1673 Engraving of Spaniards on an Erupting Popocatépetl
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Spaniards on an erupting Popocatépetl appears in this excerpted leaf from the America's Discoverers chapter of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
The scene shows two peaks erupting at once, hurling smoke and boulders into the sky, while Spaniards on the slopes are struck down by falling rocks or flee downhill. In the foreground, Indigenous men in feathered headdresses cower and shield their heads, and at right a commander in a plumed hat watches with a company of pikemen and musketeers. The scene appears to show the Spaniards' attempt on Popocatépetl, described across both sides of the leaf.
The reverse, after Cortés's conquest of Tlaxcala and the plot he uncovered at Cholula, names the twin-peaked mountain eight miles from Tenochtitlan and explains that popoca means smoke and tepeke mountain. It tells how ten Spaniards set out to climb it. Ash lay knee-deep, but two reached the crater, which the text puts at a mile and a half across, as the mountain shook and glowing stones flew out. The text below says the two survived only by sheltering behind a hollow hill. The inhabitants, who believed their dead kings were tormented in the flames with a thousand devils for their wickedness, brought them gifts. It then follows Cortés to Iztapalapa and the walled causeway across the lake to Tenochtitlan.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld 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 Die Unbekante Neue Welt, 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.
CONDITION
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