Prospect der Statt Candia.

Title

Prospect der Statt Candia.

Description

The top view shows the town of Candia (now Iraklio) on the Greek island of Crete. Below are two fortification plans of the towns of Sabionira and St Andreae.

ca. 1675

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 island of Crete is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari from the 18th century BC, which are later repeated in Neo-Assyrian records and in the Bible (Caphtor). It was also known in ancient Egypt as Keftiu, strongly suggesting that a similar form to both was the Minoan name for the island. In classical times, Crete lay on the edge of the Greek cultural area, it was regarded as the "island of 100 poleis" and was therefore divided into numerous small city-states. The stone-carved legal text of the then powerful polis of Gortyn is the only completely preserved codex of this type from Greek antiquity. From 1645 to 1648, the Turks conquered almost the entire island and incorporated it into the Ottoman Empire as Girit, with only Candia withstanding a siege until 1669. Numerous uprisings by the population in the 19th century against Ottoman sovereignty were bloodily suppressed. From 1830 to 1840, Crete was formally under the administration of the Vali of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha. In 1898, the intervention of France, Russia and the United Kingdom forced Crete into almost complete autonomy under the sovereignty of the High Porte. The Treaty of London in 1913 finally made Crete part of the Greek state, and a comprehensive population exchange was agreed in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.