Malvasia

Title

Malvasia

Description

View shows the town of Malvasia / Monemvasia in Greece. It is an impressive castle town in the southeast of the Peloponnese.

ca. 1650

Artist

Danckerts (1635-1701)

The Danckerts family sold and published maps during the 17th Century in Amsterdam. Justus Danckerts, the son of the business founder Cornelius Danckerts (c. 1603- c. 1656), was born 1635. He has published several Atlases together with his son Theodorus between 1680 and 1700. The plates finally have been sold to R. & J. Ottens who published them under their own name. Danckerts died in 1701.

Historical Description

Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, Western drama and the Olympic Games. From the eighth century B.C., the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as poleis (singular polis), which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Philip of Macedon united most of the Greek mainland in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great rapidly conquering much of the ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century B.C., becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, which adopted the Greek language and culture. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century A.D., helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World. After falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, Greece emerged as a modern nation state in 1830 following a war of independence.