Copper Engraving of Hispaniola - Indigenous Life in America by Montanus, 1673

Name: Copper Engraving of Hispaniola - Indigenous Life in America by Montanus, 1673
Brand: Montanus & Ogilby
SKU: BG-13596-22
Price: 460 USD
Availability: InStock

$460

€410 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1673
Maker: Montanus & Ogilby
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 31 × 19 cm (12.2 × 7.5 in)
Condition: Good. Slightly stained on the outer margins, otherwise in good condition. German text, also on reverse. Please study the image carefully.
Period: Colonial America
Places: Hispaniola (Haiti & Dominican Republic)
Reference: BG-13596-22

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

Two dancers from Hispaniola in an original copper engraving from the German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's Die Unbekante Neue Welt oder Beschreibung des Welt-teils Amerika und des Sud-Landes, published in Amsterdam by Jacob Meurs in 1673. The plate is headed "Die Insel Hispaniola" and numbered 181 at the upper right. It is printed in black from a copper plate, with the page of text accompanying it.

The scene shows two men dancing in the foreground: the one on the left raises a rattle in one hand and wears a leaf skirt and a feather headdress, with a string of beads at his waist. The man in the center strikes a large drum hung from his body, with a drumstick in his left hand and another raised in his right, and wears an elaborate headdress, necklaces and a breastplate. Two more men in feather headdresses look on at the right, with trees and a fenced enclosure behind them.

Montanus's work was a compendium of earlier travel accounts, and its plates were widely copied for the European picture of the Americas in the seventeenth century.

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