Eygentlicher Abriß der Festung Praia

  • Translation

Article ID EUE2191

Title

Eygentlicher Abriß der Festung Praia

Description

Representation of the island San Jago and the fortresse Praia on the islands of Cape Verde.

Year

ca. 1591

Artist

Bry, de - Le Moyne (1533-1588)

Jacques le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533-1588) was a French artist and member of Jean Ribault's expedition to the New World. His depictions of Native American life and culture, colonial life, and plants are of extraordinary historical significance. Until well into the 20th century, knowledge of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues was extremely limited. Le Moyne accompanied René Laudonnière's French expedition in their unsuccessful attempt to colonize northern Florida. They arrived at the St. Johns River in 1564 and soon established Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville. He painted in the Calvinist style and is best known for his artistic depictions of the landscape, flora, fauna, and especially the inhabitants of the New World. His drawings of the cultures commonly referred to as Timucua are largely considered some of the most accessible data on the cultures of the southeastern coastal United States. During this expedition, he became known as a cartographer and illustrator, painting landscapes and reliefs of the land they traversed. Jean Ribault first explored the mouth of the St. Johns River in Florida in 1562 and erected a stone monument there before leading the group north and establishing an outpost on Parris Island, South Carolina, with about two dozen soldiers. He then sailed back to France for supplies and settlers. However, he was unable to reinforce the fort because civil war had broken out in France during his absence. An armistice in 1564 allowed Laudonniere to lead a new expedition that established Fort Caroline on St. Johns Bluff in present-day Jacksonville. Many of the Theodore DeBry engravings depict the French fort and the local Saturiwa tribe, the Timucua, who lived at the mouth of the St. Johns in the Fort Caroline area. Le Moyne also accompanied several expeditions inland from Fort Caroline and illustrated many of the scenes he observed. Laudonniere's expedition, while leading to the publication of the Le Moyne-deBry paper and an important map of Florida's coastal regions, was ultimately a disaster as initially good relations with the Indian tribes inhabiting the areas around the St. Johns settlement site deteriorated. Le Moyne's extremely important account of this transatlantic voyage, known today from a Latin edition published in Frankfurt in 1591 by Theodore de Bry under the title "Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americai provincia Gallis acciderunt," clearly shows that it was the king who commissioned the artist to accompany the expedition led by Jean Ribault and Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere as official recorder and cartographer. Although only one original drawing by Le Moyne on an American subject is known today-the depiction of Athore "showing Laudonniere the marker column erected by Ribault," executed in watercolor and gouache on vellum, now in the New York Public Library-the "Brevis narratio," published by de Bry as the second volume of his major series of publications on voyages to the New World, contains forty-two engraved illustrations and maps purportedly made on site by Le Moyne. The text by de Bry describes and analyzes these images, and his book represents an important milestone in the literature of early voyages of discovery.----Theodorus de Bry (1528-1598) Frankfurt a.M. Around 1570, Theodorus de Bry, a Protestant, fled religious persecution south to Strasbourg, along the west bank of the Rhine. In 1577, he moved to Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant, which was part of the Spanish Netherlands or Southern Netherlands and Low Countries of that time (16th Century), where he further developed and used his skills as a copper engraver. Between 1585 and 1588 he lived in London, where he met the geographer Richard Hakluyt and began to collect stories and illustrations of various European explorations, most notably from Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Depiction of Spanish atrocities in the New World, as recounted by Bartolome de las Casas in Narratio Regionum indicarum per Hispanos Quosdam devastatarum verissima. In 1588, Theodorus and his family moved permanently to Frankfurt-am-Main, where he became citizen and began to plan his first publications. The most famous one is known as Les Grands Voyages, i.e., The Great Travels, or The Discovery of America. He also published the largely identical India Orientalis-series, as well as many other illustrated works on a wide range of subjects. His books were published in Latin, and were also translated into German, English and French to reach a wider reading public.

Historical Description

The uninhabited islands were circled by António Fernandes in 1445 and discovered and entered for the first time in 1456 by the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto, who was in Portuguese service (Boa Vista). Antonio da Noli, a Genoese captain who also sailed on behalf of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, continued to explore the islands from 1458 in collaboration with Diogo Gomes, discovered most of the rest of the eastern Cape Verde Islands and baptized the archipelago with the name Ilhas de Cabo Verde and began settling the islands as governor of the Portuguese crown from 1461. In fact, Diogo Gomes later claimed to be the first of the two to have seen the island of Santiago from afar and also to have been the first to set foot on it. Antonio da Noli, however, managed to return to Portugal earlier, and he was then understandably rewarded by Heinrich the Navigator with the encouragement of the discovery, which, in the words of Diogo Gomes, "I, Gomes, discovered". Because of the rivalry between the two, Diogo Gomes is considered to be the true discoverer of the main island of Santiago in Portuguese historiography. The islands were named by the Portuguese after Cabo Verde (Green Cape) on the west coast of Africa.

Place of Publication Frankfurt on Main
Dimensions (cm)26 x 19 cm
ConditionPerfect condition
Coloringoriginal colored
TechniqueCopper print

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