Sicily Map 1688 Baroque Engraved Print - Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse

This Sicilia Regnum, the Kingdom of Sicily, was engraved by the Merian workshop of Frankfurt am Main and issued in 1688 in the Topographia Italiae. It is attributed to Matthaeus Merian the Elder and Caspar Merian, with text traditionally associated with Martin Zeiller, and the sheet measures about 37 by 29 centimeters. The island fills nearly the whole sheet in its triangular form, and the coastline is drawn with bays, capes and promontories. The Mediterranean is lettered Mare Mediterraneo and Mare Africo, and the interior carries shaded molehill hills, branching rivers and the old divisions Val di Mazara, Val di Noto and Val Demona. The catalog gives the sheet size instead of the printed area, and the volume belongs to the celebrated Topographia series begun by the elder Merian.

Palermo, Messina, Catania and Syracuse are the major cities labeled, with many smaller towns around the coast and in the interior. At the top are two elaborate coats of arms, which allude to the rulers of the kingdom, and sailing ships and sea creatures animate the waters. The title cartouche in the lower left is ornamented with baroque scrollwork, foliage and a grotesque mask. The Topographia series combined maps, views and descriptive text to survey Europe region by region, and this volume was devoted to Italy. It is a copper engraving, printed in black and white, with the crisp coastlines that made Merian's workshop famous.

A collector of seventeenth-century engraved maps, a family with roots in Sicily, or a traveler who loves Palermo or Mount Etna will find a memorable gift here. TheMapVault's 1849 Meyer sheet of Sicily and Calabria shows the island in the nineteenth century, whereas this Merian map of 1688 is the Baroque view of a kingdom. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.