Schenk, View of Alexandria, Egypt - Hecatompolis, 1702

An original engraved view of Alexandria, Egypt, from Pieter Schenk's Hecatompolis, sive Totius orbis Terrarum Oppida Nobiliora Centum, published in Holland in 1702. Plate 78 in the series.

The Hecatompolis was an ambitious survey of one hundred important cities and ports across the world, including London, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Algiers, New Amsterdam, and Havana. Pieter Schenk the Elder (1660-1711) was a German-born cartographer, engraver, and publisher working in Amsterdam, where he and his partner Gerard Valck dominated the Dutch print trade in the early eighteenth century.

The Alexandria plate sits at the intersection of city views, classical antiquity, and Orientalist topography. Pompey's Pillar, the great granite Roman triumphal column erected in honour of Diocletian in 297 CE, is visible in the foreground, marking the city as both a contemporary port and a survival of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Provenance. Name inked to title: Charles D. de Beaurieux. Family of William Henry Crocker I (1861-1937), founder of Crocker National Bank, San Francisco. Gift to manservant Louis Collaud (1893-1972) in 1932. Bequest to Nancy Meyer Kolmodin (proprietor of Friedrich's Gifts and Antiques, Lafayette, California). A fully documented hundred-year ownership history.

Images shown are from the vendor pending our own high-resolution photography. Detailed condition photographs available on request.