Ceres Seeking Her Daughter

Hendrick Goudt's engraving illustrates an episode from Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. It depicts the Greek goddess of the harvest, Ceres, in search of her daughter Proserpina, who had been abducted by Pluto, lord of the underworld. Overcome by thirst, Ceres received water with grains of barley in it from a peasant woman. When the old woman's son mocked her greedy manner of drinking, Ceres flung the barley water at him, transforming him into a lizard.

This engraving is a tour de force in the handling of light. Goudt introduced a way of layering lines to create textures and atmospheric depths in darkness which had never been seen in the history of the print. He was the pivotal figure in the quest for dark tonalities, greatly influencing subsequent printmakers such as Rembrandt van Rijn.