Hendrick-Goltzius-Drawing-of-his-right-hand

From van Mander’s account we learn that when Goltzius was about one year old, he “fell into a fire with his face over a pan full of boiling oil and burned both hands on the red-hot coals. His mother tried to cure them with splints and ointment among other things, but was unable to prevent the child from suffering severe pain day and night. An officious neighbor took the splints off and bound the right hand in a cloth.” This was the reason why Goltzius was never able to fully open his right hand. Dr. F. Groenevelt, a Netherlandish plastic surgeon specializing in the treatment of the burned hand, has reviewed the hand in Goltzius’s drawings and finds them entirely consistent with a burn injury: “The upward angle and bend of the index finger may be the result of a deep burn of the back of the finger and particularly the first phalange—the ‘collar-button’ phenomenon. He finds the deformity of the middle finger, the ring finger and little finger entirely consistent with scarring from deep burns.”

Based on the direction of the cross-hatching in his drawings, it is speculated that Goltzius was right-handed, and he may have benefited from the stiffness of his fingers giving him a strong grip when engraving with a burin while forcing him to draw with his arm and shoulders. Walter Melion suggests that he engraved with his right hand and drew with his left.