Hendrik Hondius I

Hendrik Hondius I (born Hendrik de Hondt; 9 June 1573 – ) was a Flemish-born and trained engraver, cartographer, and publisher who settled in the Dutch Republic in 1597. Early life and education Hendrik Hondius was born in Duffel, in the Duchy of Brabant (then part of the Habsburg Netherlands), to Guillam (Willem) de Hondt, a philologist. He spent part of his childhood in Mechelen, where he learned to write, according to the 17th-century Flemish biographer Cornelis de Bie. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Antwerp.

After his mother remarried, he was apprenticed in Brussels to the goldsmith Godfried van Ghelder, who worked for Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. He also studied drawing with the engraver Jan Wierix of Antwerp. At this time he started to study engraving. Career He obtained his first print privilege for a portrait of Prince Maurits. He dedicated himself to his engraving practice. His work was very well received and he got commissions from many eminent personalities for engravings or drawings.

He moved to Amsterdam in 1603 and Leiden in 1604–1605.

After his return to The Hague his prints displayed the Buitenhof as his address. The young Constantijn Huygens followed in 1611 for three months drawing classes with Hondius. Hondius bought in 1614 a large house between the Binnenhof and the Gevangenpoort in The Hague which he used as work and living quarters. He joined in 1617 the local church counsel where he adopted an anti-catholic and anti-arminian standpoint. Of these portraits, 22 were reworked versions of portraits contained in a book with almost the same title by Dominicus Lampsonius that was published in Antwerp in 1572 by Volcxken Diericx, the widow of Hieronymous Cock. The 1572 book contained 23 portraits of early Netherlandish artists, all of whom had died before the publication, including a portrait of Hieronymous Cock who had died while preparing the publication. Through his 1610 book Hondius updated and expanded the canon of Netherlandish painting. He included some German and English artists in an apparent attempt to situate the Netherlanders within a broader, more semantically uncertain 'Northern' canon. Hondius constructed the series as part of a continual celebration of past and present Netherlandish artists. Hondius did not include in his book the portrait of Cock, which was the last portrait in the 1572 publication. Onderwijsinge in de Perspective Conste, door Henricus Hondius, The Hague, 1623 Alghemeine regelen der sterkebouw, The Hague, 1625 Theatrum honoris in quo nostri Apelles saeculi, seu pictorum, qui patrum nostrorum memoria vixerunt, celebriorum pracipue quos Belgium tulit, verae et advivum expressae imagines in aes incisae exhibeniur, Amsterdam, 1612, 1618 Les hommes illustres, gravés et imprimés par H.H. Les portraits des hérésiarques et autres hommes illustres par H. Hondius, J. Muller, J. Matham, J. Stadeler, etc.