Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hogenberg, Remigius
HOGENBERG, REMIGIUS (d. 1580?), engraver, is believed to have been a son of Hans Hogenberg, a Flemish painter, who died about 1544 at Mechlin, where Remigius was born. The year is not known. He came to England about 1573. There is in the British Museum a large view by him of the city of Münster, entitled ‘Westvaliæ Metropolis Monasteriũ,’ dated 1570, which he no doubt engraved while still abroad. After his arrival in England it is stated by Strype (Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, ed. 1821, ii. 524) that he entered the service of Archbishop Parker, who employed him and another engraver, named Richard Lyne, in constructing genealogies. One of these, bearing the double title ‘Linea Valesiorum’ and ‘Linea Angliæ,’ and containing the genealogy of the kings of England from the Conquest to the reign of Elizabeth, with the royal line of France, bore the subscription, ‘Remigius Hogenbergius, servus D. Matt. Archiep. Cant. sculpsit 1574.’ He also engraved from a portrait by Lyne a small portrait of Archbishop Parker, signed ‘R. Berg,’ with the date 1572, afterwards altered to 1573, which was thought by Vertue to be the first portrait engraved in England. It is extremely rare, and has been copied by Woodburn. Similar to it is a miniature, likewise by Hogenberg, in the original copy of the statutes of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which was etched by Michael Tyson, and a portrait of Thomas Brooke, Lord Cobham. Between 1575 and 1578 he engraved the maps of the counties of Kent (with Sussex, Surrey, and Middlesex), Wilts, Devon, Salop, Hereford, Lincoln and Nottingham, Lancaster, and Montgomery for Saxton's Atlas. Kramm mentions small portraits by him of Henry of Lorraine (Duke of Guise) and Gaspard de Coligny, executed somewhat in the style of De Gheyn, yet inferior to the works of that artist. He also engraved portraits of Henry IV, king of France, Charles, duke of Lorraine, Francis of Valois (Duke of Anjou and Alençon), and Erasmus. It is said that he died at Lambeth about 1580.
It has often been stated, but apparently in error, that Franz Hogenberg (d. 1590), Remigius's elder brother, also came to England. The portrait of Queen Mary, dated 1555, which has been ascribed to him because of its bearing the initials ‘F. H.,’ was more probably the work of Frans Huys, an engraver who lived at Antwerp from about 1545 to 1570, and the maps of Gaul and Belgium, which are stated by Vertue to have been engraved by Franz Hogenberg for Saxton's Atlas, are not to be found in that series. Franz Hogenberg died at Cologne in 1590, and was interred in the protestant burial-ground of that city. Abraham and Johann Hogenberg, two later engravers of Cologne, were perhaps his sons.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum, 1849, i. 189, iii. 846–8; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves, 1886–9, i. 666; Kramm's Levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Kunstschilders, &c., 1857–64, i. 709, 710; Quad's Teutscher Nation Herligkeit, 1609, p. 431; Merlo's Nachrichten von dem Leben und der Werken Kölnischer Künstler, 1850, pp. 188–192; Neeffs's Histoire de la Peinture et de la Sculpture à Malines, 1876, i. 218–19; Biographie Nationale, publiée par l'Académie Royale de Belgique, 1866, &c., ix. 428–32.]