Metz.

Title

Metz.

Description

A detailed bird’s-eye view of the city of Metz in Lorraine, featuring a title, a coat-of-arms cartouche, a compass rose and a index from 1 to 48.

ca. 1643

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 area around the Moselle, populated mainly by Celtic tribes, was conquered by Gaius Iulius Caesar in the Gallic War between 58 and 51 BC and later became part of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From a division of the Frankish Empire into three parts, the Lotharii Regnum, the "Empire of Lothar" or Lotharingia, named after its king, emerged in 843. s lay in the middle between the East and West Frankish Empires and originally stretched as an elongated territory from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. In 870, the area was again divided between the East and West Frankish Empires. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Metz became Frankish and later the capital of the Merovingian sub-kingdom of Austrasia. In the High Middle Ages, Metz developed into a prosperous Free Imperial City within the Holy Roman Empire, shaped by trade, church building, and city walls. In 1552, Metz was occupied by France and was later definitively made French in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). However, the city remained culturally and linguistically influenced by German for a long time.