Always humiliated, nevertheless De Hooghe. Biography of Cornelis de Hooghe (1541-1583)

Biography of Cornelis de Hooghe (1541–1583)
Cornelis de Hooghe (1541–1583) was one of the most intruiging mapmakers in the Low Countries of the sixteenth century. He consistently claimed to be the illegitimate son of emperor Charles V, father of Philip II of Spain and Margareth of Austria. Although some see De Hooghe as a fool or a charlatan, his claim is supported by the facts that he worked for his presumed half-sister Margareth of Austria, and that eyewinesses confirmed that his looks ere so similar to the emperor’s that no-one doubted his parentage.
De Hooghe’s Belgica map was long supposed to have been made for Ludovico Guicciardini’s famous Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (Description of all of the Low Countries) (1567). De Hooghe’s signed map was undated, and it was assumed that it, like the book, dated from 1567. In fact, it predated it, being the second version of a larger, unsigned map. The prime version bears no traces of ever having been bound into a book and was probably used at the court of Margareth of Austria since it depicts (and its title refers to) the frontiers between France and the Habsburg territories agreed in the Cateau–Cambrésis peace negotioations of 1559, and was probably was made shortly thereafter. After Margareth left the country, De Hooghe remastered the original copper plate to meet Guicciardini’s demands.
De Hooghe’s Hollandia map may well be the most beautiful and richest map of its time, lavishly ornamented by a delicate moresquin engraved frame. It also bears the blasons of Philip II and his stadholder William of Orange. Intended as a present to cement the excellent relationship between the two men, the map instantaneously became obsolete when they became mortal enemies within a year, and De Hooghe sold a hundred copies of his map to the Antwerp printer Plantin for the very low price of 3½ stuivers (one twentieth of a guilder).
In about 1566 De Hooghe started working on the book of fortifications by Captain De Marchi, the prominent aide of Margareth of Austria, then ruler of the Netherlands, For this vast study, published as Della architeturra militare (1595), De Hooghe engraved 52 small copper plates and 114 bigger ones showing the layout of model fortified cities. He never saw his engravings in print as Margareth was forced to leave the country by her half-brother, Philip II of Spain, who was dissatisfied with the way she dealt with the iconoclastic rebels in the Low Countries.
For some reason, however, the unfinished plates intended for the frontispieces of the book’s many chapters remained in the hands of De Hooghe. With the writing master Clement Perret, he used them in a copybook on fine handwriting, sold by Plantin but printed elsewhere. It was said that the book had been made for kings and others of very high rank. This copybook, the Excercitatio, appeared in 1569. Later a simplified version, the Alphabetum, was edited and sold, also by Plantin.
In 1574 De Hooghe was the first mapmaker to contribute to Christopher Saxton’s atlas of England and Wales. In 1574 he engraved the map of Norfolk. Also in 1574 De Hooghe was asked to map the Dutch city of Haarlem, a request which he refused after he was not allowed to attend a communion servie in the local church.
In 1576 returned from London and later Ipswich (England) where he was an international trader for some years, to Rotterdam, where he married Maritgen Tromper, from a local wealthy family. He is said to have had four children, presumably two sons and two daughters. The boys later became the first dutch italinate painters Charles and David de Hooch. Remakably is that Charles (as the first son probably named after the emperor) baptised his sons Alexander and Horatio, after two brothers in law of Margareth of Austria.  
De Hooghe’s life ended sadly in 1583, when he was tried, beheaded and quartered for his efforts to bring the Low Countries, which fought for their independence from Spain, back under the rule of his supposed half-brother Philip II, by that time undoubtedly the most hated man in the country.