Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Ithaka Prize
- I Constantijn Huygens in The Hague a courtier in the capital
- II Constantijn Huygens and Hofwijck a courtier as a landscape architect
- III Christiaan Huygens: An inventive scientist at Hofwijck
- IV Hofwijck's heirs care and neglect
- V Hofwijck in alien hands division and impending demolition
- VI Hofwijck in safe hands a narrow escape
- VII The restoration of house and garden from 1914 onwards a long way up
- VIII The restored garden around 2005 a successful reconstruction
- Map of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century
- Genealogical table
- Literature
- Notes
- Origin of images
- Index of personal names
- The authors
- Colophon
IV - Hofwijck's heirs care and neglect
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Ithaka Prize
- I Constantijn Huygens in The Hague a courtier in the capital
- II Constantijn Huygens and Hofwijck a courtier as a landscape architect
- III Christiaan Huygens: An inventive scientist at Hofwijck
- IV Hofwijck's heirs care and neglect
- V Hofwijck in alien hands division and impending demolition
- VI Hofwijck in safe hands a narrow escape
- VII The restoration of house and garden from 1914 onwards a long way up
- VIII The restored garden around 2005 a successful reconstruction
- Map of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century
- Genealogical table
- Literature
- Notes
- Origin of images
- Index of personal names
- The authors
- Colophon
Summary
Chronology 1695-1750521
1695 - 1699
After the death of Christiaan Huygens, the brothers Constantijn II and Lodewijck are the remaining heirs of Hofwijck. Lodewijck lives at Hofwijck with his wife Jacomina Teding van Berkhout. Constantijn II, in the last years of his life, is still occupied with the completion of Christian's book Cosmotheoros. However, he would not live to see the final publication in 1698. He dies in 1697. Lodewijck dies in 1699. With Lodewijck Huygens has also died the last son of the creator of Hofwijck. The following years of the history of the habitation are described below in chronological order.
1699 - 1703
Constantijn Huygens had precisely indicated the order of succession for the Hofwijck country house in his will. It was now the turn of his eldest grandson, Constantijn III, the eldest son of Constantijn II. Under Christiaan and Lodewijck the house had been neglected. Constantijn III has repairs made, which he managed to charge to his aunt Jacomina Teding van Berkhout, Lodewijck's widow, after a lawsuit. A notarial deed dated April 26, 1703 shows that he was no longer alive at that time.
1703 - 1746
According to the arrangement laid down in Constantijn's will, Hofwijck will now pass to his last grandson Constantijn IV, the eldest son of Lodewijck. Constantijn IV, born in 1675, is 28 years old when he received possession and usufruct of Hofwijck. Under him Hofwijck experiences the colorful autumn of the Huygens period.
During his Hofwijck period, Constantijn IV devotes himself with great dedication to collecting and reading his grandfather's writings, letters and notes. He arranges these carefully and chronologically into a ‘diary’, which would be published some century and a half later. He makes transcripts of his grandfather's Latin letters, perhaps with the intention of publishing them, in accordance with the wish expressed by his grandfather in his will. He also creates ‘memorials’ for his deceased relatives in other ways. He probably commissions the painting Hendrik Carré made in 1737 of ‘Father Time’, depicting the greatest discoveries of Christiaan Huygens. He also had Johannes Leemans II make two matching paintings, two still lifes with books, scientific instruments, two plaster portrait medallions and a simple ‘anamorphosis’, an almost burned-out candle, reflected in a shiny cylinder.
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- Information
- Huygens and HofwijckThe Inventive World of Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens, pp. 148 - 155Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022