Фламанд суретшісі Жорис Хофнагель: өмір және шығармашылығы

Flemish painter

Joris Hoefnagel or Georg Hoefnagel (1542, in Antwerp – 24 July 1601, in Vienna) was a Flemish painter, printmaker, miniaturist, draftsman and merchant. He is noted for his illustrations of natural history subjects, topographical views, illuminations and mythological works. He was one of the last manuscript illuminators and made a major contribution to the development of topographical drawing. His manuscript illuminations and ornamental designs played an important role in the emergence of floral still life painting as an independent genre in northern Europe at the end of the 16th century. The almost scientific naturalism of his botanical and animal drawings served as a model for a later generation of Netherlandish artists. Through these nature studies he also contributed to the development of natural history and he was thus a founder of proto scientific inquiry.

Joris Hoefnagel was the son of Jacob Hoefnagel, a dealer in diamonds and luxury goods such as tapestries, and his wife Elisabeth Vezelaer, daughter of the Antwerp mint master Joris Vezelaer. As his father likely wished him to enter the family business, he received a comprehensive humanistic education. He spoke, in addition to his native Dutch, several languages and was able to write poetry and play various musical instruments. In one of his works, Hoefnagel described himself as self taught as an artist. However, according to the early Flemish biographer Karel van Mander he received his first art lessons from Hans Bol, probably in the period 1570–1576 before he permanently left Antwerp. This apprenticeship with Hans Bol is not documented. Hans Bol likely introduced Hoefnagel to miniature painting.

He lived from 1560 to 1562 in France, where he attended the universities of Bourges and Orléans. Here he probably made his first landscape drawings. He was forced to leave France in 1563 due to religious unrest and he returned to Antwerp. He left soon thereafter for Spain, where he resided from 1563 to 1567 and was active on behalf of the family business. He made various sketches of places in Spain and was particularly fascinated with Seville, the primary colonial trading port of Spain, where he could see many exotic animals and plants. He returned to Antwerp in 1567 but may have visited his hometown in between on business. He travelled to England in 1568 and resided in London for a few months where he built friendships with other Flemish businessmen.

After the Sack of Antwerp by Spanish troops during the Eighty Years War in 1576, in which much of the family fortune was lost to plunder, Joris Hoefnagel left his hometown. He traveled in 1577, accompanied by his friend the cartographer Abraham Ortelius, along the Rhine via Frankfurt, Augsburg and Munich to Venice and Rome. The pair also travelled southwards from Rome to Naples and visited various ancient sites.

During his trip to England, he made drawings of royal palaces such as Windsor Castle and Nonsuch Palace, which are regarded as some of the earliest realist landscape watercolours in England.

In England, Hoefnagel also made a set of emblematic drawings entitled Patientia (full title: Traité de la Patience, Par Emblêmes Inventées et desinées par George Hoefnagel à Londres, L’an 1569), which focused on the themes of patience and suffering. The genre like nature of the work anticipated later Netherlandish emblem books. Patientia also reflected the influence of Neo stoic philosophy, which was popular in the circle around the Antwerp publisher Christopher Plantin. One of the emblems from the series is entitled Patiente cornudo (the patient cuckold). It depicts a scene of public punishment of an adulterous woman and her deceived husband, i. e. the 'patient cuckold'. The Catholic Church regarded both husband and wife guilty in the crime of adultery. The husband has his hands tied and he wears on his head two large branches with their offshoots which resemble large deer antlers. Between the tops of the branches hang bells on a rope. After the man rides a woman, her head covered with a veil and her face hidden behind her own hair. She whips her husband with a string of garlic. Behind them is a crier who heralds the crime of the couple. He has a trumpet and a stalk with which he punishes the couple. Hoefnagel reprised this scene in his View of Seville from 'Civitates orbis terrarium'. Added in the View of Seville is a woman on a donkey who is naked from the waist up. She is the procuress who is also punished. The scene further includes figures who ridicule the couple by holding up their fingers in a 'V' form, an allusion to the 'horned' (cuckolded) husband.