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| Johannes Stradanus Printers at Work ca. 1590 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Anonymous artist working in Bologna Madonna and Child ca. 1590-1600 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Hendrik Goltzius Classical Statue known as the Albani Faun 1590-91 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Cristofano Roncalli Hellenistic sculpture known as the Dying Alexander ca. 1590-1620 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
The Burning Babe
As I in hoary winter's night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat,
Which made my heart to glow.
And lifting up a fearful eye
To view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright
Did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames
Which with his tears were fed.
'Alas', quoth he, 'but newly born
In fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts,
Or feel my fire, but I.
'My faultless breast the furnace is,
The fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
The ashes, shame and scorns;
'The fuel Justice layeth on,
And Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men's defiled souls:
'For which, as now on fire I am
To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath
To wash them in my blood.'
With this he vanished out of sight
And swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind
That it was Christmas day.
– by Robert Southwell, SJ (written 1586-92, published 1602)
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| Cristofano Roncalli Study of Head ca. 1590-1620 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Girolamo Muziano Christ driving Money-changers from the Temple before 1592 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Girolamo Muziano Raising of Lazarus before 1592 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Jacopo Tintoretto Studies for Samson slaying the Philistines before 1594 chalk drawing Morgan Library, New York |
from The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage (1594)
Aeneas: Then he unlockt the Horse, and suddenly
From out his entrails, Neoptolemus
Setting his spear upon the ground, leapt forth,
And after him a thousand Grecians more,
In whose sterne faces shin'd the quenchles fire,
That after burnt the pride of Asia.
By this the Campe was come unto the walles,
And through the breach did march into the streetes,
Where meeting with the rest, kill kill they cryed.
Frighted with this confused noyse, I rose,
And looking from a turret, might behold
Young infants swimming in their parents bloud,
Headles carkasses piled up in heapes,
Virgins halfe dead dragged by their golden haire,
And with maine force flung on a ring of pikes,
Old men with swords thrust through their aged sides,
Kneeling for mercie to a Greekish lad,
Who with steele pol-axes dasht out their braines.
Then buckled I mine armour, drew my sword,
And thinking to goe down, came Hectors ghost
With ashie visage, blewish sulphure eyes,
His armes torne from his shoulders, and his breast
Furrowd with wounds, and that which made me weepe,
Thongs at his heeles, by which Achilles horse
Drew him in triumph through the Greekish Campe,
Burst from the earth, crying, Aeneas flye,
Troy is a fire, the Grecians have the towne.
– by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, translated and adapted from Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid
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| Guido Reni Birth of the Virgin ca. 1595-1600 wash drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Jan Brueghel the Younger Landscape with Tobias and the Angel ca. 1595-96 wash drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Christoph Murer Cartoon for Stained-glass Window 1598 drawing Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf |
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| Giovanni de' Vecchi St John the Evangelist 1598-99 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Annibale Carracci Study of Ignudo for Farnese Gallery Fresco 1598-99 drawing National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
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| Francesco Brizio Ulisse Aldrovandi presenting his book Ornithologiae to Pope Clement VIII in Bologna ca. 1599 drawing - print-study for frontispiece Royal Collection, Windsor |