Lamsvelt (sold)

This beautiful, rare engraving is an unrecorded variant of Vincenzo Coronelli's bird's-eye view of Venice. While the work is unsigned, it has been attributed to the Dutch engraver Jan Lamsvelt (or Lansvelt.) The city's unmistakable, archipelagic layout is portrayed in meticulous detail, and the waters around the city are teeming with ships and galleys (including the state barge of the Doge of Venice, Il Bucintoro). The engraving is a reduced (approximately 2/3) version of Vincenzo Coronelli's 1693 Citta di Venezia, which combined Matthias Merian's meticulous bird's-eye view with a superbly-composed ribbon-and-laurel border, embellished with the coats of arms of the various dominions of the Venetian Republic. In addition to the change of scale, the engraver has translated the bulk of the text in the body of the map from the original Italian to French, to conform to the language of the 1699 Voyages du Mr. Du Mont printed in the Hague, for which this engraving was intended. At some point that year, the plate was amended, changing the title and the two instances of the name for the Venetian Lagoon from French to Dutch. This rather hasty alteration was made for the inclusion of the plate in the Dutch edition of Du Mont's Voyages printed in Utrecht, also in 1699. None of the rest of the French text has been changed, and the plate numbering engraved in the upper left corner is unchanged between the two states of the view. That the plate was first engraved in the French, followed with the minor alteration to create a Dutch version, seems self-evident. (more details)