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- Herausgeber: Unicorn
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
A remarkable painting by the Antwerp painter Maerten de Vos, 'Moses Showing the Tablets of the Law to the Israelites', shows wealthy merchants, artists and poets, a ground-breaking botanist, a pioneer in women's education, and the greatest publisher of the age gathered around a portrayal of Moses and Aaron with the stone tablets of the law engraved with the Ten Commandments in Dutch. In searching for an answer to the question of what brought together this diverse group of influential people in sixteenth-century Antwerp, Richard Willmott turns to their letters, diaries, friendship albums and poetry to write a group biography. As he finds out more about each life and explores the links that brought them together, he shows how a network of friendship and exchange of scholarly ideas that crossed the Channel and Europe's borders lay behind the rich civilisation of sixteenth-century Antwerp, until it was destroyed by the struggle for political and religious power in the Eighty Years War when the Dutch fought the Spanish for independence.
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i
‘Or quoi, si je prens les choses autrement qu’elles ne sont? Il peut estre; et pourtant j’accuse mon impatience, et tiens premierement qu’elle est également vitieuse en celuy qui a droict comme en celuy qui a tort: car c’est tousjours un’aigreur tyrannique de ne pouvoir souffrir une forme diverse à la sienne.’ (‘And what if I get things wrong? That could well be the case; and yet I blame my own impatience and reckon above all that impatience is as much a fault in the person who is right as in the person who is wrong: for it is always a tyrannical sourness to be unable to endure a way of thinking different from one’s own.’)
– Montaigne, Essais, Book 3, ch. 8, ‘De l’Art de Conferer’ii
iii
Contents
Illustrations
Chapter 1
1Wedding portrait of Gillis Hooftman and Margaretha van Nispen by Maerten de Vos, 1570 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
2Moses Showing the Tablets of the Law to the Israelites (Panhuys Paneel) by Maerten de Vos, 1574–5 (Catherijneconvent, Utrecht)
Chapter 2
3The Kraanenhoofd and Werfpoort (Crane and Harbour gate) on the Scheldt inAntwerp by Sebastiaan Vrancx, 1616–18 (The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp)
4 The Antwerp Bourse in 1531 (The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp)
5Antverpia by Joris Hoefnagel, before 1597 (University Library of Antwerp)
6 Portrait medallion of Gillis Hooftman attributed to Steven van Herwijk, 1559 (Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp)
7 Portrait medallion of Gillis Hooftman by Jacob Jonghelinck, 1580 (Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp)
8 Medallion of Gillis Hooftman by Jacob Jonghelinck, 1580 (De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam)
9Septentrionalium Regionum Descrip. (Description of the Northern Regions) from Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first printed 1570 (Harvard University)
10Portrait of Peeter Panhuys, Aged 34 by Frans Pourbus I, 1562 (Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge, Antwerp)2
Chapter 3
11 Detail of Die Sintflut (The Flood) by Maerten de Vos, c. 1570 (Residenzmuseum im Celler Schloss, Celle)
12St Paul at Ephesus by Maerten de Vos, 1568 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)
13St Paul on Malta by Maerten de Vos, c. 1568 (Louvre Museum, Paris)
14 A view of the Castle chapel at Celle looking east (Residenzmuseum im Celler Schloss, Celle)
15Teaching the Children by Maerten de Vos, 1565–1576 (Residenzmuseum im Celler Schloss, Celle)
16Katharina by Albrecht Dürer, 1521 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
17Balthazar by Joos van Cleve, c. 1525 (Brighton & Hove Museums)
18The Adoration of the Kings by Maerten de Vos, 1599 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes)
19 Frontispiece of Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, engraved by Frans Hogenberg, 1570 (Library of Congress, Washington, DC)
Chapter 4
20Johan Radermacher by an unknown artist, 1607 (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Amersfoort)
21 Portrait of Emanuel van Meteren and his wife Hester van Corput, 1576 (Auckland Library)
Chapter 7
22 Double-page spread from the Complutensian Bible, 1520 (Chained Library, Hereford Cathedral)
23 Double-page spread from Plantin’s Biblia Regia, first printed 1568 (Yale University Library)
24 Opening title page of Plantin’s Biblia Regia (Yale University Library)3
Chapter 8
25Portrait of Maerten de Vos by Aegidius Sadeler after Joseph Heintz the Elder, 1592 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
26 Watercolour of Stonehenge by Lucas d’Heere, 1573–1575 (British Library, London)
27An Allegory of the Tudor Succession by Lucas d’Heere, 1572 (Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire)
28Palace of Nonsuch by Joris Hoefnagel in Civitates Orbis Terrarum (vol. 5), first printed 1598 (Ghent University Library)
29View of Seville by Joris Hoefnagel in Civitates Orbis Terrarum (vol. 5), first printed 1598 (Ghent University Library)
30Patience by Joris Hoefnagel, 1569 (Bibliothèque Municipale, Rouen)
Chapter 12
31St Thomas by Maerten de Vos, 1573 (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp)
32Antonius Anselmo and Family by Maerten de Vos, 1577 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)
33Air by Maerten de Vos, engraved by Adriaen Collaert, 1580–84 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
34 Folio XX in ‘Aier’ in the Four Elements by Joris Hoefnagel, 1575–89 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
35 Folio LIV in ‘Ignis’ in the Four Elements by Joris Hoefnagel, 1575–89 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
36The Four Philosophers by Peter Paul Rubens, 1611–12 (Pitti Palace, Florence)
Chapter 13
37Amicitiae Monumentum (Allegory for Abraham Ortelius) by Joris Hoefnagel, 1593 (Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp)4
Acknowledgements
My manifold debts to the scholarship of others are revealed in my bibliography (although any errors are all my own), but three diligent editors are worthy of particular mention. I could never have written the book in its present form without the herculean labours of Jan Hendrick Hessels, who edited the numerous letters addressed to Ortelius and his nephew Ortelianus held by the Dutch stranger church of Austin Friars, Epistulae Ortelianae, and the yet more time-consuming efforts of Max Rooses and Jan Denucé, Directors of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, who engaged in the enormous task of transcribing all of Plantin’s letters in nine books over a number of years.
I am also most grateful to all those who have sent me material from libraries that I was unable to visit. Foremost among these should be the librarian at Eupen, who sent me the article about Gillis Hooftman by Willi Berens, ‘Ein Großer Eupener’ from Geschichtles Eupen I, a hard copy of which I have never been able to find. Had I realised at the time that this would provoke the curiosity that led to my writing this book, I would have taken more care to record their name, an omission for which I apologise. I am grateful as well to Anne van Buren of De Acht Zaligheden and Elspeth Orwin of Auckland Public Libraries. One library that I could visit in person was the Chained Library at Hereford Cathedral, and I must thank Jennifer Dumbelton for her helpfulness in showing me volumes of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible and of Plantin’s Biblia Regia and Gordon Taylor for taking photographs.
I also offer thanks to Cecile van der Harten, who kindly organised a visit to the Rijksmuseum store at Lelystad, and I owe particular debts of gratitude to Gijs van der Ham, the curator of 80 Jaar Oorlog at the Rijksmuseum, who found the time to show me around what proved a most thought-provoking exhibition (and which could be said to underlie the writing of this book). 6Thanks also to Rudie van Leeuwen, who thoughtfully sent me an English translation of his article, ‘Moses and the Israelites by Maerten de Vos: The Portrait Historié of the Panhuys Family from 1574’. And although I had already completed the preliminary drafts of this book when I visited it, I was able to learn more when I went round the excellent Ode aan Antwerpen exhibition curated by Micha Leeflang at the Catherijneconvent in Utrecht, which placed de Vos’s great painting of Moses, Aaron and the Tablets of the Law at its heart.
I am also grateful to Liz Russell, who read an early draft, to Catherine Evans for reading a later one, and to Claudia Thompson for casting an eye over my Dutch translations (my errors are not her fault). I owe a particular debt to Ian Strathcarron for his willingness to take on what he described as a ‘suitably eccentric’ project for Unicorn, and to the excellent team at Unicorn of Ryan Gearing, who oversaw the project, Katie Greenwood, who sourced the images, and Michael Eckhardt, who patiently sorted out the manuscript. Finally, I must thank my wife, Isobel, for her tolerance while I was writing and for accompanying me to various foreign galleries and museums in pursuit of my prey.
Names and identifications
The English reader is likely to come across a good many unfamiliar names in this book, and, to add to the potential confusion, many of these names take various forms. I have tried to be consistent in my naming of them, but this has sometimes proved a challenge.
Place names
These are relatively easy to deal with. Where there is a form of the name generally used in English, I use it; for example, Antwerp and neither Antwerpen nor Anvers; Brussels and neither Brussel nor Bruxelles; and Genoa, not Genova. Elsewhere, the form used by the native population is preferred; for example, the German Aachen and neither the Dutch Aken nor the French Aix-la-Chapelle. Holland was originally the dominant state of the United Provinces that became the Netherlands, and so I have avoided using it to name what has now become the Netherlands. Unhelpfully, the Netherlands was originally the name used to signify all the territories once ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy and then the Habsburgs, and so I normally refer to the Low Countries when I mean the territories that are now the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. I do, however, sometimes use Dutch as a general term for those coming from either the Dutch- or Flemish-speaking parts of the Low Countries, as well as for their language and its various dialects.
Names of people
These pose a much greater problem because not only are there different forms commonly used (for example, Jacob Coels lived in London and is quite often referred to by the Anglicised names James Cool or Cole), but there are also Latinized names used by humanists (who frequently wrote to each other in 8Latin) such as Ortelianus, the nickname for Coels because he was a favourite nephew of Abraham Ortelius (Ortels in Dutch). Where somebody is well known by a particular name (for example, Abraham Ortelius, who produced the first atlas), I use that; elsewhere, I use the form that has become most familiar in my own reading. The Antwerp merchant Gillis Hooftman was sometimes referred to as Aegidius van Eyckelberg (Aegidius is the Latin form of Giles), but since there are references to other members of his family who do not normally carry the cumbersome family name of van Eyckelberg, I have stuck to the name that they all used: Hooftman. Emanuel van Meteren always spells his first name with one ‘m’, and since Christophe Plantin came from France, I use the French form of his name rather than the Dutch or English. William of Orange (also known as William the Silent) refers to the leader of the Dutch rebellion and not to his great-grandson who married Mary, the daughter of James II, to become William III of England and who is also often referred to as William of Orange. In choosing the spelling Lucas d’Heere and not De Heere or D’Heere, I follow the spelling used in the contemporary manuscript copy of his Tableau Poetique. I refer to the Habsburgs and not the Hapsburgs.
By now, the astute reader will have realised that there is no absolute principle governing my decisions, although I have tried to be consistent throughout the book in the naming of each individual. (You may refer to the Dramatis Personae following this section if you are puzzled by an unfamiliar name.)
Different Christian confessions
There is another possible confusion over names which concerns the terminology used to differentiate between the different Christian groups during the Reformation. When Luther first published his famous ninety-five theses in 1517, he was not intending to establish a new ‘Lutheran’ church, but to put forward propositions for discussion that might lead to reform within the existing church. Similarly, individual Christians did not wake up one day and suddenly decide to be a ‘Lutheran’ or a ‘Calvinist’, but gradually changed their opinions about such disputed matters as exactly what was happening when the priest blessed the bread and wine at Mass, and the relative importance of faith and works in the search for salvation. Consequently, scholars do not always agree on the terminology to describe these changing positions. In this book, I shall use the term ‘Catholic’ to describe those who accepted the Pope’s authority, ‘Lutheran’ to describe those who accepted the teaching and authority of Luther, and either ‘Reformed’ or ‘Calvinist’ to describe those who followed the teaching of the Swiss reformers such as Calvin and Zwingli. The general term for the Reformed in France was ‘Huguenots’. I shall try to avoid 9the term ‘Anglican’, referring simply to the English church since, convenient though the term is, the Church of England today is so different from what it was in the sixteenth century that the term is inevitably misleading. Despite its historical inaccuracy, I occasionally use ‘Protestant’ as an umbrella term for all those rejecting the Pope’s authority.
It should also be pointed out that ‘humanism’ will not refer to the modern atheist or agnostic assertion of the worth of humanity independent of God, but to the Renaissance study of human history and thought through the liberal arts and especially the revival of classical learning; it is in no way opposed to Christian belief. The usage just about survives in the title of the Oxford course called literae humaniores, which is the study of the languages, history and philosophy of Greece and Rome. A hint of the humanist desire to improve Latin as a language of science and thought can be seen in the occasional apology for poor style by some of the correspondents in the Epistulae Ortelianae. 10
Dramatis Personae
The following list is intended to aid the reader if they come across an unfamiliar name and need a little information to place them in the story. Generally speaking, I have not listed those who appear only once, whose identity will be explained at the time.
Alba,Dukeof: The general sent by Philip II to the Low Countries to suppress Protestantism and resistance to royal authority, who would later become Governor of the Low Countries.
Anjou,Dukeof: The youngest son of Henri II of France; unsuccessful suitor of Elizabeth I of England; invited to replace Philip II as hereditary ruler of the United Provinces of the Low Countries, he proved treacherous and died soon after being forced to flee the country.
Assonleville,Christoffeld’: Lawyer and influential member of the council that governed the Habsburg Low Countries under Margaret of Parma.
Aylmer,John: Tutor to Lady Jane Grey; exiled under Mary, and Bishop of London under Elizabeth.
Barrefelt,HendrikJansenvan(Hiel): Leader of a breakaway group from the Family of Love and a mystic theologian.
Bomberghen, Cornelis van: A Calvinist merchant who was a business partner of Plantin.
Botticelli, Sandro: A Florentine painter of the early Renaissance. 12
Brederode,Hendrickvan: A leader of the confederacy of Low Countries nobles who presented a petition to Margaret of Parma demanding an end to the persecution of Protestants (the Geuzen).
Burghley: See Cecil.
Camden,William: English antiquarian and author of Britannia.
Çayas (Zayas), Gabriel de: A scholarly secretary of Philip II.
Cecil,William,BaronBurghley: Queen Elizabeth I’s principal adviser for much of her reign.
Cisneros,CardinalFranciscoJiménezde: Statesman, religious reformer and scholar; founder of the first university of Alcalá de Henares in Spain and initiator of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible.
Clinton,Edward,EarlofLincolnandLordHighAdmiral: English patron of Lucas d’Heere.
Coudenberg, Pieter: Botanist.
Coxcie,Michiel: A Flemish painter who served both Charles V and Philip II (c. 1499–1592).
Cranmer,Thomas: First Protestant archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI; martyred by Mary I.
Dousa,Janus(JanvanderDoes): Governor of Leiden during the Spanish siege and first president of its university.
Dudley,Robert,EarlofLeicester: Favourite of Elizabeth I and leader of the expeditionary force to support the Dutch.
Erasmus,Desiderius: A scholar from Rotterdam (1466–1536) who insisted on the importance of establishing reliable biblical texts; he was critical of the Catholic Church, but thought reform should come from within and opposed Luther.
Espés, Don Guerau de: Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth I.
Eyck,JanandHubertvan: Brothers who painted TheAdorationoftheMystic Lambin St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent.
Farnese, Alessandro, Duke of Parma and Piacenza: Son of Margaret of Parma, general of Philip II’s forces in the Low Countries and Governor (1578–92). 13
Granvelle,AntoinePerrenotde: Cardinal and statesman; adviser to Margaret of Parma and subsequently to Philip II; a man of great learning and patron of Plantin and Lipsius (who as a young man was his secretary).
Guicciardini,Lodovico: Italian merchant who settled in Antwerp and who wrote a detailed description of the Low Countries and their culture illustrated with city maps.
Haemstede,Adriaanvan: Pastor of the Dutch stranger church at Austin Friars accused of Anabaptist sympathies and expelled from England.
Heere, Lucas d’: Painter and poet from Ghent.
Heyns,Peeter: Owner of an influential girls’ school in Antwerp, as well as a poet and playwright.
Hoefnagel, Joris: Miniaturist, illuminator and poet from Antwerp.
Hooftman,Anna: Daughter of Gillis and wife of Orazio Palavicino; she subsequently married Sir Oliver Cromwell (uncle of the Lord Protector of the same name).
Hooftman, Bartholomaeus: An elder brother of Gillis, and a merchant and alderman of Trier.
Hooftman, Gillis: Wealthy Antwerp merchant, financier and ship-owner.
Hooftman,Hendrik: An elder brother of Gillis; merchant who fled Alba’s persecution.
Hooftman, Margaretha: Daughter of Bartholomaeus Hooftman and wife of Peeter Panhuys.
Lefèvre,Guy,delaBoderie: French scholar of oriental languages and poet; with his brother Nicolas he was one of the correctors of the BibliaRegia.
Leicester: See Dudley.
Lipsius,Justus(JoostLips): Eminent classical scholar and philosopher.
Mander,Karelvan: Pupil of d’Heere who wrote HetSchilder-boeck, which contains a collection of brief biographies of painters.
MargaretofParma: Illegitimate daughter of Charles V; became Duchess of Parma by her second marriage. Governor of the Low Countries (1559–67) until the arrival of Alba; mother of Alessandro Farnese, a subsequent Governor. 14
Marlowe, Christopher: Elizabethan playwright and poet.
MarnixvanStAldegonde: Statesman and writer; William of Orange’s right-hand man and Governor of Antwerp when it was besieged by Farnese.
Marot, Clément: French Protestant poet, some of whose psalm translations form part of the GenevanPsalter.
Melanchthon, Philip: Lutheran theologian.
Meteren,Emanuelvan: Dutch merchant based in London who became consul for the Dutch community in London and wrote the first history of the Dutch revolt.
Moerentorf,Jan(Moretus): Married Plantin’s eldest daughter and inherited the Antwerp printing press. His descendants continued to run the press until 1867 when it was sold to the city of Antwerp and became a museum; the presses, typefaces and much paperwork had been scrupulously preserved by the family.
Montano,BenitoArias: Chaplain to Philip II, he was the biblical scholar and philologist sent to Antwerp to supervise the printing of the BibliaRegia.
Moretus: See Moerentorf.
Niclaes, Henrik: Founder of the Family of Love.
Nispen,Margarethavan: Third wife of Gillis Hooftman; her eldest child, Anna, married Palavicino.
Noot,Janvander: A Protestant, he was one of the first poets to write in Dutch.
Noue, François de la: Huguenot leader and war hero.
Ortelius,Abraham: Antwerp cartographer, author and scholar.
Parma: See Farnese.
Perez, Luis: Spanish merchant based in Antwerp; close friend of Plantin.
Palavicino,Orazio(SirHoratioPalavicino): Noble Genoese merchant and financier; became an English denizen and served as an ambassador for Elizabeth I; married Anna Hooftman.
Panhuys, Peeter: Merchant and partner of Gillis Hooftman, whose niece he married. 15
Plantin, Christophe: A Frenchman, he was the pre-eminent printer of Antwerp.
Postel,Guillaume: A learned French scholar of ancient oriental languages and a religious universalist.
Racket, Johanna: Niece of Gillis Hooftman and wife of Johan Radermacher.
Radermacher,Johan: Apprentice of Gillis Hooftman and subsequently his agent in London and right-hand man.
Raphelengien,François(Raphelengius): Husband of Plantin’s eldest daughter and skilled orientalist; took over Plantin’s Leiden printing house and became Professor of Hebrew there; later converted to Calvinism.
Requesens, Luis de: Governor of the Low Countries after Alba (1573–6).
Rivière, Jeanne: Wife of Christophe Plantin.
Rogers,Daniel:Son of John Rogers, the first Protestant martyr under Mary I, and of Adriana van Weyden, who was a first cousin of Abraham Ortelius and Emanuel van Meteren. He wrote Latin poetry and acted as an agent for Elizabeth I in her negotiations with Protestant German princes.
Ruytinck,Simon: A minister at the Dutch stranger church at Austin Friars in London; wrote a brief biography of van Meteren.
Spinola, Ambrogio: Genoese soldier and successful Spanish general.
Viglius de Zuichem: An influential Netherlandish statesman under the Habsburgs.
Vivien,Johan(Vivianus): Friend of Ortelius and Radermacher; writer and collector of antiquities and especially coins.
Vos, Maerten de: Antwerp painter.
Walsingham,Francis: English ambassador to France at the time of St Bartholomew’s Day massacre and subsequently principal secretary to Elizabeth I; Elizabeth’s most important adviser apart from Cecil.
Zayas: See Çayas. 16
PART 1
AT THE HEART OF A CIVILISATION18
CHAPTER 1
Prelude
The first portrait
As the taxi made its way through the rectangular gridiron of an industrial estate, we turned another right angle and there in front of us was a huge barrier. The driver turned and asked if we were sure that we had the correct address. I confirmed that we were sure, observing that I had a print-out of the email appointing the time and place.
‘May I see it, please?’ she enquired in the impeccable English that one comes to expect from the entire Dutch nation. Satisfied, she drove slowly up to the barrier, which began to slide open as we approached. We drove through, turning in a gradual circle through the enormous forecourt. A couple of people were waiting to welcome us at the top of some external steps, and so we climbed them, identified ourselves and were welcomed in. There, as we waited to meet the director, we read about the history of the building we now stood in. It had been constructed to protect the new euro coins and notes that were distributed once the new currency became legal tender in December 2001, hence the elaborate security arrangements and the huge loading yard for the lorries needed to distribute an entire nation’s cash. Now the building was instead keeping safe the numerous works of art for which there was no room on the walls of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and it was one of these that we had come to see.
Back in England, I had ascertained that the Rijksmuseum possessed a family portrait by the sixteenth-century Antwerp artist Maerten de Vos, and rather than travelling to Amsterdam on the off-chance of seeing it, I had emailed the museum to ask if it would be on display. I received a prompt answer informing me that it would not. I replied to express my regret that I would not be able to see the wedding portrait of my eleven times great-grandfather 20and great-grandmother. This quickly brought a reply with an invitation to view the portrait at the Rijksmuseum’s store in Lelystad, which I gratefully accepted, much impressed by the speed and courtesy of the museum’s staff. And so it was that we stood there as one of those great sliding racks with a number of pictures hanging on it was slowly drawn out and the portrait celebrating the marriage of Gillis Hooftman and Margaretha van Nispen in 1570 gradually emerged into sight (ill. 1). While we were there, we were told that both these forebears appeared in another much larger group portrait by the same artist which was to form part of an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum that winter, entitled 80 Jaar Oorlog (‘The Eighty Years’ War’1). It is this second portrait which is the starting point of this book.
The second portrait
In the museum of the Catherijneconvent in Utrecht hangs the large oil painting that I went to see in the 80 Jaar Oorlog exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Its strong colours seem to confirm the suggestion that the painter worked for a while in Tintoretto’s studio. It is entitled Moses Showing the Tablets of the Law to the Israelites, and at first glance it appears to be a straightforward imagining of the scene when Moses brings down the Tablets of the Law (the Ten Commandments) for a second time before he asks the Israelites to make offerings for the construction of the ark in which to carry and protect them. However, a closer examination immediately reveals an anomaly, for whereas Moses and Aaron in the centre are wearing what might be imagined to be clothes of the Old Testament period, we notice that between them and all around them are other people in more modern (i.e. sixteenth-century) clothes, many of them wearing ruffs typical of the 1570s. Looking more carefully, we now see that the full title describes the picture as showing Moses and the Israelites ‘with portraits of members of the Panhuys family, their relatives and friends’ (ill. 2).
What we have in front of us is a portrait historié – a painting in which contemporaries of the artist are depicted taking part in a historical scene. This needs to be distinguished from the earlier custom in which it was not uncommon for the donor of an altarpiece, for example, to be painted in devout prayer at the side of a painting and often to a smaller scale. These earlier figures are not participating in what is shown, but are observing it, just as the worshippers in the church are being invited to do. In a portrait historié, however, the modern characters are shown participating in the scene that is being painted. An earlier example would be Sandro Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi painted one hundred years earlier in 1475/6, an altarpiece commissioned by Gaspare di Zenobi for his family’s funerary chapel in Santa Maria Novella 21in Florence. Not only is Gaspare shown amongst those adoring the Christ child, but according to Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Painters, the three Magi themselves can all be identified with members of the powerful Medici family.2 This painting is different in one respect, though: in Botticelli’s painting, it is only the artist himself who looks directly at the viewer, as if challenging us to join the worshipping great ones, but in de Vos’s painting, all the contemporary figures look out from the painting. Right in the middle between Moses and Aaron stands the figure of Johan Radermacher, who looks directly at us over the right shoulder of Aaron. It is as if they are all urging the viewer to take heed of the Ten Commandments.
A picture with a modern layman at the centre was clearly never intended as an altarpiece in a church; this is a private painting, a fact made clear when on examination we see that some of the figures have their names and ages discreetly painted on their clothes. All of these turn out to be members of the family of Peeter Panhuys and it was, in fact, a descendant of the Panhuys family, Jonkheer Peeter van Panhuys, who gave the picture to the Mauritshuis Museum in 1836. For this reason, it is often referred to as the Panhuys Paneel and, in the interests of brevity, that is how I shall now refer to it.
Other sources
At this point, I began to investigate the origins of the connection between Gillis Hooftman and Peeter Panhuys, the business partner who had married his niece, and Maerten de Vos, the painter of both pictures. I soon found that the answer was literally staring me in the face from the centre of the Panhuys Paneel. The literature all pointed to Johan Radermacher, the tall man between Moses and Aaron who looks directly (and rather sternly) at the viewer. He was an erstwhile apprentice of Hooftman and subsequently his London agent. At an earlier period, Hooftman had wished to have a series of biblical paintings in his dining room (that new extravagance in the homes of the wealthy which also provided a private place near the back of the house where friends could discuss controversial matters in privacy). He asked Radermacher to suggest a good artist. While working in Antwerp as a young man, Radermacher had come to know Abraham Ortelius and they had become good friends. Consequently, it was only natural that Radermacher should turn to Ortelius for advice, and it was the latter, with his links across the intellectual world of Western Europe, who suggested that Maerten de Vos would be just the man to paint pictures for Radermacher’s boss.
We can be sure of this because much later, after the death of Ortelius, his nephew Jacob Coels (often referred to as Ortelianus) asked Radermacher for 22memories of his uncle, and the latter told him the story in one of a number of letters that Coels kept, adding them to the large number of letters that Ortelius himself had carefully saved. This wonderful cache of letters, the Epistulae Ortelianae, was in due course passed on to the Dutch stranger church at Austin Friars in London for safe keeping. Most of these letters are in Latin, but a number are in ‘modern’ languages (i.e. sixteenth-century Dutch, French, Italian, German and Portuguese). Mercifully for readers today, their admirable nineteenth-century editor Jan Hendrick Hessels added to the heroic task of editing these letters the provision of full summaries of each one in English.3 This painstaking transcription of a remarkable collection of letters provides a portrait of European civilisation at the time, as well as throwing light on the literal portrait that is the starting point of this study. There are more letters than these, however, that throw light on the likenesses in the portrait.
One of the figures in the Panhuys Paneel is the printer Christophe Plantin, and his letters are a further major source of information. Whereas the Epistulae Ortelianae consists mainly of letters written to Ortelius and his nephew, the letters in the enormous collection that Max Rooses, another diligent nineteenth-century editor, began to publish in the 1880s, the Correspondance de Christophe Plantin, are mainly copies of letters written by Plantin rather than to him. Other written material that I shall be drawing on includes the memorieboeken (family records) of Peeter Panhuys and Emanuel van Meteren (the first historian of the Dutch revolt), the alba amicorum (friendship books) of Radermacher, Ortelius and van Meteren, and some of the poetry of Lucas d’Heere and Joris Hoefnagel (who were both poets as well as painters).
Exploring the context
So, who are all these people that de Vos painted in the Paneel, and what do we learn from their lives? Some answers to the first of these questions are suggested below (‘Who is who’). They range from the certain to the highly speculative, although there is fairly general agreement about many of their identities. My aim in the first part of this book is to explore what can be found out about the civilisation and conflicts of the time prior to the painting of the Paneel by looking at the lives and writings not just of the group shown in the Paneel but also of their wider circle. Next, in a shorter second part, I shall look at what happened after that moment. What can be said straight away is that these contributors to Antwerp’s rich civilisation would be scattered by political and religious conflicts that led to an extended period of warfare and ultimately to the establishment of the northern provinces of the Habsburg Low Countries as the separate country that became the Netherlands. 23
The Habsburgs had inherited the Low Countries from the Dukes of Burgundy, and the territory that they ruled approximately covered what is now the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Despite the seventeen constituent states being collectively described as the Low Countries, and despite the fact that they all shared the same hereditary overlord, they were some way from being what would normally be described as a country. Each state, and sometimes each city, had its own laws and privileges granted to them over time, and some of the northern states had only been annexed much more recently, the last being Gelderland, which had only finally been conquered by Charles V in 1543 after a long and vicious struggle with the Duke of Gelre. In addition, they were divided by language – not just French and Dutch, but also Frisian and Oosters (or East Dutch), and further east even Low German. They were also soon to be divided by bitter divisions between Calvinists and Catholics. These factors combined to ensure that it was only in exceptional circumstances that they joined to resist Spanish authority; in general, though, their own local interests over-rode any wider concerns.4
In 1559, the twenty-five-year-old Lucas d’Heere (the fifth man from the right standing at the back) had painted Philip II of Spain, the Habsburg overlord of the Low Countries, as King Solomon being offered gifts and homage by the Queen of Sheba, an allegorical figure representing the Low Countries. When he depicted this harmonious relationship of overlord and grateful subjects, he could hardly have imagined the moment twenty-six years later, in 1585, when Johan Radermacher (the central figure) would be part of a delegation negotiating the surrender of Antwerp to one of Philip’s generals in exchange for an agreement that all Protestants would be allowed four years in which to settle their affairs and leave. This agreement was to prove more or less the point of no return in establishing a line between what became the Calvinist north (the future Netherlands) that would renounce Philip’s lordship, and the Catholic south (the future Belgium) that would remain loyal to him, although there were still many weary years of war ahead. The aim of this book is to look at what was lost by this conflict.5
Who is who on the Panhuys Paneel?
The list below is intended both as an introduction and for reference as you read on. You may also wish to refer to the Dramatis Personae (p. 11) when you come across an unfamiliar name. The ascription of identities ranges from the certain (the names and ages of members of the Panhuys family are painted on their clothes) to the probable, the possible and, finally, but by no means of least interest, the distinctly speculative – let the reader beware!6 Therefore, this 24section needs to be prefaced with a warning. This book is about the civilisation that the people painted in the Paneel epitomise, as illuminated by their letters and other writings. It is not about the precise identification of every figure in the picture, nor is it exclusively about the people represented in it. If, therefore, some of the identifications I suggest below are wrong, this does not mean that, like some politicians, I am adhering to ‘my’ truth as opposed to provable facts. Three of the most doubtful identifications below are of Emanuel van Meteren, Benito Arias Montano, and Justus Lipsius. All three of them, however, were closely associated with other people who are generally agreed to be shown in the Paneel and, more importantly, are integral members of the civilised circle that is the real subject of this book. (My fourth completely unprovable identification is of Johanna Racket, but what I say about her is not dependent upon the identification.) Fuller explanations will emerge as the book continues, but where identification is particularly uncertain, I have put question marks below.
A provisional identification of figures on the Panhuys Paneel (ill. 2) Standing at the back from the left
1. Joris Hoefnagel
2. Israelite
3. Black woman carrying a red amphora
4. Gillis Hooftman
5. Another black woman carrying a large jug
6. Emanuel van Meteren (or Jean de Castro or Maerten della Faille)
7. Johanna Racket (with back turned; niece of Gillis Hooftman and wife of Johan Radermacher) with young daughter
8. Jeanne Rivière (wearing a cap; she is the wife of Christophe Plantin)
9. Israelite (?) woman pointing
10. Unknown man in contemporary (?) dress, or an Israelite
11 & 12. Two Jewish women behind Moses
13. Moses (seated)
14. Unknown man gesticulating (just to right of Moses’ head; possibly Justus Lipsius as a young man)
Standing at the back from the right
1. Self-portrait of Maerten de Vos
2. Peeter Panhuys
3. Rembert Dodoens
4. Israelite man
5. Lucas d’Heere 25
6. Bartholomaeus Hooftman
7. Israelite woman (behind, carrying a jug)
8. Unknown man. (I would dearly like to suggest that this simply dressed figure’s evident interest in the text that he gestures towards means that he is intended to represent Benito Arias Montano, or at least his insistence on the primacy of textual scholarship, but deliberately painted to look unlike him since he was worried about the Inquisition at the time and would not wish to be associated with the others, but I have to concede this is highly improbable.)
9. Christophe Plantin
10. Israelite
11. Peeter Heyns
12. Aaron
13. Johan Radermacher (just to right of Moses’ staff)
When these characters first enter the story, they will be identified by the numbers above preceded by an ‘L’ or ‘R’ (left or right, respectively): e.g. Gillis Hooftman (L4).
Left foreground with children
Margaretha van Nispen (the third wife of Gillis Hooftman) and her children Anna, Cornelis and Gillis Hooftman (junior). (There is some doubt about the identity of the two boys, but these are the names of Margaretha’s first three children according to Batavia Illustrata or Oud Batavien (p. 1028),7 which was published in 1685 and at the time was very approximately the Dutch equivalent of Burke’s Peerage.)
Right foreground
Margaretha Hooftman (sitting in a yellow dress), a niece of Gillis Hooftman by his brother, Bartholomaeus,8 and the wife of Peeter Panhuys, surrounded by a number of her children, including Peeter (standing behind her with his father’s hand on his shoulder), Anna (kneeling in front of her mother and holding a jug), Margaretha (behind her sister), Bartholomaeus (between his mother’s knees) and Gilles (on her lap). The putto (naked child) leaning against her is not a cupid, but perhaps a cherub to represent the soul of a daughter who had died in early childhood (strange though it seems to us, such cherubs were invariably portrayed as male).9 Sitting to the immediate left of Margaretha is her mother, Barbara Daelberg (with her head resting on her hand, wearing a headdress). This last portrait is posthumous. 26
CHAPTER 2
A merchant family and its network: Gillis Hooftman and Peeter Panhuys
…iam nova Roma resurgat
Scaldis ubi refluo flumine voluit aquas.
…‘Now a new Rome arises
Where the tidal waters of the Scheldt ebb and flow.’
Orbis in exiguo maximus orbe viget.
‘The great globe thrives within the small one.’
– Daniel Rogers10
The quayside scene in Sebastiaan Vrancx’s picture of the crane and harbour gate on the Scheldt at Antwerp (1616–18; ill. 3) is one of frantic activity. Barrels and chests are everywhere as a horse drags a heavily loaded cart, and baskets and goods are carried in every direction; one dockworker is bent low under a heavy bale of cloth wrapped in bright red material, and another carries a huge chest. Two men shake hands, and others stand around discussing business. A sailor holds the hand of a woman as she cautiously walks down a gangplank to a moored ship. Dogs go about their doggy business, while one mother breastfeeds her baby, and others hold their children firmly by the hand. More ships can be seen on the river beyond. and in the middle distance is the fort known as Het Steen. Further along the bank, a windmill can be seen, and the right bank of the river curves away into the distance. Looming large on the left is a great double crane and to the right is the harbour gate leading into the city through the strong walls. 28
It was here in the heart of all this activity that the influential merchants Gillis Hooftman (1521–81) and Peeter Panhuys (1529–85) had lived forty years earlier in their great house, the Pollenaken, and made such a major contribution to the wealth of Antwerp. And where did Hooftman and Panhuys negotiate the business deals, loans and financial arrangements that lay behind the frantic trading activity shown in Vrancx’s picture? After 1531, merchants like Hooftman no longer had to strike deals in the street or a warehouse because Antwerp had led the way in building an exchange, their Bourse, where merchants and bankers could meet all comers to exchange commodities, find the best bargains, arrange financial credits overseas, or borrow money to set up new businesses at home (ill. 4). If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Sir Thomas Gresham, the English financier whose ingenious transactions on the Antwerp money market helped fund Elizabeth I through various financial difficulties, paid just such a tribute when, in 1565, more than thirty years after Antwerp, he opened a similar Bourse in London. After a visit by Elizabeth I, it became known as the Royal Exchange. The importance of the Antwerp Bourse was emphasised when Joris Hoefnagel (L1) chose to include the same Daniel Rogers poems quoted at the start of this chapter in his bird’s-eye view of Antwerp which was printed by Plantin some time before 1597 (ill. 5).
When a merchant like Gillis Hooftman accumulates wealth, he looks for things to spend it on, and so he asked his agent, Johan Radermacher, to find a painter for the pictures that he wanted to decorate his dining room. His instructions were those of a typical businessman: he wanted someone who would work faster than the best-known Antwerp painter of the day, Frans Floris, but also someone whose work was not too expensive.11 This is not only a reminder that you do not become as rich as Hooftman did without being careful with your money, but also that civilisation does not come cheap, and in Antwerp it depended very much on successful international trade.
The wealth that art seeks out can also, of course, derive from land or conquest, but it is worth noting that all the gold and silver looted from the Americas by the Spanish at this time was poured into their wars with France and in keeping the Ottoman Empire at bay in the Mediterranean, even before vast sums were spent trying to control the Netherlands (and which may well have contributed as much to inflation as to civilisation).12
Trade, as opposed to looting, depends on mutual contacts, and with the exchange of goods there often comes the exchange of ideas. For a society as a whole to become civilised, the peaceful cross-fertilisation of ideas is as crucial as the leisure provided by trade-generated wealth. And Antwerp, with 29its many resident foreign merchants, was supremely successful in creating the tolerant environment in which goods and ideas could be exchanged with profit to boost both the cultural and trading wealth of the city.
Antwerp’s mercantile wealth depended partly on its happy position just a little way up the Scheldt estuary, with sea routes to the Channel and North Sea, west to Spain and across the Atlantic to the Americas, and finally even north to the White Sea. There were also good overland routes through Germany to the south and east, and connections through France in the west and on to Italy. In short, Antwerp was ideally placed to become the great trading centre of northern Europe, and so it did. There was a frequentia omnium gentium, a gathering of people from across the globe, as that Anglo-Netherlandish emissary of Elizabeth I, Daniel Rogers, was to put it in his poem about how merchants flocked to the Antwerp Bourse to trade (see note 1). Of course, Antwerp’s location would have been insufficient without the drive and energy of its merchants, and the favourable site and burgeoning trade drew in ambitious merchants from far and near, not only from the Netherlandish provinces, but also from Germany, France and England, as well as from other great trading cities and ports such as Genoa and Venice. As the printer Christophe Plantin puts it in his ‘Ode to the Council and People of Antwerp’:
C’est grand honneur, Messieurs, do voir tant d’estrangers
Des quatre Parts du Monde (avec mille dangers)
Apporter ce qu’ils ont d’esprit & de puissance
Pour render vostre ville un Cornet d’abundance,
De sçavoir & de biens.
(‘It is much to the credit of the city that so many foreigners from the four corners of the world, facing a thousand dangers, bring their ingenuity and energy to make the city a cornucopia of plenty, knowledge and goods.’)13
To encourage these foreign entrepreneurs and the money that they brought, Antwerp gave favourable trading concessions, even sometimes at the expense of their own merchants. Almost 1,000 foreign merchants were based in Antwerp and the city helped them to establish their own naties (nations) or bases where they could find accommodation and warehousing for their goods. These ‘nations’ were separate corporations within the city with their own buildings, administration and jurisdiction.14 The city was also open to new ideas and willing to turn a blind eye to the unorthodox religious beliefs of some of its visitors.
However, not everyone who came to Antwerp to seek their fortune came from that far away. Hooftman and Panhuys came from an area roughly 30between Eupen, Walhorn and Aachen. These days, Eupen is at the centre of a small German-speaking enclave in east Belgium whereas Aachen is less than ten miles across the border in Germany. This region was in the Duchy of Limburg, but today this information is not especially helpful since there are now both Dutch and Belgian provinces called respectively Limburg and Limbourg, neither of which actually coincides with the earlier territory. The earlier Duchy of Limburg passed into the territory of the Duchy of Brabant, with the Duke of Brabant being one of Philip II of Spain’s many inherited titles. (Eupen and Walhorn only became part of modern Belgium after the First World War, when the region was taken from Germany and given to Belgium.) Nowadays, Walhorn is a small village less than five miles from Eupen, itself a modest, although attractive, town. Modern borders, and indeed the concept of Belgium and Germany as separate countries with national boundaries, are quite alien to the period under discussion. Although Philip II’s father, the emperor Charles V, was the common ruler of all these territories, and merged the titles that he had inherited with the intention of making a single unified state through his ‘Pragmatic Sanction’ of 1549, the Eighty Years’ War split them apart again (later, the incursions of Louis XIV would slice away some of the western territories into France). Nor did linguistic boundaries coincide with national ones in the way that English people have come to expect because of their isolation across the Channel: even today, some people in this region speak Limburgish amongst themselves, a variant of Dutch/German, which like Dutch and Platt-Deutsch (Low German) gradually evolved from German. It was a form of Dutch itself, however, that was to become the dominant dialect and official language in northern Belgium and the Netherlands.
Hooftman moved from Eupen to Antwerp as a young man, whilst Panhuys, his younger partner and nephew by marriage, came from Walhorn. The wealth they created enabled them to commission pictures by increasingly well-known Antwerp painters such as de Vos, although, as we have seen, they were careful about the price they were willing to pay. The pictures that they commissioned also had a serious purpose behind them: they were not just decorative but were normally related to their wider intellectual interests and especially their religious concerns.
In the Paneel, for example, we not only see Moses at a key moment in Jewish and Christian history – when he brings down the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai – but also one of the greatest printers of the age, Christophe Plantin, surrounded by some of his authors: the botanist Rembert Dodoens; the schoolmaster, translator and playwright Peeter Heyns; and the artist and poet 31Lucas d’Heere, as well as learned merchants such as Johan Radermacher and Gillis’s brother, Bartholomaeus Hooftman, another merchant.
Like a number of other merchants, Radermacher was a humanist with an interest in classical literature and history, as well as what could be learned from them. Humanist interests of this period went far beyond mere backward-looking antiquarianism: it has been suggested, for example, that Prince Maurice, who was to transform the rebel Dutch troops into a disciplined army that could cope with the Spanish, studied the account of Roman military tactics and training by Justus Lipsius, one of Plantin’s authors, for principles and inspiration, if not for tactics.
So, what were the sources of the wealth that drew together so many exceptionally talented people, making sixteenth-century Antwerp a centre of civilisation as well as of trade, its new city hall as fine as any ‘gorgeous palace’ of Shakespeare’s imagining? At the core of Antwerp’s prosperity was the trade in wool and woollen cloth from England. Even today, you would be hard put to travel through the hillier regions of the English or Welsh countryside without seeing flocks of sheep. In sixteenth-century England, when most people’s principal preoccupations were still shelter, food and clothing, just about the only commodity that could be easily transported and sold for profit was wool or the cloth woven from it (timber and stone were much more difficult to transport and were usually used locally). As such, wool lay at the heart of the English economy and the woolsack represented the commercial wealth of England and Wales. (It is not for nothing that the Lord Chancellor still sits on the Woolsack when presiding over the House of Lords.)
Much of England’s wool was exported through Antwerp, where it arrived either unwoven or as cloth. The latter was sent either ready for immediate sale or for ‘finishing’ in the workshops of the Low Countries.15 Dyeing cloth meant that another key import was alum (usually a term for hydrated double-sulphate salt of aluminium, which could only be mined in a few places), which was the only known mordant for fixing dye and therefore essential for the local industry. In 1491, Maximilian of Austria had granted Antwerp the staple (i.e. exclusive trading rights) for alum, and being at the centre of this trade had strengthened Antwerp’s growing commercial dominance.16 By the sixteenth century, the basic trade in cloth and alum was beginning to be augmented, partly, of course, by what English merchants bought with the money made by selling wool. The range of what was being sold started to expand rapidly as the result of the explorations and colonisation of the Portuguese down the west coast of Africa and beyond to the East Indies, as well as by Spanish and Portuguese conquests in South America.17 Not only Portuguese spices, 32but also South German copper and silver were valuable commodities traded through Antwerp.18 There was also trade from southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where Venetian and Genoese galleys had been fighting both literally and commercially for many years while trading with North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. Goods from this region might travel overland or directly by sea; for example, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, John Stow mentions Italian ‘galley men’ in his A Survey of London who landed their merchandise in Thames Street at a place called Galley Quay.19
Many imports, however, reached England via Antwerp, the most successful and prosperous port in northern Europe, and it was here that Hooftman and Panhuys came in the mid-sixteenth century with a view to making their fortunes. We can see the latter on the right-hand side of the Panhuys Paneel, named after him, of course, as its commissioner. He stands there (R2), looking out at us, dressed in brown, with lace at his cuffs and wearing a ruff, and with a reddish-brown cloak over his left shoulder. His left hand rests reassuringly on the left shoulder of his rather apprehensive-looking eldest son, also named Peeter, and he holds his son’s right hand with his own right hand. (He can be identified with absolute confidence by the fact that his name is painted on the fold of his cloak running upwards towards his shoulder.)
On the left-hand side of the Paneel stands Gillis Hooftman (L4), wearing a red cloak and with a bushy, gingerish beard. At first sight, his careworn face which stares out at us looks almost detached from the body to which it belongs, but on closer examination we see that this is because its owner has the stooped neck of an older man who has spent many hours in his office poring over his maps and accounts. Nevertheless, he still has an imposing physical presence. Apart from his natural concerns as a ship-owner and merchant in a time of widespread war and upheaval, we know that Hooftman had good cause to look careworn, as he had suffered some heavy financial losses in the years prior to the painting. One of his ships had sunk off the coast of Zeeland in 1571 and another, valued at 30,000 florins, was wrecked on shifting sands near Saaftinghe20 in 1574, while in the same year he had also had to contribute 1,500 florins to the forced loan from the city of Antwerp to the Spanish Governor-General, Requesens, after unpaid Spanish troops had mutinied immediately after they had won a crushing victory at Mookerheyde and marched on Antwerp.21 The earlier painting by de Vos of Hooftman and his third wife, Margaretha van Nispen, mentioned above (ill. 1) makes it possible to identify him confidently, as do two portrait medallions (ills. 6 & 7; see also p. 5222). The inextricable entanglement of politics and religious conflict with commerce in the Reformation period is well illustrated by the lives of 33international merchants and bankers such as Hooftman and Panhuys. As such, it is not surprising that Hooftman looks preoccupied.
Hooftman (1521–81), possibly the youngest of eight siblings, had probably come to Antwerp a year or two before 1540 (he was already registered as a citizen of Antwerp by 15 July 1541).23 According to the nineteenth-century Belgian Biographie Nationale de Belgique, he started his career as a colporteur et boutiquier (pedlar and small shopkeeper), but soon became a rich international merchant and owner of a large merchant fleet.24 This rags-to-riches story requires two major qualifications. The first is that he probably joined one of his older brothers, Hendrik, in Antwerp. We can assume that the latter was already thriving commercially since in 1562 he bought the Pollenaken for 10,000 guilders.25 This was a substantial house in Steenstraat in a prime position on the banks of the Scheldt where Hooftman lived with Hendrik. Steenstraat was a quayside street that led to Het Steen, the fortress and jail on the banks of the Scheldt. It was evidently a large house since later, after Hendrik had left Antwerp to avoid the religious persecution enforced by the Duke of Alba, Peeter Panhuys and his family lived there with Hooftman and his family. Being right on the quayside, it almost certainly served as a warehouse as well as a home.26 It appears, then, that Hooftman’s first ventures may have been in partnership with an already successful elder brother.
The second qualification to the story is that it was not unusual at the time to share risk not simply through shared ownership of cargo, but also by sharing ships. In these circumstances, it might be hard to quantify accurately the number of ships owned by a single merchant, or to be sure that Hooftman really owned one hundred of them (as some accounts claim), small though they were by today’s standards. Nevertheless, by the end of his life, Hooftman was evidently very rich and could afford to take on the risks of shipwreck and privateers by himself, thus avoiding the inconvenience of needing to negotiate the coordination of voyage times and destinations with other merchants.
Hooftman’s initial success seems to have been based on the timber trade in the Baltic, although he later came to trade much more widely in anything from woollen cloth to Bibles. Merchant ships were vulnerable, however, not only to bad weather and errors of navigation, but also to the dangers of war and piracy. The Livonian War (1558–83) made the Baltic dangerous,27 while conflict between Spain and France (which was also engaged in a civil war) also posed threats.
Given these events, it is easy to understand Hooftman’s compulsive reference to his maps which was described by his agent, Radermacher, in a letter of 1603 telling Ortelianus how the latter’s recently deceased uncle, 34Abraham Ortelius, first came to produce his ground-breaking atlas. At this time, maps were often attached to a linen backing and then fixed on wooden frames so that they could be hung on walls, or otherwise they were rolled up; in other words, they were not easily portable or available for instant reference. Radermacher describes how, at times of conflict, Hooftman would anxiously spread out his maps:
He also bought all the geographical maps that could be had so that he could calculate from the distances the freight of merchandise and the dangers they were exposed to. They also enabled him to make judgements about the news that was brought him daily about the European wars, especially in France. And as he lived at a time of many such events, he would compare all the maps he could get hold of. As he didn’t tolerate any delay, he would unfold them to examine them during the course of his meals or whenever there was debate about crossing certain territories, or in the middle of conversation with friends, or even when a thought occurred to him when he was by himself.28
The ongoing struggle for domination of the Baltic explains why, at about the time of the painting of the Panhuys Paneel, Hooftman started to plan an alternative route for importing goods from Russia via the White Sea. This may have been suggested to him by an early and fairly accurate map of the seas around northern Russia (Septentrionalium Regionum Descrip., ill. 9) that was published by Abraham Ortelius in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (‘Theatre of the Lands of the Globe’, first edition, Antwerp, 1570). The Theatrum
