Sir Walter Raleigh Frees Five Indian Kings – Drake Voyages Engraving 1770

1770 · Views & Engravings

Sir Walter Raleigh Frees Five Indian Kings – Drake Voyages Engraving 1770

Name: Sir Walter Raleigh Frees Five Indian Kings – Drake Voyages Engraving 1770
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13599-97
Price: 290 USD
Availability: InStock

$290

€259 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1770
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 20.1 × 25.2 cm (7.9 × 9.9 in)
Condition: Good. Good antique condition with age-appropriate toning and light foxing. Minor handling marks and faint creases consistent with an eighteenth-century book plate. Plate mark visible.
Period: Colonial America
Reference: BG-13599-97

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

Sir Walter Raleigh freeing five captive Indian kings, an original copper engraving from Drake's Voyages (A New Universal Collection of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages and Travels), published in London around 1770. "Engraved for Drake's Voyages" is lettered at the top, and the caption below reads "Sir Walter Raleigh sets at Liberty five Indian Kings, who were all linked together."

The scene is set in a vaulted stone dungeon. At the left, five crowned captives stand bare to the waist, linked together, with other prisoners behind them and a figure crouched on the floor, while a man at the center bends down to the chains. At the right three men in Elizabethan dress and feathered hats stand in the open doorway, one gesturing toward the prisoners, with chains hanging from the wall behind. The crowns are a European convention for showing the prisoners as rulers.

The episode comes from Raleigh's 1595 expedition to Trinidad and the Orinoco in search of El Dorado. In his own account he said that after taking the Spanish settlement of San José de Oruña on Trinidad he found local chiefs chained in a dungeon, held by the governor, Antonio de Berrío, and set them free.

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