start of the 1630s he was also in touch with René Descartes, with Rembrandt, and the painter Jan Lievens. He became friends with John Donne, and translated his poems into Dutch. He was unable to write poetry for months because of his anguish over his wife's death, but eventually he composed, inspired by Petrarch, the sonnet Op de dood van Sterre (On the death of Sterre), which was well received. He added the poem to his Dagh-werck, which he left unfinished: the day he has described has not ended yet, but his Sterre is already dead. After sending the unfinished work to different friends for approval, he eventually published it in 1658 as part of his Koren-bloemen. Huygens also corresponded with Margaret Croft and Elizabeth Dudley, Countess of Löwenstein, ladies in waiting to Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, and Mary Woodhouse, a friend made in London in 1622. Hofwijck After a couple of years as a widower, Huygens bought a piece of land in Voorburg and commissioned the building of Hofwijck. Hofwijck was inaugurated in 1642 in the company of friends and relatives. Here Huygens hoped to escape the stress at court in The Hague, forming his own "court", indicated by the name of the house which has a double meaning: Hof (=Court or courtyard) Wijck (=avoid or township). In that same year, his brother Maurits died. Due to his grief Huygens wrote little Dutch poetry, but he continued to write epigrams in Latin. Shortly afterwards, he began writing Dutch pun poems, which are very playful by nature. In 1644 and 1645 Huygens began more serious work. As a new year's present for Leonore Hellemans, he composed the Heilige Daghen, a series of sonnets on the Christian holidays. In 1644, a garlanded portrait of Huygens was painted by Daniel Seghers and Jan Cossiers: it is now in the Mauritshuis. In 1647 he published another work, in which play and seriousness are united, Ooghentroost, addressed to Lucretia of Trello, who was losing her sight and who was already half-blind. The poem was offered as consolation. From 1650 to 1652 Huygens wrote the poem Hofwijck in which he described the joys of living outside the city. It is thought that Huygens wrote his poetry as a testament to himself, a memento mori, because Huygens lost so many dear friends and family during this time: Hooft (1647), Barlaeus (1648), Maria Tesschelschade (1649) and