2021Art - Matthaus Merian (1593-1650) - Miniature Sheet

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.