Cronus1.0021_Goltzius

Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), "Saturn" (1592), engraving after Polidoro da Caravaggio's (ca. 1498-1543) lost series of frescoes called "Octo Gentium Dii" (Eight Deities). Four states. : 18 1/2 x 11 5/8 in. (46.99 x 29.53 cm). Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art acc. no. 1981.25.1; Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, inv. M.88.91.272h.

In Goltzius' engraving of Polidoro da Caravaggio's "Saturn", the old Titan is festooned emblematically with a grapevine to symbolize his dominion over Italian agriculture. The scythe in his right hand lacks the fateful blade with which the god had once castrated his father Uranus.

After the Olympian gods deposed their tyrannical father, Saturn (or in Greek, Cronus/Kronos), they relegated him far from Olympus to the western land of the evening sun, Hesperia, where he continued to live as an agrarian divinity. Consequently, Roman cult later syncretized the archaic rustic deity of Italy, Saturn, with the Greek Cronus.

The inscription beneath the figure's feet reads "Octo gentium Dij per Polydorum quondàm quodàm in atrio Romae e Cenobij Diui / Pauli regione: in colle Quirinali, nunc M. Cauallo ad parietem et lucidè et subumbrosè deliniati, / per HGoltzium ibidem adnotati, et celati postmodum in Tyronum gratiam." (The eight gods of the pagans once painted in chiaroscuro mural by Polydorus in some hall at Rome near the refectory of Saint Paul on the Quirinale, now Monte Cavallo, transcribed by H. Goltzius and afterwards engraved for the use of students.)— trans RTM

Bibliography:

Strauss (1977a), no. 289.
Bartsch (1980-82), no. 256.
New Hollstein (1996) catalogue raisonné, no. 315, state i/iii (or 4)