Focus on Clio (Hendrik Goltzius) and analyze the Description.
The engraving depicts the Greek muse of history seated, holding a pen in her right hand and a tablet and inkwell in her left, with two books at her feet.
She is drawn, wrote historian Natalie Zemon Davis, "with a faint smile, perhaps ironic, certainly detached. From this picture, it is only a short step to some Renaissance representations of History as a winged woman writing, her white garb signifying that she bears witness to truth as well as to renown."Four lines about Clio, in Latin hexameter by 16th-century Dutch poet Franco van Est (Franco Estius), form a caption at the bottom of the engraving.
They read:Or, in an approximate translation into English,
right Clio Latin hexameter Franco van Est Natalie Zemon Davis