Hendrik van der Borcht the Elder or Hendrick van der Borcht the Elder (1583 - 26 July 1651 was a Flemish-German engraver and painter of portraits, still lifes of antiquities, flowers and fruit and landscapes. He was also an eminent antiquarian. He was mainly active in Germany to which his family had emigrated for religious reasons. Life Hendrik van der Borcht was born in Brussels as the son of Hendrick and Elisabeth Notemans. His father was in 1581 councilman of the city council of Brussels. This council was controlled by Calvinists since the end of 1577 following an uprising against his Catholic sovereign, King Philip II of Spain. It is not clear whether his father was part of the radical Calvinists who had rejected Francis, Duke of Anjou, as the new sovereign of the Low Countries. Hendrik left his home country with his family in 1586 after the Fall of Antwerp when Calvinists who did not wish to convert back to Catholicism emigrated from the Southern Netherlands. It is not clear where the family resided between 1586 and the end of 1597. It is believed they were somewhere in Germany, possibly in Frankfurt or Frankenthal, which were safe havens for Calvinists and where relatives of the families van der Borcht and Noteman were already residing. On 6 November 1597 the family resurfaces again in the records when the mother Elisabeth Notemans was present in Frankenthal at the christening of Elisabeth Gijsmans, the daughter of the painter Hendrik Gijsmans. Elisabeth Notemans was the godmother. The baptismal record in Frankenthal notes that she was already a widow. She may have left the family's residence to join her relatives in Frankenthal, probably not long before the baptism, since she is not mentioned at the weddings of her brothers in Frankenthal. The family left Frankenthal for Frankfurt after two years in Frankenthal. In 1598, Elisabeth Notemann married in a second marriage the likewise widowed Anton Mertens from Antwerp. Anton Mertens had made a fortune in Antwerp as a goldsmith and jeweler. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585, he had left for Frankfurt with his wife Susanna Tripmakers and the children born in Antwerp. Here he rebuilt his jewelry business and also went into private banking business. The Firma Mertens was probably one of the oldest German private banks and was to survive until 1917 when it was incorporated into today's Commerzbank. Anton Mertens