Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77) after Johannes Nieuhof (1618-72), thirteen etchings taken from 'An Embassy Sent by the East-India Company, of the United Provinces to the Grand Tartar Cham or Emperour [sic] of China', c.1669, translated from the Dutch original by John Ogilby, each in a verre eglomise dark green and gilt mount and painted and gilt frame, comprising: the title-page depicting the Emperor of China seated to front on a throne, his left hand resting on a globe lettered with 'China', surrounded by armed warriors, three prisoners in chains in foreground, a fourth lying with his head in a wooden stock (later coloured); a distant view of Beijing beyond a fortified wall, titled 'Peking', seen from a hillside, with three figures and a dog on a rock at centre foreground, numerous people travelling to and from the city on foot and horseback along a road, the Great Wall on mountains in background;a view of the inner court of the Emperor's palace at Beijing, titled 'Prospect of Y Inner Court of the Emperours Palace at Pekin', seen from a height, with ambassadors kneeling and standing at centre foreground, supervised by a herald, further figures facing one another in two lines and tending to twelve horses behind, a massed assembly of guards lined up on three sides in front of the buildings, annotations to the lower margin; a detailed ground plan of the Emperor's palace at Beijing, titled to scroll at top left 'The Groundplot & Forme of Y Palace or Imperial Court in Peking', with trees and pavilions, crowded with people inside and outside the walls, annotations to scroll at top right; a distant view of Nanjing beyond a fortified wall, titled 'Nanking', seen from a hillside, with figures and a man on horseback next to a palm tree to the foreground, numerous people travelling to and from the city on foot and horseback along a road; a view of the Porcelain Pagoda (Da Bao'en Si), at Nanjing, within an inner courtyard with various figures, mountains to the background; a view of Canton from a boat, titled 'Kanton', the city beyond a fortified wall with city gate to the centre, with Dutch and Chinese ships in the foreground, mountains with temples to the distant background; a detailed two-page ground plan of Canton, titled to scroll at top left 'The Groundplat of Kanton', the sea with ships and two fortified islands in foreground, annotations to the margin below; a view of a procession of courtly figures, titled 'A Royall Feast or Entertainment of the Ambassadors without the Citty at Canton', the two Ambassadors being led toward the Old and Young Viceroys and Tou-tang all seated under a canopy, with musicians to the left and various figures standing and on horseback to the foreground, annotations to the top right; a view of Macau from a boat, titled 'Makou', with two Dutch ships and smaller boats in the foreground, one ship firing a salute, responded by shots from a square tower on a distant hilltop at left; two views of Jakarta, titled 'The Citty of Batavia' and 'The Castle of Batavia', at top view of the city seen across the sea with Dutch ships and rowing boats in foreground; the bottom view of the castle with long stone bridge at left and wooden bridge at right, various ships and rowing boats in the foreground; a view of the bridge in the province of Shaanxi, titled to central scroll held by two griffins in flight 'The Bridg from Mountaine to Mountaine in the Provence of Xensi called the flying Bridg, 400 cub: long 500 high', the bridge centrally placed with rushing water below, figures barely visible crossing the bridge, with mountainous forested landscape to either side; a view of an interior of a temple, titled 'Innward Part of a Pagode or Chinese Pagane Temple', the temple with an altar to the back wall with sculpture of a deity, various figures inside and to the exterior foreground, a pagoda and other buildings to the left side; the majority of the plates approx. 33 x 22cm, the two-page ground plan of Canton 29.5 x 37cm (13)Footnotes: Note: The publication of Johannes Nieuhof's account of the 1655-57 Dutch embassy to China, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, was undoubtedly the primary triumph of the voyage. While not the first account of the Far East through Western eyes, Nieuhof's descriptions of the Middle Kingdom with, more importantly, more than 150 finely engraved illustrations of cityscapes, architecture, people and their costumes, flora, and fauna, after drawings taken from life, presented the most substantial and detailed account of China to date. Nieuhof's account was published in Dutch but was quickly translated into other European languages, including English by John Ogilby in 1669, resulting in the work rapidly becoming the primary source of information on China in Europe, visualising the lands and people of the Far East to a wider audience than ever before, and contributing in no small part to the development of Chinoiserie in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
