Cornelis de Hooghe (1541, in The Hague – 1583, in The Hague) was a 16th-century engraver and mapmaker from the Northern Netherlands.
Biography
Cornelis de Hooghe, born in 1541 in The Hague (the Netherlands) as a bastard of Charles V, after this emperor's visit to the town in the summer of 1540. As De Hooghe's later friends and co-conspirators were to be found in the upper-class Delft families, it can safely be assumed that his mother was one of the daughters of Cornelis Arendsz. van der Hooch and Petronella van Persijn, wealthy and influential locals of both The Hague and Delft with close ties to the Habsburg government. This family also used names like Verhooch, De Hoogh or De Hooghe and owned a farm in the vicinity of Delft, bearing the name De Hooght. The exaggerated mention in his “Hollandia-map” (1565) of the rather unimportant Persijn manor (Huys te Persijn), that was situated just north of The Hague, underlines his descent from this family.
De Hooghe was a pupil of Philip Galle and received his education as an engraver when Galle still lived in Haarlem. "Cornelius Hogius" (as he signed his Norfolk map in 1574) already worked for himself at the court of Margareth of Parme (his halfsister and a bastard of Charles V, too) when Galle moved to Antwerp. He produced two maps for Margareth's court. Firstly he made a copy of Forlani's map “La vera descrittione della Gallia Belgica”, that by itself is assumed being a smaller copy of a wall-map by Van Deventer that now has been lost. In De Hooghe's copy he added to Forlani's map the borders of "Belgica" exactly as they were statued in 1559 by the peace treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. He therefore modified the original title of the map into “La Descrittione di Belgica con le sue frontiere” and added Philip IInd's blason to the copy of Forlani. His second known work was his "Hollandia-map", dated 1565 and signed by his monogram C.D.H. This map is considered being his masterpiece and was ornamented by a lavish moresquen border and the blasons of both king Philip II of Spain and of William of Orange (the Silent), by that time stadholder of Holland. The third known work were the illustrations that he made for captain Francesco de Marchi, Margareth's most trusted aid, for his book on the construction and lay-out of fortifications. Several projects were severely hampered by the Antwerp uprising of 1566, after which William of Orange had to flee to Germany. This made the "Hollandia-map", fraternally bearing both blasons of Philip II and of William of Orange, obsolete.
On 4 May 1567, a few days after Margaretha settled herself and her court in Antwerp for a few months in order to restore calm in this town, De Hooghe sold his "Hollandia-map" to the famous Antwerp printer Plantin. In 1567 his "Belgica-map appeared in the first edition of Ludovico Guicciardini's "Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi". It is often assumed that this map was especially made for this book, but the differences in size show that De Hooghe just sold a slightly modified and signed reprint of these maps to the author. It is safer to assume that only the second version of this map was made for Guicciardini. The first unsigned version of this map must be dated prior to 1567, most probably rather close to the year 1559 of the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis and was made solely for use at the court. None of the existing first version maps that survived bears any sign of book binding, nor were they cut off in order to fit in Guicciardini's book. At the end of 1567 Margareth left for Italy after being replaced by the Duke of Alva. By this event, Cornelis lost his job as a court engraver and left for London. He is being mentioned on the 1567 Archbishop Grindal's list of religious refugees "Catalogus corum qui ex ditione Philippi Hispaniarum Regis Ecclesiae Belgico-Germanicae Londinensi subsunt".