The 1564 Medici Danti Map of California

Italian School, 16th Century Provenance: Private Collection, New York This intriguing drawing is a study by an anonymous 16th-century Italian artist after a vignette in Michelangelo’s fresco of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. The altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was already richly decorated when Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint his Last Judgment...

Pen and ink on paper, laid down on canvas, mounted to wooden scroll bars Signed and dated lower right: “Drawn by N. B. Rogers August. 1843” Inscribed with an ownership inscription on the verso: Rev. E. D. Daniels, Palmer, Mass. Provenance: Rev. Eugene Davidson Daniels, Palmer, Massachusetts, 1871 This extraordinary manuscript map is a rare survivor of the devotional and educational culture of New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although at first glance resembling a large-scale engraving or printed publication, this precisely rendered wall map was entirely drawn by hand, the product of meticulous research by a minister working in isolation in rural Maine. The map shows New Testament era cities, towns, tribal areas, and political borders as well as physical features such as rivers, lakes, mountains, and hills (indicated by half-tone cross-hatching). On to this geographically accurate rendering of the Holy Land, Rogers has located and inscribed significant locales mentioned in the Gospels and has annotated these places with relevant citations from the Bible. He further records these by plotting the travels of Jesus on what resemble a series of trails across the Holy Land. Each is distinguished by a different pattern of dots and dashes – correlated to an explanatory table at the lower right. From this we know that these lines document the “Flight into Egypt and return,” “Travels of Christ from Nazareth to Jerusalem and return,” “Travels from the commencement of his Ministry to the first Passover,” “Travels from the first and the second Passover,” “Travels from Jerusalem to Galilee after the 2nd Passover,” and “Travels from the third Passover to the Crucifixion.” An inset map of “Jerusalem...

Follower of Zacharias Wagener (1614-1688) Tamanuâguasû (Giant Anteater) On Italian 17th or 18th-century paper, H. 28 x W. 43.5 cm ​The present painting is a copy after Wagener’s painting of the anteater, Tamanduá-bandeira, which is illustrated in his “Thier Buch”, with 109 drawings of Brazilian fish, birds and mammals, published in Amsterdam c. 1641, in German. ​ Zacharias Wagener, or Wagenaer in Dutch, (Dresden 1614 – Amsterdam 1668) was a real adventurer who became Opperhoofd on Deshima and Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in the service of the VOC. During the Thirty-Year War in Germany Wagener tried his luck in Amsterdam where he worked for the map-maker Willem Blaeu. In 1634 he joined the WIC and left for Dutch Brazil where he worked as writer and painter, together with Frans Post...

Wonderful 18th century English gouache on paper of a 18th century English scene of a man on his horse with his dog in a landscape One of a set of five all framed in Hogarth frames. ...