Merian, Matthaeus (1593-1650) And Others

Topographia Galliae; Dat Ist Een Algemeene En Naeukeurige Lant En Plaets-Beschrijvinghe Van Het Machtige Koninckrijk Vranckryck

      . Amsterdam: Joost Broersz, Caspar Merian, 1660-1661-1662-1663. 4 volumes, small folio. (12 3/8 x 8 inches). Engraved titles and 325 plates and maps (some folding, some double-page) by Matthaeus Merian and others. Contemporary speckled calf, covers with the gilt-blocked armorial of Ralph Sneyd, expertly rebacked to style, spines with raised bands in 7 compartments richly tooled in gilt, red morocco lettering pieces in the second comparment. A fine Dutch-language edition of the most comprehensive illustrated guide to seventeenth century France. Merian (1593-1650), the father of engraver Matthäus the younger, and the grandfather of the painter, engraver and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, was born in Basel Switzerland. After a period when he visited and lived in Nancy (France), Paris and Stuttgart, and after working for Theodore de Bry for a while, he married in 1618 and settled in Frankfurt. From here he issued a great many engravings including various topographical series accompanied by text by Martin Zeiler, which together form an invaluable record of Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century. The present work, published in Amsterdam at the time of and shortly after Merian's death, is a Dutch-language version of Zeiler and Merian's Topographia Galliae, oder Beschreibung und Contrafaitung der vornehmbsten und bekantisten Oerter in...Frankreich. first published in Frankfurt between 1655 and 1661. The work, containing over 300 plates, is the most comprehensive illustrated guide to the cities and structures of seventeenth century France. The finely engraved pictures are of great importance, as they preserve many details of buildings, roadways, and cities that no longer exist or have been significantly altered. Cf Brunet V, 1530; cf. C. Schuchhard Die Zeiller-Merianschen Topographien bibliographisch beschrieben (Hamburg: 1960).