Bacchus, Venus, and Ceres

This huge drawing is no sketch for a painting but rather a demonstration of the inimitable skill of a Dutch artist famed in his own lifetime as a magnificent engraver and draughtsman. Cupid hardens his arrows in a fire lit on the altar of love, fuelled by vine leaves and corn cobs - attributes of the deities of vine and fertility without whom, as the Latin poet Terence put it, Venus freezes. Next to him Goltzius depicted himself, wittily likening his engraver’s tool to the all-penetrating arrows of love.