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21. Jacob van Meurs (ca. 1640-ca. 1680) Animals of America
Etching from Ogilby’s America, 1621, 129 x 162 mm. (sheet 393 x 251 mm.). Fine impression on the full sheet (Chapter II, p. 173), with incredibly interesting text, on laid paper with good margins. What could be more likely to the seventeenth-century exploring mind than that the mythical unicorn actually existed in the New World? Shown here in the company of a hart, a stag (with moose-like antlers), a beaver and a musk cat (muskrat?), it appears quite at home in the verdant, tropical landscape portrayed. The text, with a reference to Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), gives incredible physical details of some of these beasts and the medicinal uses of some of their parts. Truly, the early exploration of the Americas brought to light much that was exotic and new to European civilization, but also things that were buried in the depths of its own collective psyche. |
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