Lecture synopsis:
The prominent Dutch poet and secretary to stadholder Frederick Henry,
Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), was a true polymath. He was a
diplomat, an art connoisseur, a bibliophile, collector, musician,
scholar and a perfumer. Mainly by means of his correspondence, he
maintained a vast network of contacts reaching ‘everybody who mattered’
in the Dutch Golden Age. It is estimated that Huygens wrote and
received more than 100,000 letters.
Ineke Huysman: works as a researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands in Amsterdam. At present, she is project manager of the Correspondence of Constantijn Huygens, the Correspondence of Johan de Witt, the Correspondences of Dutch Stadtholders-wives and the Diaries of Willem de Clercq and the digitization of the autograph collection of the Royal Archives.She graduated at the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on the life of Béatrix de Cusance, a 17th-century Duchess of Lorraine.