1697. Folio, two parts in one volume, with two further supplements; pp. [ii] engraved title-page, [68], 152; pp. [2], 259,[1] errata; pp. [iv]; pp. [iv]; with woodcut head and tailpieces and 48 engraved plates by Jan and Caspar Luiken, Georg Christoph Eimmart and Christoph Weigel, and two further double-page engraved plates; title printed in red and black with 2 large woodcut historiated initials, the plates comprising either nine or 12 panels including two title panels flanking top central image giving the millennium and century; narrow horizontal worm hole in blank outer margins of first 20 leaves (touching a few words and edge of one plate but with no significant loss), small hole with loss upper gutter of final leaf, some minor foxing and spotting throughout, mostly marginal, and with some soiling and foxing to plates, a few with some browning to verso margins, light dampstain to margin of final two leaves; front free endpaper detached; with 19th century owner's inscription dated 1851 on front flyleaf, who has clipped the top corner of same flyleaf to remove earlier provenance, remains of further label on rear endpaper and of old label on rear paste-down; in contemporary speckled calf, spine in compartments with raised bands, with old title label, tooled in gilt, head and tail of spine worn exposing head-bands, with loss at head, upper joint cracked and head and tail but holding, covers somewhat scuffed and scratched, corners bumped and worn; a good copy. First edition of a striking educational compendium - a superbly illustrated mnemonic history of the world from Creation up to 1697, the work of the noted engraver Christoph Weigel (1654-1725), and with text by Gregory Andreas Schmidt (1655-1696) and Samuel Faber. The beautifully etched and engraved plates provide a chronological summary of universal history, and are presented mnemonically broken down into the six millennia before and after Christ, then into the centuries and also by decades. A general ‘table’ is given summarising each millennium, with 37 special tables for the 37 centuries of the two millennia before Christ and the two after, each with 10 illustrations depicting events from a given decade. The small beautifully executed copperplate engravings vividly demonstrate Weigel’s mastery, and no doubt would have captured the imagination of the young readers. As an iconographic memory tool, it is in the great tradition of symbolic and emblematic books of the period.
‘In 1697 there appeared in the bookshop of Johann Daniel Tauber in Nuremberg a large tome, richly illustrated with 48 folio copper plate engravings and titled Sculptura Historiarum Et Temporum Memoratrix. The book, which presents the principal events in universal history since the creation of the world in the form of a chronological summary, does not simply follow a strictly chronological order but is shaped on mnemotechnic principles... History is thus conceived as a list of the principal events in history. This virtual list is embodied first and foremost in sets of illustrations on 48 panel engravings each of which depicts a millennium—or a century as the case may be—which in turn are divided into ten panels; these last illustrate either a century (as a subdivision of a millennium) or a decade (as a subdivision of a century). The plates, as such, can thus be viewed as pictorial lists. This became fully apparent when in 1700, poorer-quality copies were made and published on their own, with no explanatory text, under the title Die Welt in einer Nuß (’The world in a nutshell’).’ (Abstract from: ‘Le Monde dans une noix’, Markus Meumann, online facsimile of the reprint of 1700; without appendix here present - https://doi.org/10.4000/mcv.5803).
The present copy is also bound with two supplementary mnemonical double-page engravings, both of which appear to be rare, and we believe were printed before the book edition was published. The first, Gedächtnuß-hülffliche Bilder-Lust der merckwürdigsten Begebenheiten des 1696ten Jahrs’ describes 12 events in 1696 and announces the publication of the main work available by "nechkünfftige Michaeli" (feast of St. Michael, September 29). It is accompanied by two leaves of printed text ‘Memorabilia historica anni millesimi sexcentesimi nonagesimi sexti. Oder historische Denckwürdigkeiten des 1696ten Jahrs’.
This is followed by a second similarly rare broadside, Gedächtnuß-hülffliche Bilder-Lust der merckwürdigsten Begebenheiten des 1697ten Jahr’ with the VD 17 locating only a single copy at Munich. As usual it describes 12 contemporary events including a view of Cartagena in Columbia, South America as well as a view of Barcelona. The heading is: ‘Memorabilia historica anni MDCXCVII. Sive continuatio prima ad annum praecedentem MDCXCVI. Das ist: historische Denckwürdigkeiten des 1697sten Jahrs. Oder: Die erste Fortsetzung auf das vorhergehende 1696ste Jahr’. The Raid on Cartagena in Columbia was a successful attack by the French on the fortified city of Cartagena de Indias, on May 6, 1697, as part of the War of the Grand Alliance. By 1695, the French Navy had declined to the point that it could no longer face the English and Dutch in an open sea battle and therefore had switched to privateering. The account provided includes a detailed list of the loot together with two leaves of explanatory text.
Of further Americana interest, p. 206 under 1492 notes Columbus's New World discoveries and voyages to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, including later explorations in 1497 and 1506 with Americus Vespucci; page 273 notes battles in 1621 Brazil between the Dutch and Spanish; the Spanish Silver Fleet in 1628 from the Americas; on pages 258-9 appears an illustrated account of William Penn, the great Quaker. (Not in Landis, European Americana).
Christoph Weigel's (1654-1725) ‘fame rests not so much upon his own work as engraver as upon the mighty works which he issued as publisher. The height of his career was reached in 1698 when he settled in Nuremberg.’ (Faber du Faur, German Baroque Literature p. 469).