# Bacchus, Venus, and Ceres [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [GOLTZIUS, Hendrick]() - Date: 1551-1600 - Technique: Pencil, pen, and brown wash on grounded canvas, 220 x 170 cm ## Commentary Bacchus, Venus, and Ceres 1606 Pencil, pen, and brown wash on grounded canvas, 220 x 170 cm The Hermitage, St. Petersburg 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. ## Related artworks - [Apollo]() - [Calphurnius]() - [Circumcision in the Church of St Bavo at Haarlem]() - [Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert]() - [Hercules and Cacus]() - [Icarus]() - [Jupiter and Antiope]() - [Lot and his Daughters]() - [Mercury]() - [Minerva]() - [Phaeton]() - [Portrait of Frederick de Vries]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()