{"product_id":"engraving-of-a-bound-man-on-a-platform-above-a-battle","title":"1673 Engraving of a Bound Man on a Platform Above a Battle","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn engraved scene of a bound man on a platform above a battle appears in this excerpted leaf from the Brazil section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the center of the scene, a man stands bound to a tall post atop a raised wooden platform while a bearded man beside him clutches a bundle of long rods against his shoulder while flame and smoke billow up behind them. All around them, hats fly through the air above the platform. Below it, European soldiers in broad-brimmed hats and dark-skinned men grapple and strike at one another, several already sprawled on the ground. At left, figures scramble down a ladder and leap from the platform's edge while a crowd of onlookers carrying jugs looks on, and at right, pikemen advance beneath a banner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe engraving is uncaptioned and neither side of the leaf describes a scene like the one seen here. The bound man may stand for the punishment the text below describes, in which a soldier worn down by hunger and thirst was set on the wooden horse for a minor offense and made to carry heavy balls on his feet and six muskets on his shoulders under a burning sky, though the text does not confirm this reading. The same column tells of the misery of the Dutch forces in Brazil, whose hospitals lay full of the sick and churchyards full of the dead, and of the commander the text calls Schuppe, forced to give up the island of Taperika (modern-day Itaparica). The admiral Banckert fared better, attacking a Portuguese fleet off the Bay of All Saints and taking five ships said to be worth more than twenty tons of gold, along with the new viceroy of Brazil and three Franciscan friars. The text then turns to the field marshal Hus, captured in 1645 at the house of Engenho after he had fought until his powder ran out and the Portuguese commander Vidal had piled wood, straw, and sulfur beneath the house. The reverse continues with Matheus van den Broeck's account of the surrender. A priest is said to have tugged at Vidal's sleeve to hurry the terms along, and once the Dutch were disarmed, the Portuguese fell on their hundred Brazilian allies despite the oath they had sworn. The fighting below the platform may stand for this massacre, in which, the text says, one Brazilian taken for dead sprang up and stabbed a Portuguese ensign through the heart.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eArnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled \u003cem\u003eDe Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld\u003c\/em\u003e from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and \u003cem\u003eDie Unbekante Neue Welt\u003c\/em\u003e, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New World Cartographic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43828418314301,"sku":"92457","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0390\/9705\/files\/92457a.jpg?v=1792096594","url":"https:\/\/nwcartographic.com\/products\/engraving-of-a-bound-man-on-a-platform-above-a-battle","provider":"New World Cartographic","version":"1.0","type":"link"}