Jan van Hoogstraten
Jan van Hoogstraten (26 January 1628 – 28 July 1654) was a Dutch Golden Age painter from Dordrecht. He became a master in the Dordrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1649. He moved to Vienna with his older brother Samuel to work at the court and died there at a young age.
A well-known story from his time in Vienna tells how he got a commission to paint the Denial of Peter. He finished the servant girl and needed a proper St. Peter. Not speaking German, he persuaded a beggar to follow him to his studio, thinking he would receive alms at the door. When the beggar saw the skull and other vanitas symbols laid out on a table, he panicked and ran outside. Samuel van Hoogstraten, returning and thinking he was a thief, caught him. The townspeople laughed, and the beggar finally agreed to sit as St. Peter, but he was so frightened that the painting turned out well. The beggar refused to sit again, feeling he had seen death and the devil there.
The RKD notes that Jan was known for landscapes and seascapes. He lived in Dordrecht until 1652 and then went to Vienna, where he died and was buried in St. Stephen's Cathedral. A friend of Samuel carved a small marble sculpture of a child for his grave in memory.
It is unclear whether Jan accompanied Samuel on any trip to Rome, or stayed in Vienna after Samuel’s first audience with Emperor Ferdinand III on June 23, 1651. François van Hoogstraten later wrote a poem in his memory and named his son after him, who also became a poet.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:03 (CET).