In the 1980s Warhol turned to the work of painters such as Sandro Botticelli as a source of inspiration. He first experimented with this on the Mona Lisa’s visit to New York in 1963, producing a variety of prints of Leonardo’s mysterious woman. This screenprint is based on a painting by the German artist Johann Tischbein. It depicts Johann von Goethe, a key figure in German literature as a traveller in a landscape of ruins. Warhol has cropped the original composition so as to create a head and shoulders portrait of the writer. Goethe had contemplated painting as an early career choice and published a book on the theory of colour. As the first person to study the psychological affects of colour, it is interesting to think what he would make of Warhol’s representation of him as a Pop icon.