Schenk, View of Nuremberg (Nuremberga) — Hecatompolis, c.1702

An original copperplate engraving of Nuremberg by Pieter Schenk the Elder, plate 28 from his Hecatompolis sive Totius Orbis Terrarum Oppida Nobiliora Centum — the Hundred Cities — published in Amsterdam at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. The plate is signed in the lower margin Pet. Schenk and Amstel. C.P. (cum privilegio), with bilingual Dutch and Latin captions describing Nuremberg as an ancient and renowned city of Germany, famed for its handsome buildings and its commerce, and praising it in the Latin as urbs nobilissima, turris quasi Germaniae centrum, aedificiis et mercimoniis praestans — a most noble city, a tower as it were at the centre of Germany, distinguished in its buildings and its trade.

Pieter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711) was a German-born engraver and publisher who settled in Amsterdam in the 1670s, where he trained under and later partnered with Gerard Valck. The two firms together dominated the Dutch print trade in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, taking over a substantial part of the Visscher and Hondius copperplate stock when those houses contracted. The Hecatompolis was Schenk's most ambitious city-view project, conceived as a single-volume world atlas of urban subjects and ranging from the major capitals of Europe through Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Algiers to the New World. The plates are uniformly elegant in execution, with foreground figures, framing trees, and skylines arranged in the precise Dutch topographical manner of the period.

Nuremberg held a particular place in the Dutch imagination as one of the great printing cities of Germany — the home of Albrecht Dürer, of Anton Koberger's press, and of the Liber Chronicarum of 1493. Schenk's view across the river to the densely-built town with its towers and church spires renders the city in the early-Enlightenment topographical idiom: orderly, prosperous, and open to inspection.

Condition

Very good. Clean, well-inked impression with strong contrast in the foliage and the architectural detail of the skyline. Wide margins on all sides with the platemark and signature lines fully present. Light age-toning consistent with early eighteenth-century laid paper; no foxing of consequence, no tears, no repairs. [CONFIRM dimensions once measured.]

Rarity

Single plates from the Hecatompolis appear in the trade with some regularity, but Nuremberg is one of the more sought-after subjects in the series, drawing both German-market collectors and a strong international following on the strength of the city's place in the history of printing and of Dürer's career. Plates retain particular value when, as here, the bilingual Dutch–Latin caption and the Schenk signature are clean and fully legible.

Specifications

Title: View of Nuremberg (Nureberg / Nuremberga), plate 28

Artist / engraver: Pieter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711)

Publication: Hecatompolis sive Totius Orbis Terrarum Oppida Nobiliora Centum

Publisher: Pieter Schenk, Amsterdam, c.1702

Medium: Copperplate engraving on laid paper

Dimensions: approximately 24 × 30 cm sheet

Signature: Signed in plate lower left Pet. Schenk and lower right Amstel. C.P., plate number 78 lower right