Joris Hoefnagel or Georg Hoefnagel (1542 – 24 July 1601) 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.
Life
Early years
Joris Hoefnagel was born in Antwerp, 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.
Travels
thumb|220px|A [[sloth]]
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.
Exile
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.
Landscapes and topographical works
thumb|280px|View of Seville from [[Civitates Orbis Terrarum]]
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.
Emblems
thumb|Patiente cornudo from 'Patientia'
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.
Manuscript illuminations
Hoefnagel was an accomplished miniature painter and is famous for his miniature work on various manuscripts in the collection of the Habsburg dynasty.
The Book of Hours of Philippe of Cleves
His earliest known miniature contributions are found in The Book of Hours of Philippe of Cleves (Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels). In the late 1570s or early 1580s, Hoefnagel added in the margins of this 15th century devotional book various illuminations. Some of the themes he developed recur in his later book illuminations, such as the split sour orange or the bright orange Maltese cross. Hoefnagel used diverse imagery such as flora and fauna, mythology, portraits, city views and battle scenes. The aim was to glorify the Emperor as the supreme terrestrial power and the protector of the Catholic faith. He began the work around 1590, more than 15 years after the death of the calligrapher, Georg Bocskay. Like the Musterbuch, this book was originally made by Bocskay to illustrate various calligraphic scripts and also included a constructed alphabet. 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. His illustrations thus provided a survey of the natural world. He further illustrated the minuscule letters of the constructed alphabet with hybrid creatures and fanciful masks.Using his extensive resources of pictorial illusionism, Hoefnagel aimed to demonstrate with his illustrations the superior affective power of images over the written word. It thus argued the superiority of one art form over another. The book is one of the last important examples of European manuscript illumination, produced at a time when printed books had virtually replaced manuscripts. 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.
Natural history studies
thumb|280px|Animalia Rationalia et Insecta (Ignis), Plate I from the Elementa Depicta, picturing [[Petrus Gonsalvus and wife Catherine, parents of Tognina.]]
The Four Elements
Hoefnagel had chosen 'natura magistra' (nature his teacher) as his motto. It reflects his interest in the realistic depiction of nature. He made a start with his miniature drawings of animals before he left Antwerp. It is on the strength of these early miniatures that he was appointed by the Dukes in Munich. the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, the Louvre, Paris and various private collections). The work was entitled Animalia rationalia et insecta (ignis); Animalia quadrupedia et reptilia (terra); Animalia aquatilia et conchiliata (aqua); and Animalia volatilia et amphibia (aier) and contains detailed depictions of thousands of animals divided according to the four elements. The book is therefore simply referred to as the Four Elements. It is divided in four parts of twelve plates (each with separate frontispiece) engraved by Jacob Hoefnagel after designs by his father Joris Hoefnagel. 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.
thumb|Flower still life with insects
The prints in the collection were intended not solely as representations of the real world. They also carried a religious meaning as they encouraged the contemplation of god's plan of creation. Like contemporary emblem books each print carried a motto typically referring to god's interference in the world. The prints of the book were used as models by other artists and the Hoefnagel motifs were copied until the 19th century.
It has been argued that Hoefnagel's manuscript illuminations, the prints from the Archetypa studiaque and some drawings on vellum independent from any text (such as the 1594 Flower still life with insects, Ashmolean Museum) stood at the basis of still-life painting as an independent genre. 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.