Matthaeus Merian : Skizze seines Lebens und ausfuhrliche Beschreibung seiner Topographia Germaniae nebst Verzeichniss der darin enthaltenen Kupferstiche : eine kulturhistorische Studie
A German scholarly study by H. Eckardt, published in Basel in 1887, that sets out the life of the engraver Matthaeus Merian and catalogues the copperplate prints in his Topographia Germaniae. The single picture is a frontispiece-style engraved portrait of Merian, a bearded man in a dark cloak holding a sheet of printed map or plan, with a Latin inscription below. A designer might take from it the formal conventions of seventeenth-century portrait prints: a half-length pose, a plain dark ground, and an inscribed caption block set beneath the image.
