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.

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.

[3] After returning to Antwerp in 1569, Joris Hoefnagel married Suzanne van Onchem in 1571 and in 1573 the couple had a son called Jacob, who would also become an artist.

[4] 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.

[3] As a Calvinist, he was forced to leave Munich in 1591 when a rule was imposed that all members of the court had to proclaim their adherence to the Catholic faith.

He then went to work for Emperor Rudolf II, first residing in the city of Frankfurt am Main, where he moved in a circle of Flemish humanists, merchants, artists and publishers.

Hoefnagel worked intermittently on the Civitates his whole life and may have acted as an agent for the project, by commissioning views from other artists.

He enlivened the finished engravings with a Mannerist sense of fantasy and wit by using dramatic perspectives and ornamental cartouches.

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.

[6] 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.

Patientia also reflected the influence of Neo-stoic philosophy, which was popular in the circle around the Antwerp publisher Christopher Plantin.

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.

His decorations include nature imagery and grotesque borders.The calendar pages are illuminated with small gaming-boards, instruments and animals linked by strapwork.

Hoefnagel added miniature illuminations to the original text using watercolour and body color in silver with gold highlights, sometimes with traces of silverpoint for the preparatory drawing.

[10] Hoefnagel used diverse imagery such as flora and fauna, mythology, portraits, city views and battle scenes.

When the book had come in the possession of Emperor Rudolf II, Hoefnagel added illuminations primarily of plants, fruit and flowers but also included small animals and insects and city views.

This is particularly reflected in his meticulous manner of drawing, the use of trompe-l'œil devices (such as cast shadows or stems slipped through fictitious slits in pages) and the naturalistic content.

This tradition emphasized illusionism in painting through devices such as three-dimensional modeling of vegetative and other forms and the depiction of details in a precise and life-size manner.

[15] Hoefnagel strived to display his virtuosity in his attention for detail as well as his predilection for difficult subjects such as an apple cut in two, a bean pod that is split open or an insect or reptile with iridescent skin.

[2] Gradually these natural history were organised into a four-volume manuscript (various folios dated from 1575 to 1582 in various museums including the National Gallery of Art, Washington,[17] the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, the Louvre, Paris and various private collections).

The book is a collection of 48 engravings of plants, insects and small animals shown ad vivum made after studies by Joris Hoefnagel.

[20] 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.

Like contemporary emblem books each print carried a motto typically referring to god's interference in the world.

This influence is assumed to have been important in particular on the development of the typical Dutch genre of still lifes with flowers, shells and insects.