Pair of Virginia and Florida Natives, America – Ethnographic Engravings, 1683

Name: Pair of Virginia and Florida Natives, America – Ethnographic Engravings, 1683
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-14129-1, -5
Price: 505 USD
Availability: InStock

$505

€450 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1683
Kind: Native Peoples
Size: 20.2 × 13.6 cm (8 × 5.4 in)
Condition: Good. Both engravings are in good condition for their age. Light overall toning and minor handling wear consistent with 17th-century impressions. Plate marks visible. Small marginal imperfections and faint spots, not affecting the engraved image.
Period: Colonial America
Places: Florida, Virginia
Reference: BG-14129-1, -5

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

A matched pair of costume plates from Alain Manesson Mallet's Description de l'Univers (Paris, 1683), showing Native people of Virginia and Florida. Both are copper engravings printed in black, headed "De l'Amérique" with the figure numbers CXXVII and CXXX and the page numbers 295 and 299.

On the left, the banner reads "Ples de Virginie." A man in a feathered headdress and a long patterned mantle stands with a staff beside a woman who holds a sprig of leaves and wears a short wrap and strings of beads. On the right, the banner reads "Ples de la Floride." The man holds a long bow with a quiver on his back, and the woman, in a draped skirt, points as if speaking. Each pair stands in a shallow landscape of low hills, trees and distant water under a sky of clouds, within a ruled border.

Mallet was a military engineer who served Louis XIV, and his survey of the known world was one of the most widely read geographical works of its day. The pair sets the two Atlantic regions side by side in a way the work itself does, as types of dress rather than portraits.

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