About the artist:

Henrik Hondius I or Hendrik Hondius the Elder (1573–1650), was a Dutch Golden Age engraver, cartographer and publisher. He was born in Duffel and settled in The Hague in 1597. According to Cornelis de Bie's Het Gulden Cabinet, his father was Guiliam Hondius, a learned man who moved to Mechelen, where the young Hondius learned to write. He studied first with a goldsmith in Brussels before learning to paint from Jan Wierix. Later, he learned mathematics and architecture from Hans Vredeman de Vries when he was in Leiden in 1604. He was probably related to the famous cartographer Jodocus Hondius who started a map making business in Amsterdam and whose sons were named Hendrik Hondius II and William (Guiliam). In 1610 he published the work Pictorum aliquot celebrium praecipue Germaniae inferioris Effigies, which included 69 portraits of artists, including an engraving of Hans Holbein.[5] Of these prints, 22 were copied from an earlier work by Dominicus Lampsonius. Both works have been placed online by the Courtauld Institute of Art, with a comparison of Hondius' version to the 1572 version published by Lampsonius and the widow of Hieronymous Cock. The only portrait Hondius did not include in his 1610 version was the last one, a posthumous portrait of Cock himself.