Franciscus Draeck Nobilissimus Eques Angliae Ano. Aet. Sue 43

Jodocus Hondius I was a Flemish engraver, instrument maker, mapmaker, and publisher whose career moved between Ghent, London, and Amsterdam. After leaving Ghent during the religious turmoil of the 1580s, he worked in London, where he became familiar with English maritime circles and with information surrounding Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation. This three-quarter-length portrait of Drake is traditionally attributed to Hondius and shows the English navigator as a figure of military authority and global achievement.

This portrait is titled Franciscus Draeck Nobilissimus Eques Angliae Ano. Aet. Sue 43, identifying Drake as an English knight at the age of forty-three. He stands holding a baton, with his other hand resting on a richly decorated helmet. A royal favour is tied to his sleeve, and a globe hangs in the background beneath an arched window opening toward Plymouth Sound. These details connect Drake’s status, royal service, and maritime career, including his return to Plymouth after his circumnavigation. The first state is generally dated to around 1583, based on the stated age of Drake and the portrait’s association with his lifetime. This example is the second state, published by George Vertue in the eighteenth century from the original copperplate. Vertue added shading to the background and an inscription at the bottom recording that the portrait was engraved during Drake’s life. The survival and reissue of the plate show the continuing eighteenth-century interest in Drake as a national and maritime figure.

The Latin inscription presents Drake as the “most courageous and unconquered” leader who, favoured by the west winds, travelled around the world in two years and ten months and returned to England in 1580 after departing in December 1577. The portrait therefore does more than record likeness: it celebrates circumnavigation as proof of courage, providence, and English maritime expansion. Latin inscription below: Habes: Lector candide fortissimus ac invictissimus Ducis Draeck ad Vivum Imaginem qui toto terrarum orbe, duorum annorum, et mensium decem spatio, Zephyris faventibus, circumducto, Angliam sedes proprias 4. Calendas Octobris anno a partu Virginis 1580 revisit cum antea portu soluisset Idibus Decembris anni 1577. This may be translated: “Here you have, candid reader, the living image of the most courageous and unconquered leader Drake, who, favoured by the west winds, was carried around the whole world in the space of two years and ten months, and returned to England, his homeland, on 28 September 1580, having previously set sail in December 1577.”

Within the collection, this portrait is closely connected with Hondius’s maps that preserve Drake-related geography, including Americae Novissima Descriptio (131), Orbis terrae novissima descriptio (199), and Insulae indiae orientalis praecipuae (80and 272), which marks Drake’s presence on the southern coast of Java. It also relates to other works concerned with the Americas, Pacific, and southern oceanic world, including Frans Hogenberg’s Americae et proximarum regionum orae descriptio (130) and Abraham Ortelius’s Maris Pacifici (221).