1638 Merian View of London, England

This is a Matthäus Merian view of London, engraved in 1638 for inclusion in his Archontologia cosmica. It was based on an earlier, 1616 panorama of the city by Claes Visscher (1587 - 1652.) The four-sheet, nearly seven-foot-long Visscher is an all but unobtainable rarity, with only a handful of known copies in institutional and private hands. (An example sold at Christies in 2018 for nearly $150,000.) The Merian expertly reduces the image, preserving much of its detail and elegance. The detail and recognizability of the image are particularly remarkable, given that neither Merian nor Visscher ever had visited London; Visscher's view was based on traditional printed maps (possibly including John Norden's Civitas Londini, which survives in a single copy in the Royal Library in Stockholm) and the reports of visitors at the turn of the century. Visscher's publisher, Jodocus Hondius, lived in London from 1587 to 1593, and he may have been consulted. Thus, despite being engraved during the reign of Charles I, the view is a depiction of Elizabethan London c. 1600; it remains one of the very few acquirable views of the city as it stood prior to the 1666 Great Fire of London.

The View

The panoramic view shows London from a fictional high point just south of the Thames. The old St. Paul's Cathedral and London Bridge dominate the central part of the view. To the right, the Tower of London can be seen with the tower's domes transformed into fanciful, almost slavic onion-style spires - but overall the view demonstrates impressively accurate representation of the city. The river is slightly straightened in the north part of the view, probably to aid in the presentation of detail beyond that bend.

Key Features

While the Visscher was sufficiently large to label features on the view, Merian has instead compiled the labels in a list of 43 numerically keyed features. These are predominantly the steeples of the city's churches, but include palaces, important structures along the waterfront, and several of London's suburbs just visible in the distance. Among the mansions on the north bank of the river are Whitehall Palace (marked on the view, not the list), York House, Durham House, Burley House, and Arundel House. Old St Paul's Cathedral is shown without the spire (struck by lightning in 1561.) The Old London Bridge agrees with German visitor Paul Hentzner's report of the structure:

...a bridge of stone eight hundred feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon twenty piers of square stone, sixty feet high and thirty broad, joined by arches of about twenty feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a bridge. Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed on iron spikes: we counted above thirty.

The 'Traitors' Gate' is clearly depicted here, overlooking the busy traffic of the Southwarke Road (Now the A3). The detail of the south part of the city, showing what is now St. Katherine's Dock, shows that Merian's view was derived from the second state of Visscher's original: these details did not appear on the 1616 first state.

Shakespeare's London

On the south bank of the Thames appear four theater structures, three of which are labeled: The Swan, The Bear Garden, and The Globe - from 1599, the theatre of the 'King's Men,' Shakespeare's company.

Publication History and Census

This view was created by Matthäus Merian for inclusion in his Archontologia cosmica, published in Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1638 with further editions noted in 1646 and 1649. The entire volume is well represented in institutional collections. The separate plate is catalogued only in the British Library, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Bibliotheque National de France, and the Folger Library.