Lucretia

During the early years of the sixteenth century Lucas van Leyden was the most important Northern Netherlandish artist and the only printmaker of great significance. In the seventeenth century, printmakers like Hendrick Goltzius and Rembrandt considered him their most significant Dutch artistic predecessor, often looking to his work for technical and compositional source material. Lucas was among the earliest of the Netherlandish Renaissance artists to take inspiration from Italian art. This Lucretia was inspired by a similarly posed Venus engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi after a design by Raphael. Lucas’s contemporary Jan Gossart looked to this print for his own painting of Venus and Cupid of 1521 (Brussels, Musée Royaux de Belgique). Lucretia’s electric hair creates a lively aura around her figure.