Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, View of Augsburg, Bavaria, 1572

copperplate engraving, hand-colored, handmade paper, 42 x 53.5 cm;
One of the earliest depictions of Augsburg, published during the reign of King Sigismund Augustus, whose court commissioned table silverware from Augsburg for the royal castle. Until the 18th century, Polish kings and magnates commissioned special silver mugs and jugs from Augsburg. Today, the Wawel Treasury holds dozens of silver pieces from that city. Hundreds of copperplate engravings depicting Polish kings and nobles also originated in Augsburg; these bore the city’s name in Latin: “Augusta Vindelicorum.” The city served, as it were, as a “foreign” Polish center for the production of silverware and copperplate engravings for the elites of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Fukier family of Warsaw settled in Poland in the 16th century; they were descended from the famous Fugger magnate family of Augsburg. On the reverse is a Latin text about the city, which also mentions the Fuggers;
Condition: good, sheet folded in half.