Brüssel die Haupt-Stadt des Herzogtums Brabant und Residenz des Gouverneurs des Königes in Spanien

Title

Brüssel die Haupt-Stadt des Herzogtums Brabant und Residenz des Gouverneurs des Königes in Spanien

Description

Map shows the ground plan of Brussels around 1700.

ca. 1702

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

Historical Description

The name Brussels is composed of the word elements bruk and sel[la], as can still be seen in the French form of the name Bruxelles. According to legend, a chapel dedicated to St. Michael was founded in the 7th century by St. Goorik on the site of the present collegiate church. With the foundation of the cathedral chapter in 1047, Saint Gudula became the collegiate church. In the High Middle Ages Brussels took a decisive upswing. From 1420, the town hall and the first guild houses were built on the Great Market. In 1430 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, inherited the Duchy of Brabant. He made Brussels the capital of his Burgundian kingdom. The city flourished economically during this period. As a result of the Eighty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the northern Netherlands became independent, while the southern Netherlands, and thus Brussels, remained under Spanish rule. In the second half of the 17th century, France under Louis XIV fought for supremacy in Europe. French rule ended in 1815 with Napoleon's defeat on the battlefield of Waterloo, located just south of the present Brussels-Capital Region. The partly French-speaking and mainly Catholic south felt at a disadvantage to the Protestant, "Dutch" north in terms of politics, education and economics. The Belgian Revolution led to the secession from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 and the final establishment of a Belgian state.