London Before The Fire - A Grand Panorama [antikvár]

LONDON BEFORE THE FIRE A GRAND PANORAMA Commentary by J.S. Wellsman ^His fine view of medieval London was drawn at the beginning of the seventeenth century; Elizabeth I was probably still alive when it was begun, but it was not finished until some years after her death in 1603 when James I, the first of the Stuarts, came to the throne. The year 1616 is given on the print itself as the date of publication but, as with any old print, this can never, or only rarely, be anything more than an approximation of the date of the drawing. Exactly fifty years after the publication of the panorama most of the city was to vanish in the flames of the Great Fire, and, of this great city, only six or seven churches and the Tower of London remain. But, though so few buildings have survived, the street plan, even to minor lanes and alleys, is easily discernible in spite of three hundred years of improvements. The authorship of this view of London is always nominally given to C.J. Visscher, a Dutchman of Amsterdam who, as was usual in those days, combined the work of printing, publishing and selling works such as this. He was born in 1587. Relying on the evidence shown by the print, at least some of it was drawn in the first two or three years of the seventeenth century when Visscher was in his early teens and rather young to have produced this work. Also, there is very little evidence that he was even in London. So the true authorship is, and will probably remain, a matter of doubt. Our most important source of information for this period of London is John Stowe's Survey of London which he first published in 1598; a second enlarged edition was produced in 1603, two years before his death at the age of eighty. It was the first detailed description of London, and Stowe, a tailor by profession and an antiquarian and historian by inclination, walked the streets of his native city to give us this wonderful description not only of its streets and buildings but of its life and inhabitants, its history and its government. To anyone interested in London's history, Stowe's survey can be thoroughly recommended as a most readable account of London. It is published today in J.M. Dent's Everyman series. Our pictorial knowledge of London at this time is very limited so far as accuracy of appearance is concerned for it must be remembered that the artists themselves did not place accurate representation very high in the scale of priorities. Many instances can be found where two artists have drawn the same building so differently that one can hardly recognize the building to be the same, were it not for the position or labelling. Even labelling cannot be relied on without checking and it is surprising how often even experienced historians have accepted pictorial evidence from views such as Visscher's and others' purely on their face value. Nevertheless this view of London gives us a very good impression of London in 1616, and much valuable information can be obtained. I hope to point out the more obvious and misleading mistakes but a few general points may be mentioned here. One very noticeable fault is the great exaggeration of height as related to distance, in other words, a distortion of perspective. This is most obvious in the case of church spires and towers. Another, though less obvious, point which has interesting