Jacob Hoefnagel
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.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
[1] A census in 1612 of people living at the court, conducted at the time Rudolf II died, includes the name of Jacob Hoefnagel, followed by the title 'Contrafetter' which means portrait painter.
[7] In Prague he belonged to a circle of Flemish and Dutch merchants, artists and scholars, some of whom were Reformed, with close ties to the court of Rudolf II.
During the Thirty Years' War which started in 1618, he took the side of the Protestant Winter King Frederick V of the Palatinate against the Catholic Habsburg dynasty.
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.
It is divided in four parts of twelve plates (each with separate frontispiece), made after designs by his father Joris Hoefnagel and engraved by Jacob who was only 19 years old at the time of publication.
[12] 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.
[13] 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.
Around the same time, he was in Vienna one of the contributors to a painted scientific work known as the "Museum or bestiary (Tierbuch) of Emperor Rudolf II", which consists of 180 parchment leaves and is kept in the Austrian National Library as cod.
[9][16] 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).
[17] 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.
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.
[19] His Diversae insectarum volatilium icones ad vivum accuratissime depictae per celeberrimum pictorem, published by Claes Jansz.
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 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.
