Jacob Hoefnagel

Flemish artist, art dealer, diplomat, merchant and politician

Jacob Hoefnagel (also 'Jacobus', 'Jakob' or 'Jakub") (1573 in Antwerp – c.1632 in Hamburg), was a Flemish painter, printmaker, miniaturist, draftsman, art dealer, diplomat, merchant and politician. He was the son of the Flemish painter and miniaturist Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1601) who was a court painter to the dukes of Bavaria and Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Jacob Hoefnagel himself became a court painter to Rudolf II and to the Swedish court. He is noted for his illustrations of natural history subjects as well as his portraits, topographical views, emblems and mythological works, which continue his father's style.

Jacob Hoefnagel was the oldest son of Susanna van Onsem and Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600) and was baptized in Antwerp on 25 December 1573. Unlike his father who was not trained professionally as an artist but had started out as a merchant in the family business in diamonds and luxury goods, Jacob was given the opportunity to study art under a master in Antwerp. He was registered as a pupil of Abraham Liesaert in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1582. He then started a peripatetic life. He travelled via Munich to Frankfurt am Main where he joined his father at the latest in 1592. His father had by then remarried after the death of Jacob's mother. It was during this time that Jacob published a series of etchings copied from drawings by his father. It is likely he left Frankfurt in 1594 following the persecution of the Calvinists in that city. He was in Regensburg in 1594 and from 1600 in Prague. From 1602 he also spent time in Vienna where he married in 1605 Anna Muys, the daughter of the Dutch court architect Anthoni Muys (Anton de Mois). This was already his third marriage. Throughout his life Jacob Hoefnagel would marry five times. He experienced financial difficulties, which he attributed to the court's failure to pay his salary as a court painter. In 1620 Hoefnagels was again a resident in Prague. He was accused by the authorities of fraudulently dealing with certain financial matter. He spent time in Scandinavia including Stockholm and Göteborg. In Göteborg, he holds various high level positions: from 1622 to 1626 he is city counselor, from 1624 to 1627 president of the court of justice and in July 1624 he was appointed as one of the three burgomasters. In 1624 the Swedish king Gustav Adolf visited Göteborg. In November 1624, the painter is rewarded with a golden chain with a miniature portrait of the king. He is recorded on 30 April 1624 in the Swedish court accounts as a portrait painter. The Italian scholar Filippo Buonanni asserted in 1691 that these engravings are the first published instance of the use of the microscope. However, this assertion of Buonanni is still contested. As the quality of the engravings varies, it is assumed that some of the works were made by members of the family De Bry who resided in Frankfurt.

Unlike his father who preferred drawing, Jacob was an accomplished oil painter who produced works in the Prague Mannerist style popularised by artists such as Hans von Aachen and Bartholomeus Spranger. As a painter Hoefnagel specialized in small format mythological or allegorical scenes on vellum or copper. Only a few portraits of Hoefnagel are known, all executed during his stay in Sweden. These portraits include a bust portrait of king Gustaf Adolf (The Royal Armoury) and the queen consort Queen Maria Eleonore of Sweden dated around 1624. He received 150 national dollars and a gold chain from the king for this commission. The original of the oil painting of the queen consort is lost and is now known through the engraving made by Hendrik Hondius I in 1629. Two collaborations on small cabinet miniatures between father and son Hoefnagel are known, Diana and Actaeon (Louvre) and Allegory on Life and Death (British Museum).

Jacob's father Joris had provided designs for the fifth volume of Civitates orbis terrarum, which consisted of prints of bird's eye views and maps of cities from all around the world. The work was edited by Braun and largely engraved by Frans Hogenberg. Jacob reworked in 1617 designs of his father for the sixth volume of Civitates Orbis Terrarum, which was published in Cologne in 1618. Volume 6 contains a homogeneous series of images of cities in Central Europe (in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Transylvania), which are very consistent in their graphics. The views are in perspective, and only in a few cases, isometric and stand out through the accuracy of the information, the particular attention to the faithful representation of the territory, the landscape, the road conditions and the power of observation and refinement of interpretation.

His Diversae insectarum volatilium icones ad vivum accuratissime depictae per celeberrimum pictorem, published by Claes Jansz. Visscher in Amsterdam in 1630 is one of the earliest works dealing exclusively with insects. The book consists of 16 prints engraved by Jacob after designs by his father. A single convex lens was used in the preparation of some of the drawings for this book. As far as known, the pictures of Hoefnagel are the earliest printed figures of magnified objects (Locy, The Story of Biology, p. 199). The 16 beautiful engravings depict 302 insects, in order: 37 Coleoptera, 22 Orthoptera, 14 Odonata, 16 Neuroptera, 72 Lepidoptera, 35 Hymenoptera, 78 Diptera, 21 Hemiptera, and 7 larvae; from central and northern Germany. Jacob Hoefnagels described the engraved copies of his father's designs as "A pattern or copy book for artists, displaying on sixteen plates about 340 insects, mostly larger than life". The work was used by many artists as models and as such helped spread Joris Hoefnagel's fame. The Dutch biologist Jan Swammerdam mentioned that the insects were drawn from life. The publication of this book has sometimes been credited to a hypothetical brother of Jacob called Jan as the book was published in the year Jacob died and was published in the name of I. Hoefnagel. However, it is unlikely that the publication was a product of a brother of Jacob.

An album of emblematic drawings entitled Gloria Crocodilus kept at the British Museum has been attributed to Jacob Hoefnagel. The album consists of 82 leaves, 63 of which bear miniature emblematic roundels in bodycolour, each inscribed with a title above in Latin. It was made in the Dutch Republic in 1634 and bound at an early date in Dutch red Morocco leather with elegant gilt tooling. The dedicatee is Godefridus Crell of Prussia, who may have been a member of the distinguished German Crell family. The attribution to Jacob Hoefnagel is based on the drawings' resemblance to his series of emblematic roundels now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.