5.       Matthäus Merian                                                                                            1650 


Matthäus Merian (b. 1593 in Basel) served an apprenticeship as copperplate engraver under Friedrich Meyer after leaving grammar school. After spending time in Strasburg, Nancy and Paris he returned to Basel where he produced some of his first town plans (circa 1610-1615). He travelled again before he moved to Frankfurt to work for Johann Theodor de Bry, a well-respected publisher. Together with his son of the same name and Martin Zeiler he worked on a multi-volume work of town views and maps of German-speaking areas, Topographia Germaniae. Started in 1642 the work consisted of 16 volumes by 1654 and by 1688 the 30 volumes now included illustrations of other European areas such as France, Italy and Crete. This was one of the most ambitious of all publishing ventures of the time and was issued in many editions. Exeter was one of 17 towns of Great Britain and Ireland which appeared in the year that Merian died (1650) and also in J. C. Beer’s Das neu-beharnischte Grosz-Britannien  published in Nuremberg in 1690. 

Title: Exonia Excester

Size: 160 x 130 mm with no scale or signatures. 

This is a near copy of Speed’s inset but without the reference table or numbers, people or ships, extended east and west with the title on an ornate banner below the City’s Arms in a leaf cartouche. There are minor irregularities to buildings and trees outside of the city walls. [1]


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[1] Illustration reproduced by kind permission of Devon Archives & Local Studies - .SM B/EXE/1650/MER.

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