Bidspirit auction | gravura

gravura - [INDIA — GOA]. Goa Indiae Orientalis Metropolis. Johannes JANSSONIUS (publisher). [Amsterdam, Janssonius’ press, c. 1657]. Hand-coloured copper engraving; 470 × 605 mm (engraving); 495 × 650 mm (passepartout). Important bird’s-eye plan of Goa , issued in Janssonius’ town atlas (mid-17th century) and derived from Dutch models current since the late 1500s. The city appears with a concentric street pattern, suburban quarters and a busy estuary filled with shipping; at top the Portuguese arms , to the right a shield with the armillary sphere and a cartouche bearing an alphabetical key to principal sites (cathedral, Jesuit college of São Paulo , Dominican, Franciscan and Augustinian houses, etc.). A touchstone image in the seventeenth-century luso-oriental urban iconography. Note: not part of the Civitates orbis terrarum.