Engraver and publisher
Matthäus Merian
The Frankfurt engraver whose workshop drew the towns of Europe, one copper plate at a time.
On Picturepops™ cards · 1
The life
1593–1650Born Basel, Switzerland
Matthäus Merian the Elder trained as an engraver in Zürich and settled in Frankfurt, where he married the daughter of the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry and took over the family firm. His Topographia, begun in 1642, filled many volumes with views of the towns of Europe, and his daughter Maria Sibylla Merian became a celebrated painter of insects and plants. Our card, Dubrovnik, opens onto an old engraved view of Ragusa, as the city was then called.