The Dragon Devouring the Companions of Cadmus 1588

Hendrick Goltzius created "The Dragon Devouring the Companions of Cadmus" as an engraving, demonstrating the technical skill that made him famous in the Netherlands. This image reflects a renewed interest in classical mythology, a cultural phenomenon in the 16th Century. The scene depicts a gruesome moment from Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Cadmus's men are attacked by a dragon. Goltzius renders the dragon as a grotesque, almost comical monster, and the men as helpless victims. The cultural context here is the rise of humanism, which led artists to explore classical texts. However, the graphic violence and the dragon's monstrous form might also reflect contemporary anxieties about the unknown, or about challenges to social order. To better understand this artwork, we would need to research not only Goltzius's artistic training and patrons, but also the broader social and intellectual currents of the Dutch Golden Age.