Virginia Indians, Man & Woman in Traditional Dress, Handcolored Engraving, 1683
$270
€240 · £205
Original print, not a reproduction.
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- Date
- 1683
- Sheet size
- 7.4 × 5 in (18.7 × 12.8 cm)
- Condition
- Good. Good condition for a hand-colored engraving of the late 17th century. Overall age toning to the paper, with scattered foxing and surface soiling, most visible in the margins. Minor abrasions and light handling wear. The hand coloring remains clear.
- Wardrobe
- Far & away
- Era
- Before 1700, Baroque
- Stock no.
- f_47986942
Two Native inhabitants of Virginia in a hand-colored copper engraving from Alain Manesson Mallet's encyclopedic geography, c.1683. A ribbon banner across the sky reads "De Virginie," and the sheet is headed in German, "die Einwohner der Landtschafft Virginea," with "Fig. 17" at the right.
A man and a woman stand side by side on open ground within a ruled border, in a shallow landscape of low hills. The woman at the left holds a sprig of leaves in one raised hand, wears a purple wrap and layered bead necklaces, and has long hair falling across her shoulders. The man wears a tall headdress of red feathers and a striped blue mantle edged with gold bands, with bracelets and anklets, and holds a staff. The colorist added blue sky with white clouds and green and brown to the ground.
Mallet's work, first issued in Paris in 1683 as Description de l'Univers, was a large survey of the known world, and its American plates offered European readers a widely copied image of the Native peoples of North America.
