Preview
Identifier
20086303
Description
Engraved view and plan showing the Portuguese city, fortifications, and harbor of Santiago (Cidade Velha a.k.a. Ribeira Grande) in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa. The image depicts an attack by an English fleet commanded by Sir Francis Drake in November 1585, during the Anglo-Spanish War between Queen Elizabeth I of England and King Philip II of Spain. (Portugal had been part of Spain since the Union of 1580.) At the closing of the battle Drake ordered the town to be burned. This hand-colored engraving is from a book by Johann Ludwig Gottfried titled "Newe Welt und Americanische Historien. Inhaltende Warhafftige vnd vollkommene Beschreibungen aller West-Indianischen Landschafften" published by the heirs of Matthaeus Merian in Frankfurt am Main in 1655. This book first appeared in 1631 and was an abridgement of Theodore de Bry's eleven-volume "Grand Voyages" The image as engraved by Theodore de Bry and Mattheus Merian in De Bry's book was first produced by an Italian cartographer and draftsman working in London named Baptista Boazio (a.k.a. Giovanni Battista Boazio) who apparently worked from original sketches made on Drake's expedition, perhaps by Drake himself. Colored illustrations on map. Text on reverse side. Double sided with full text on one side; on verso, half paged text with hand colored illustration below the text. Pages numbered. Text side includes original printed annotations accompanying the text, with modern handwritten pencil notes along bottom margin. 33 cm. x 20 cm. [Gift of Dr. Jack Franke]
Archival Date
1655
Collection Name
Maps of Africa
Collection Number
Acc. 2019-328
Language
German
Original Format
Maps
File Format
JPG
Rights
Rights held by The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections. Any use of content downloaded or printed from this page is limited to non-commercial personal or educational use, including fair use as directed by U.S. copyright laws. For more information or for reproduction requests, please contact UTA Special Collections by emailing spcoref@uta.edu.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Subjects
Maps; Islands; Illustrations; Ships; War