Bidspirit auction | Angrae urbis Tercerae (Angra do

Angrae urbis Tercerae (Angra do Heroísmo, ilha Terceira, Açores). Frankfurt, c. 1640. - [AZORES — ANGRA DO HEROÍSMO]. Angrae urbis Tercerae, quae insularum quas Azores vocant maxima est caput. Matthäus MERIAN (engraver & publisher), after Baptista van DOETECUM ; in Johann Ludwig GOTTFRIED , Newe Archontologia Cosmica ( Cosmographia ). [Frankfurt, c. 1640]. Copper engraving; 340 × 390 mm (engraving); 440 × 625 mm (passepartout). Bird’s-eye plan of Angra do Heroísmo : the walled town with a regular street grid runs from the harbour to neatly parcellated fields ; at left the Monte Brasil headland shelters the bay. Shipping enlivens the roadstead. At top a Latin title cartouche with heraldic devices frames the scene. Plate from Merian’s workshop, derived from the famous Doetecum model first published in Linschoten’s Itinerario (1596), which shaped Europe’s seventeenth-century image of Angra.