the poem entitled Minnekunde, or the Science of Love. He proceeded to Amsterdam in 1640, where he married Alida, sister of the statesman Van Beuningen. In 1641 he published a Dutch version of Corneille’s The Cid, a tragi-comedy, and in 1647 his most famous work, the pastoral romance of Batavische Arcadia, which he had written ten years before. During the last twelve years of his life Heemskerk sat in the upper chamber of the states-general. He died at Amsterdam on the 27th of February 1656.
The poetry of Heemskerk, which fell into oblivion during the 18th century, is once more read and valued. His famous pastoral, the Batavische Arcadia, which was founded on the Astrée of Honoré d’Urfé, enjoyed a great popularity for more than a century, and passed through twelve editions. It provoked a host of more or less able imitations, of which the most distinguished were the Dordrechtsche Arcadia (1663) of Lambert van den Bos (1610–1698), the Saanlandsche Arcadia (1658) of Hendrik Sooteboom (1616–1678) and the Rotterdamsche Arcadia (1703) of Willem den Elger (d. 1703). But the original work of Heemskerk, in which a party of nymphs and shepherds go out from the Hague to Katwijk, and there indulge in polite and pastoral discourse, surpasses all these in brightness and versatility.
HEEMSKERK, MARTIN JACOBSZ (1498–1574), Dutch
painter, sometimes called Van Veen, was born at Heemskerk in
Holland in 1498, and apprenticed by his father, a small farmer,
to Cornelisz Willemsz, a painter at Haarlem. Recalled after a
time to the paternal homestead and put to the plough or the
milking of cows, young Heemskerk took the first opportunity
that offered to run away, and demonstrated his wish to leave
home for ever by walking in a single day the 50 miles which
separate his native hamlet from the town of Delft. There he
studied under a local master whom he soon deserted for John
Schoreel of Haarlem. At Haarlem he formed what is known as
his first manner, which is but a quaint and gauche imitation of the
florid style brought from Italy by Mabuse and others. He then
started on a wandering tour, during which he visited the whole of
northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had
letters for a cardinal. It is evidence of the facility with which he
acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was
selected to co-operate with Antonio da San Gallo, Battista
Franco and Francesco Salviati to decorate the triumphal arches
erected at Rome in April 1536 in honour of Charles V. Vasari,
who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, says
they were well composed and boldly executed. On his return to
the Netherlands he settled at Haarlem, where he soon (1540)
became president of his gild, married twice, and secured a large
and lucrative practice. In 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam,
to avoid the siege which the Spaniards laid to the place, and
there he made a will which has been preserved, and shows that he
had lived long enough and prosperously enough to make a fortune.
At his death, which took place on the 1st of October 1574, he left
money and land in trust to the orphanage of Haarlem, with
interest to be paid yearly to any couple who should be willing to
perform the marriage ceremony on the slab of his tomb in the
cathedral of Haarlem. It was a superstition which still exists in
Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the
peace of the dead within the tomb.
The works of Heemskerk are still very numerous. “Adam and Eve,” and “St Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child” in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage—an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the “Ecce Homo” in the museum of Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding Heemskerk’s visit to Italy. An altar-piece executed for St Laurence of Alkmaar in 1538–1541, and composed of at least a dozen large panels, would, if preserved, have given us a clue to his style after his return from the south. In its absence we have a “Crucifixion” executed for the Riches Claires at Ghent (now in the Ghent Museum) in 1543, and the altar-piece of the Drapers Company at Haarlem, now in the gallery of the Hague, and finished in 1546. In these we observe that Heemskerk studied and repeated the forms which he had seen at Rome in the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, and in Lombardy in the frescoes of Mantegna and Giulio Romano. But he never forgot the while his Dutch origin or the models first presented to him by Schoreel and Mabuse. As late as 1551 his memory still served him to produce a copy from Raphael’s “Madonna di Loretto” (gallery of Haarlem). A “Judgment of Momus,” dated 1561, in the Berlin Museum, proves him to have been well acquainted with anatomy, but incapable of selection and insensible of grace, bold of hand and prone to daring though tawdry contrasts of colour, and fond of florid architecture. Two altar-pieces which he finished for churches at Delft in 1551 and 1559, one complete, the other a fragment, in the museum of Haarlem, a third of 1551 in the Brussels Museum, representing “Golgotha,” the “Crucifixion,” the “Flight into Egypt,” “Christ on the Mount,” and scenes from the lives of St Bernard and St Benedict, are all fairly representative of his style. Besides these we have the “Crucifixion” in the Hermitage of St Petersburg, and two “Triumphs of Silenus” in the gallery of Vienna, in which the same relation to Giulio Romano may be noted as we mark in the canvases of Rinaldo of Mantua. Other pieces of varying importance are in the galleries of Rotterdam, Munich, Cassel, Brunswick, Karlsruhe, Mainz and Copenhagen. In England the master is best known by his drawings. A comparatively feeble picture by him is the “Last Judgment” in the palace of Hampton Court.
HEER, OSWALD (1809–1883), Swiss geologist and naturalist,
was born at Nieder-Utzwyl in Canton St Gallen on the 31st of
August 1809. He was educated as a clergyman and took holy
orders, and he also graduated as doctor of philosophy and
medicine. Early in life his interest was aroused in entomology,
on which subject he acquired special knowledge, and later he took
up the study of plants and became one of the pioneers in palaeo-botany,
distinguished for his researches on the Miocene flora. In
1851 he became professor of botany in the university of Zürich,
and he directed his attention to the Tertiary plants and insects of
Switzerland. For some time he was director of the botanic
garden at Zürich. In 1863 (with W. Pengelly, Phil. Trans.,
1862) he investigated the plant-remains from the lignite-deposits
of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire, regarding them as of Miocene
age; but they are now classed as Eocene. Heer also reported
on the Miocene flora of Arctic regions, on the plants of the
Pleistocene lignites of Dürnten on lake Zürich, and on the cereals
of some of the lake-dwellings (Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten,
1866). During a great part of his career he was hampered by
slender means and ill-health, but his services to science were
acknowledged in 1873 when the Geological Society of London
awarded to him the Wollaston medal. Dr Heer died at Lausanne
on the 27th of September 1883. He published Flora Tertiaria
Helvetiae (3 vols., 1855–1859); Die Urwelt der Schweiz (1865), and
Flora fossilis Arctica (1868–1883).
HEEREN, ARNOLD HERMANN LUDWIG (1760–1842),
German historian, was born on the 25th of October 1760 at
Arbergen, near Bremen. He studied philosophy, theology and
history at Göttingen, and thereafter travelled in France, Italy
and the Netherlands. In 1787 he was appointed one of the
professors of philosophy, and then of history at Göttingen, and
he afterwards was chosen aulic councillor, privy councillor, &c.,
the usual rewards of successful German scholars. He died at
Göttingen on the 6th of March 1842. Heeren’s great merit as an
historian was that he regarded the states of antiquity from an
altogether fresh point of view. Instead of limiting himself to a
narration of their political events, he examined their economic
relations, their constitutions, their financial systems, and thus
was enabled to throw a new light on the development of the old
world. He possessed vast and varied learning, perfect calmness
and impartiality, and great power of historical insight, and is
now looked back to as the pioneer in the movement for the
economic interpretation of history.
Heeren’s chief works are: Ideen über Politik, den Verkehr, und den Handel der vornehmsten Völker der alten Welt (2 vols., Göttingen, 1793–1796; 4th ed., 6 vols., 1824–1826; Eng. trans., Oxford, 1833); Geschichte des Studiums der klassischen Litteratur seit dem Wiederaufleben der Wissenschaften (2 vols., Göttingen, 1797–1802; new ed., 1822); Geschichte der Staaten des Altertums (Göttingen, 1799; Eng. trans., Oxford, 1840); Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems (Göttingen, 1800; 5th ed., 1830; Eng. trans., 1834); Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge (Göttingen, 1808; French trans., Paris, 1808), a prize essay of the
