Romeyn de Hooghe was the most inventive, prolific, and versatile graphic artist of the Dutch Republic in the late seventeenth century. He led an extraordinary life: one that proceeded from very austere circumstances – though not quite rags – to riches, and was marred by a never-ending stream of scandalmongering.

The credit side of his biography shows a vast oeuvre of graphic works, unsurpassed in magnitude and originality. Having enjoyed a sound classical education, he was well-read in ancient and modern literature and history. In middle-age, he obtained a law degree and served as a magistrate in Haarlem, where he established a drawing academy. During the six-year war with France (1672–1678), he glorified Stadtholder William III of Orange in a massive array of patriotic prints. Later, he became the stadtholder-king's premier propaganda artist, extolling to a reluctant Dutch audience the virtues of William's invasion of Britain, the Glorious Revolution, and the ensuing Nine Years’ War (1688–1697). He lambasted William's adversaries, especially Louis xiv and James ii, with acerbic satirical prints of striking originality. During the latter part of his life, he broadened his activities to become an all-round designer of statues, wall and ceiling paintings, triumphal arches, ornamental cups and goblets, and stained-glass windows. He distinguished himself as the author of learned works about the institutions of the United Netherlands, religious iconography, and the genealogy of world religions. He launched the world's first illustrated satirical journal. He allegedly invented new methods to make stained glass and print cotton, and engineered a sailing bomb to be employed in naval attacks. He set up a sandstone business and ran a spy network. Having begun his career as a simple artisan, he became a universal artist, an uomo universale in the grand Renaissance and Baroque tradition.

In spite of de Hooghe's astonishing and wide-ranging talents, his life was not an unqualified success. There was an unbalanced and roguish streak to his character that drove him to take vast and unwarranted risks, threatening to destroy his career time and again. He and his family were haunted by controversies, calumny, and slander. In a scurrilous novelette and a flood of libels, he was accused of making pornographic prints, lasciviousness, godlessness, blasphemy, fraud, embezzlement, and thievery.