Istorica descrizione de' tre' regni Congo, Matamba et Angola : situati nell'Etiopia inferiore occidentale e delle missioni apostoliche esercitateui da religiosi Capuccini
This is a 1687 Italian travel account published in Bologna by Giacomo Monti, written by the Capuchin missionary Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi about the Kingdoms of Congo, Matamba and Angola for a European readership interested in missions. The pictures are small black-and-white copper engravings set within the text, showing African figures in dance, rest, travel and ceremony against sparse landscapes with huts, rocky outcrops and a few trees. A designer might take from them the compact, crowded engraved style of seventeenth-century European reportage, with its hatched shading, stiff poses and framed vignettes.
