Nox, Goddess of Night

Artist Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558 - 1617)

Dateca. 1594; designed ca. 1588-1590

MediumChiaroscuro woodcut

DimensionsImage: 13 1/16 x 10 1/8 inches (33.18 x 25.72 cm)
Mat: 21 1/4 x 16 inches (53.98 x 40.64 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: Nelson Gallery Foundation

Object numberF84-56

Signed(bl.,b.c., below wheel):"HG.f."

On View

Not on view

Collections

Prints

Terms

Exhibition History

A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 14-December 6, 1987, no. 107, as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Thirty Years of Print Purchases for the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 19 - December 31, 1989, no. 5.

Graphic Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 23-July 25, 1993, no cat., as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Inked in Time: Six Centuries of Printed Masterpieces, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 22-May 31, 1998, no cat., as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Mythological Subjects, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 9, 2007-April 13, 2008, no cat., as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Mythological Subjects, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 12-December 15, 2013, no cat., as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Gallery Label

This is an example of the technique of the chiaroscuro woodcut, which was intended to imitate the effect of drawings in wash or watercolor. The present example is printed in three separate tones and was part of a series representing the forces of nature. Here the goddess of night rides in a wagon like those the artist might have seen at carnivals. The wagon is drawn by bats, creatures of the night, and surrounded by a crowing rooster, scrambling rats and the signs of the zodiac, all symbols of passing time. The slumbering passenger may be a personification of sleep, which night induces.

Provenance

With Jeffrey D. L. Wortman, New York, by August 20, 1984;

Purchased from Jeffrey D.L. Wortman by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1984.

Published References

Adam Bartsch, Le Peintre-graveur, vol. 3, Henri Goltzius (Vienna: J.V. Degen, 1803), no. 237, p. 73, as Quelques divinités de la fable. Suite de six pièces de forme ovale: La déesse de la nuit, trainee dans son char par des chauves souris, et conduisant le sommeil qui est représenté par une femme couronnée de pavots.

Otto Hirschmann, Verzeichnis des Graphischen Werks von Hendrik Goltzius (Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1921).

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts Ca. 1450-1700, vol. 8, Goltzius-Heemskerck (Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1953), no. 372 II/II.

Walter L. Strauss, The Clair-Obscur Woodcuts by the German and Netherlandish Masters of the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries: A Complete Catalogue with Commentary (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973), no. 141.

Walter L. Strauss, Hendrik Goltzius, 1558-1617: The Complete Engravings and Woodcuts, 2 vols. (New York: Abaris, 1977), no. 420.

Roger Ward, ed., A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 240, (repro.), as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Thirty Years of Print Purchases for the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 19 - December 31, 1989, p. 5.

Nancy Bialler, Chiaroscuro Woodcuts: Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) and His Time (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1993), no. 26, only state.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 158, (repro.), as Nox, Goddess of Night.

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 60-62, 277, (repro.), as Nox, Goddess of Night.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 66, (repro.), as Nox, Goddess of Night.

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