Portraits in print
Van Hoogstraten's independent etchings from the 1640s cannot be considered successful in spreading his fame, since none were widely published. His formal portraits of the 1670s participate more fruitfully in the 'copy culture' of printmaking. Apart from his self-portrait, they were all based on paintings by others; in some cases, the source is mentioned. Thus, he must have been aware that reproductive prints can spread the fame of the printmaker as well as the designer. In some cases, he also advertised himself as painter-poet by composing the laudatory inscription.
Our research confirms the attribution to Van Hoogstraten of a portrait of Erasmus [33].1 This plate was published in Rotterdam in 1677 by François van Hoogstraten (I) (1632-1696), in a compendium of the humanist’s writings edited by the Collegiant theologian Daniel de Breen.2 François will have asked his brother for the etching to serve as the book's authorial frontispiece. The likeness is based on a well-known prototype by Hans Holbein; Van Hoogstraten could have consulted one of many workshop versions [e.g., 34].3 In the second state, the background and details of the face and figure are further worked up and a laudatory inscription in Latin is added. The calligraphy is amateurish, but the image demonstrates mastery of conventional techniques for recreating the tonal values of paint.
Around the same time, Van Hoogstraten produced four etched portraits for Beschryvinge der stad Dordrecht, a monumental history of the city and its prominent institutions and families, written by his cousin by marriage, Matthijs Balen, and published in 1677 by Simon Onder de Linde in Dordrecht. Several other printmakers also contributed portraits and an extensive catalogue of local coats of arms (including that of Van Hoogstraten).4 Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708), a prolific illustrator, provided the title page and a number of ambitious topographical scenes [35].5 He also etched the portrait of Balen himself [36]. The inscription credits a painting by Van Hoogstraten as the source: this was an oil sketch (now lost), the portrait 'in brown and white' painted in 1677 by Van Hoogstraten mentioned in Balen's will.6 Van Hoogstraten also composed the eulogy inscribed in the lower margin. His own prints depict two sixteenth-century civic leaders, the burgomaster Jacob Muys van Holy, based on a painting by Anthonie Blocklandt (1533-1583), and the bailiff Adriaen van Blyenburgh, and two contemporary worthies, the statesman Cornelis de Witt (1623-1672), probably deriving from a painting by Jan de Baen (1633-1702), and the artist and poet Margaretha van Godewijk (1627-1677), after a self-portrait [37][38[39].7 Van Godewijk, whom Balen compared to the celebrated savante Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678), was the daughter of Van Hoogstraten's teacher at the Dordrecht Latin School; she was exactly Van Hoogstraten's age, and they may have known each other since childhood. For her, too, Van Hoogstraten wrote the inscribed eulogy.8
For Van Hoogstraten's portrait of Adriaen van Blyenburgh (1532-1582), the original source is unknown, but a descendant of the same name was a Dordrecht burgomaster and a patron of the artist. In 1657, Van Hoogstraten dedicated the Eerlyken jongeling to him; in 1674, they appeared together in Van Hoogstraten's second portrait of the Members of the Serment of the Dutch Mint in Dordrecht.9 The burgomaster may well have provided Van Hoogstraten with access to a portrait of his ancestor in the family collection. An inscribed proof and other documents demonstrate how Balen and his collaborators labored over the inscriptions for this portrait and presumably others in the volume; Van Hoogstraten, too, worked carefully to complete the visual components of his plates. The copperplate for this portrait is in the National Archives, The Hague, accompanied by a sheet bearing three poetic eulogies of Blyenburgh. Only the first accords with the inscription ultimately inscribed on the plate. The last is signed 'W:I:L:A:B:' and dated 1 October 1676. The initials have not been identified.10 The date shows that this project was underway by fall 1676. Balen's preface in the printed edition is dated 14 July 1677, providing a terminus ante quem.
An impression of the first state in the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, is accompanied by a sheet bearing an alternate version of the inscribed eulogy [37]. Offset on the sheet is another manuscript text in the lower margin reading 'Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst anders de zichtbaere werelt door S. van Hoogstraten', mirrored and upside-down. This is a first design for the lettering of the Inleyding title page, and it indicates that Van Hoogstraten was working on the Inleyding in 1676.11 Yet another text appears on a proof impression preserved in the Dordrecht Regional Archives. There, the first two lines of the eulogy are different, but the final version appears on a separate paper mounted to the sheet.12 All of these inscriptions were tried out after Van Hoogstraten had worked up the portrait in full detail.
For Portrait of Jacob Muys van Holy, Van Hoogstraten worked up costume and facial features through four states, adding refinements with burin and drypoint to create a richly detailed interpretation of Blocklandt's painting (both artists are credited already in the first state).13 The third state was inscribed with a poetic eulogy of the sitter initialled by Van Hoogstraten himself [38]. However, in the final state, published in Balen's book, this verse was replaced by a different quatrain, unsigned [39].14 Why Van Hoogstraten's poem was rejected is unknown, but since he must have been responsible for reworking the plate, it appears that he collaborated closely with Balen in designing both the visual and verbal components of these portraits.
33
attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), 1677
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-1887-A-11474
34
Hans Holbein (II)
Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), 1530-1531
Muncie (Indiana), David Owsley Museum of Art, inv./cat.nr. 1995.035.134
35
Romeyn de Hooghe
Titlepage for Beschryvinge der stad Dordrecht, before 1677
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History
36
Romeyn de Hooghe after design of Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of Matthijs Balen Janszoon (1611-1691), dated 1677
Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv./cat.nr. PP 0028
37
Samuel van Hoogstraten possibly after Jan Doudijn
Portrait of Adriaan van Blijenburgh (1532-1582), before 1677
Lawrence (Kansas), Spencer Museum of Art (The University of Kansas), inv./cat.nr. 2018.0056.01,2
38
Samuel van Hoogstraten after Anthonie Blocklandt
Portrait of Jacob Muys van Holy (1540-1592), before 1677
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-1896-A-19167
39
Samuel van Hoogstraten after Anthonie Blocklandt
Portrait of Jacob Muys van Holy (1540-1592), before 1677
The Hague, RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (Collectie Iconografisch Bureau)
Notes
1 Not mentioned by Hollstein Dutch & Flemish 1949-2010 or Blanc 2008. Third state illustrated here. Impressions of the first and second states are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
2 Compendium theologiae Erasmicae, Rotterdam 1677; Thissen 1994, p. 258, no. 42. On De Breen, see J. Trapman, ‘Erasmus seen by a Dutch collegiant: Daniel De Breen (1594-1664) and his posthumous “Compendium theologicae Erasmicae” (1677)', Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History, 73 (1993), no. 2, pp. 156-177.
3 Other versions of Holbein's painting are, for instance, in the National Gallery, London, and the Royal Collection, Windsor. A similar model was used by Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) for the portrait of Erasmus in Houbraken 1718-1721; the preparatory drawing in the Rijksmuseum is in the same direction as Van Hoogstraten's print.
4 For Van Hoogstraten’s own coat of arms in M. Balen, Beschryvinge van Dordrecht, 1677, p. 1355, see Brusati 1995, p. 132, fig. 93; M. Roscam Abbing, ‘Het familiewapen van de schilder en schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678)’, in: De Nederlandsche Leeuw 141 (2024), p. 100, fig. 2.
5 Van Nierop 2008, p. 266, cat. no. 1677.01.
6 Roscam Abbing 1993, p. 93. For the print see also Czech 2002, Appendix III, p. 278, fig. 30.
7 Brusati 1995, pp. 130-134; Czech 2002, Appendix III, pp. 279-281, figs. 31-33. Czech and Blanc omit the portrait of Cornelis de Witt, which is different in format from the other three.
8 See Maciesza/Runia 2025, pp. 128-129.
9 Roscam Abbing 1993, p. 50; Brusati 1995, pp. 79, 129-132. Adriaen van Blyenburgh is also one of five burgomasters named in the dedication of the Inleyding; Weststeijn 2008, p. 34.
10 The Hague, National Archives, Family Archive Collot d'Escury, inv. no. 440. Same unknown author is credited with a sonnet in Herstelde zeeg-triomf, van Karel de Tweede..., Dordrecht 1660; Samuel van Hoogstraten was also among the contributors to this pamphlet.
11 Van Hoogstraten/Brusati 2021, p. 33, n. 14, cites this impression as evidence of Van Hoogstraten 'multitasking' in these years. In fact, he was already working on the Inleyding in 1675, according to Houbraken’s biography of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642); Houbraken 1718-1721, vol. 1, pp. 363-364; H.J. Horn (ed. and trans.), 'Appendix. Arnold Houbraken's references to Samuel van Hoogstraten and his 'Introduction to the academy of painting', in Weststeijn et al. 2013, p. 244.
12 Regional Archives Dordrecht, inv. no. 552_230851. It is kept with an impression of an etched copy, reducing the figure to a bust-length portrait in an oval, by H[endrik] Pothoven, dated 1780.
13 The Blocklandt portrait may have passed to Muys van Holy's descendants, one of whom, burgomaster Arend Muys van Holy, was in contact with Van Hoogstraten in 1675; Roscam Abbing 1993, p. 75. In the final line of the eulogy inscribed on the print's third state, after praising Muys van Holy's leadership, Van Hoogstraten writes, 'Zyn naeneefs volgen hem op hoog geduchte trappen'.
14 The collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, holds the key to the complex development of this print. Hollstein Dutch & Flemish 1949-2010, vol. 9, p. 138, cat. no. 10, and Blanc 2008, pp. 400-401, cat. no. G14/2, list three states. However, one impression in the Rijksmuseum is an unpublished first state, as noted on the museum's website. Another impression, listed by Blanc as belonging to the first state, shows traces of rework to the face, making it the second state; the lower margin of this impression is inscribed in ink with a version of the poem published in M. Balen, Beschryvinge van Dordrecht, 1677. A third impression, pictured here [38], inscribed in the plate with a poem signed SvH and beginning 'Toen Dordrecht...', constitutes a third state. A fourth impression, pictured here [39], exemplifies the final state, published in Balen 1677.