Topographia und eigentliche Beschreibung der vornembsten State, Schlosser auch anderer Platze und Orter in denen Hertzogthumer[n] Braunschweig und Luneburg, und denen dazu gehorende[n] Grafschafften Herrschafften und Landen.

MERIAN, Matthaeus (1593-1650).

Published by Frankfurt: Matthaei Merians Erben 1654.

About this Item

Folio (12 6/8 x 8 2/8 inches). Engraved allegorical title-page, double-page map of Brunswick and Luneburg, 2 other double-page maps, 86 exceptionally fine folding and or double-page views and panoramas, and 45 full-page leaves of views. Contemporary vellum over past-board, yapp fore-edges, title written in manuscript on the spine (lightly soiled). The Brunswick-Luneburg topography is the most comprehensive with the most illustrations of all Merian topographies. The Duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg, illustrated so thoroughly in these fine maps, views and panoramas, was an historical ducal state from the late Middle Ages until the late Early Modern era within the North-Western domains of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, in what is now northern Germany. The dukedom emerged in 1235 from the allodial lands of the House of Welf in Saxony and was granted as an imperial fief to Otto the Child, a grandson of Henry the Lion. It is therefore fitting that the allegorical title-page bears a great lion skin within which the title is displayed. Its name came from the two largest towns in the territory: Brunswick and Lüneburg. The individual principalities making up the duchy continued to exist until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Following the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15, the territories became part of the Kingdom of Hanover and Duchy of Brunswick The author Matthaus Merian was a notable Swiss engraver born 1593 in Basel. He learned copperplate engraving in Zurich, though he studied later in such cities as Strasbourg, Nancy and Paris. He returned to Basel in 1615, moving to Frankfurt 1616. There he worked for Johann Theodor de Bry, the celebrated publisher whose daughter, Maria Magdelana he married in 1617. In 1620 he and his family moved back to Basel, though they returned to Frankfurt in 1623. Maria took over her father's publishing house upon his death. Catalogued by Kate Hunter.

Seller Inventory # 72lib641

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Topographia und eigentliche Beschreibung der vornembsten State, Schlosser auch anderer Platze und Orter in denen Hertzogthumer[n] Braunschweig und Luneburg, und denen dazu gehorende[n] Grafschafften Herrschafften und Landen.
• Publisher: Frankfurt: Matthaei Merians Erben 1654.
• Seller catalogs:
  • Town Books
  • Germany