,
Los Angeles ,
Copenhagen ,
Berlin No references to Ter Brugghen written during his life have been identified. His father Jan Egbertsz ter Brugghen, originally from
Overijssel, had moved to Utrecht, where he was appointed secretary to the Court of Utrecht by the Prince of Orange,
William the Silent. He had been married to Sophia Dircx. In 1588, he became bailiff to the Provincial Council of Holland in The Hague, where Hendrick was born. Another short account is found in the
Teutsche Academie (1675) by
Joachim von Sandrart, where he is referred to as
Verbrug. Here we learn that he studied with
Abraham Bloemaert, a
Mannerist painter. Sandrart also refers to the painter's "tiefsinnige, jedoch, schwermütige Gedanken in seinen Werken" [profound, but melancholic thoughts in his works]. From this unsure footing, the artist's son Richard ter Brugghen sought to rehabilitate his father's reputation as a painter in the early 18th century. He secured a letter, dated 15 April 1707, from
Adriaen van der Werff in
Rotterdam, attesting to his appreciation of Hendrick's work. Later that year, on 5 August 1707, Richard presented the government council of
Deventer with four paintings of the
Evangelists, to be hung in the Town Hall as a permanent memorial to his father. and
Arnold Houbraken, in his
De Groote Schouburgh (1718–1721), produced biographies where they repeated Richard's claims that the painter met Rubens in Rome and also worked in Naples. There was a cadet of the same name serving in the army of
Ernst Casimir of Nassau-Dietz in the spring of 1607, and for this reason, Ter Brugghen is thought to have been in Italy, but only in that year, rather than as previously believed in 1604 (inferred as it was from the inscription on the Bodart print). This would certainly mean that he never met Caravaggio in Rome; that artist had fled Rome on a murder charge in 1606. However, it is certain that he was the only Dutch painter in Rome during Caravaggio's lifetime. By 1614, Ter Brugghen was in
Milan, on his way home. On 1 April 1615,
Thyman van Galen and Ter Brugghen are witnesses before the court in Utrecht. He is already listed as a member of the Utrecht painter's guild in 1616, and on 15 October of that year he married Jacomijna Verbeeck, his elder brother Jan's stepdaughter. Ter Brugghen died in
Utrecht on 1 November 1629, possibly a victim of the plague. The family had been living in the
Snippenvlucht. Ter Brugghen's last child of eight, Hennickgen, was born four months later on 14 March 1630. == Work and impact ==