It seems strange that, more than four hundred years after his birth, Constantijn Huygens, the Dutch polymath, poet, composer, statesman and translator, should need to be re-introduced to readers on both sides of the Narrow Seas. But this would appear to be the case: hardly any of his work is in print in the Netherlands, despite recent scholarly attention paid to it there, and his name is known only to a very few English-speaking readers as a historical figure, as the father of a more famous son, or as the friend and translator of John Donne. One poignant example of this neglect: Johannes Worp's monumental edition of Huygens’ poems appears to have slumbered undisturbed for the last thirty odd years in the University Library at Cambridge, ever since, if the reservation slip marking one of the Donne translations is to be believed, E.M. Forster last closed volume three at some point in the 1950s.

This act of re-introduction is the prime directive of this book: we feel that the range and diversity of The Cornflowers of the Lord of Zuilichem are overdue for reconsideration in an Europe increasingly interested in its international past. For the English-speaking reader, this book will, of necessity, be in the nature of a first introduction to an unfamiliar, if compelling, voice of late Renaissance Europe. In some respects, it also looks at the complexities of the culture out of which that voice speaks.

The visual culture of the seventeenth century in the United Provinces needs no introduction, but particularly for the English-speaking reader, this book offers a first insight into the complementary literary, architectural and musical continuum out of which the paintings came. There is no single figure better fitted to act as a representative of this culture than Constantijn Huygens: his long life as a writer spanned the crucial century of the consolidation of the Dutch Republic. This can be expressed in terms of the English culture with which he was much concerned throughout his life. His first visit to England was as a young man moving in the most cultivated and outward-looking circles of Jacobean England; he was knighted by James i, and he enjoyed the friendship of John Donne.