"[He] saw his men’s bodies, saw their conqueror Hulking hugely above them and licking Their lamentable wounds with his bloody tongue." In the ancient epic, Ovid's Metamorphosis, Cadmus arrives to find his soldiers devoured by a dragon. Vowing revenge, the prince can be see in the background slaying the beast. The great Dutch Mannerist Hendrick Goltzius was at the height of his fame as a printmaker and publisher when he engraved this dramatic scene in 1588. Like other Netherlandish artists in his time, Goltzius studied Classical antiquity to understand the ideal representation of the human face and body and to develop his own imaginative repertoire. See "The Dragon Devouring the Companions of Cadmus" on view in Gallery 213.