius's own design, the sun god, hair seemingly aflame, steps forward across swirling bands of clouds. His sharp form seems to slice through the masses of rounded forms echoed in the oval shape of the print itself and the Latin inscription engraved as a halo around Apollo's head.

With each engraving that he made in the late 1580s, Goltzius augmented the effects he had achieved in previous works. He used a broader and more conspicuous line to create an amplified variation on the cloud-filled heavens in The Feast of the Gods at the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (2000.113).

Open full-size image