Matthäus Merian Sr. (1593–1650), originally Swiss engraver working in Frankfurt am Main, is best known in our country for this “Víew of Pressburg” (today Bratislava). It was the only work that depicted the territory of, what is today, Slovakia that he included in his impressive historical-geographical book Archontologia cosmica, published in Frankfurt in 1638. In 1536, as a consequence of the Ottoman expansion, Pressburg became the new capital and coronation city of the Kingdom of Hungary. The view shown in the work is equally important, it is one of the best-known and most beautiful views of Bratislava. It is also significant as it was the first and, for quite a time, an exemplary view of the city from the north, thereby balancing the views from the south, from the Danube, created more than 50 years earlier.
In his time, Matthäus Merian was one of the most prolific creators and publishers, not only in Germany, but in the whole of Europe, which allowed him to employ experienced printmakers for his commercially successful projects, whose numbers grew constantly. On the other hand, he frequently and consciously reduced the usual trio of signatures seen on prints – the creator of the original work, the executive printmaker and the publisher – down to his own name, endowing it with the status of a company brand, and thus the work of his colleagues remained anonymous. That is also probably the chief reason why we do not know who originally created the work. We can only assume that the original was an older work, as in its year of publication the Castle was undergoing the “Pálffy reconstruction” (1635–1649) and was being rebuilt with as a castello, with a similar outline to the one it has today.
Both the high-quality of the original and its graphical processing, precise and with great detail, form the basis for the concept of the stamp using its distinctive detail. Nevertheless, in its execution the engraver could not “copy” the original one to one, he had to reduce its size. His concept, however, comes very close to a “reproduction” of the print. This successful print with a slight colour accent along with the whole miniature sheet makes this stamp a real treat for the true collector. This issue of postage stamp is enriched by a portrait of Matthäus Merian Sr. on FDC overprint created according to engraving of Joachim von Sandrart (1608 – 1688) and on FDC cancellation is used a detail of walking pedestrian taken from a “View of Pressburg”.
Martin Čičo
