.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In a prospectus of 1660, the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar announced his intention to make a map of London which would transcend in scale and ambition all previous attempts of the subject: '10 Foot in bredth, and 5 Foot upward wherein shall be expressed, not onely the Streets, Lanes, Alleys, etc: proportionally measured; but also the Buildings (especially of the principal Houses, Churches, Courts, Halls; etc) as much resembling the likeness of them, as the Convenience of the roome will permit'. Hollar had already proved his mastery of the subject with the magisterial panorama The Long View of London from Bankside, published in Amsterdam in 1647, which had surpassed Claes Jansz. Visscher's famous view of 1616 in its exquisite execution and extraordinary detail. Hollar's grand map, however, was never completed. On 2 September 1666, a fire in a baker's kitchen in Pudding Lane quickly became a conflagration, burning for four days and destroying vast swathes of the city, including the old Saint Paul's Cathedral. The writer and diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) memorably described the scene:
Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle!...God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth...Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage--non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatum: the ruins resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more! (John Evelyn, 3 September 1666).
Hollar himself would certainly have witnessed the fire firsthand and, in its aftermath, employed his experience of documenting the city to record the full extent of the destruction in this double prospect of London before and after the great fire. In the upper panel Hollar used his earlier panorama of 1647 as the basis for the view of the city in its former glory, as seen from the steeple of Saint Mary Overy, now Southwark Cathedral. In the panel below, from the same viewpoint, he meticulously and dispassionately observed its devastation, from the outer walls of the Tower of London to Blackfriars Stairs and Fleet Street: a wasteland of crumbling walls and rubble, interspersed with towers and chimney stacks and the burnt-out carcasses of churches, carefully numbered and identified in the key below.
Within a few months the print was in circulation. It elicited the praise of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) in a diary entry of 22 November 1666: 'my Lord Bruncker did show me Hollar's new print of the City, with a pretty representation of that part which is burnt, very fine indeed'. Clearly intended for a populace taking stock of the damage and beginning the reconstruction of the city, Hollar's prospect would almost certainly have been used by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke in their plans for a new and grander metropolis. The print was sold by the newly established print-seller John Overton ‘at the White Horse, in Little Brittaine, next doore to little S. Bartholomewes gate’. Overton’s shop in Giltspur Street without Newgate had itself been destroyed in the fire, forcing him to relocate to temporary premises near Saint Bartholomew’s Gate, close to where the conflagration had burned itself out. In 1668 the shop was moved back to reconstructed Newgate, as indicated by a change to the address in the third state of the print which shows the new location, adjacent to Saint Sepulchre’s Church, ‘on the corner of the little Old Baly neere the fountaine tauern without Newgate’’.
Despite it clearly having been in some demand, as evidenced by the successive re-addressing of the plate, impressions of this important, historical print are rare. New Hollstein records a total of 27 impressions in public collections, including only eight impressions of the present second state. To our knowledge, this is the only example to have appeared at auction in the last forty years. It prints a little more sharply and richly than the very good, but slightly trimmed impression in the British Museum.
Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle!...God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth...Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage--non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatum: the ruins resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more! (John Evelyn, 3 September 1666).
Hollar himself would certainly have witnessed the fire firsthand and, in its aftermath, employed his experience of documenting the city to record the full extent of the destruction in this double prospect of London before and after the great fire. In the upper panel Hollar used his earlier panorama of 1647 as the basis for the view of the city in its former glory, as seen from the steeple of Saint Mary Overy, now Southwark Cathedral. In the panel below, from the same viewpoint, he meticulously and dispassionately observed its devastation, from the outer walls of the Tower of London to Blackfriars Stairs and Fleet Street: a wasteland of crumbling walls and rubble, interspersed with towers and chimney stacks and the burnt-out carcasses of churches, carefully numbered and identified in the key below.
Within a few months the print was in circulation. It elicited the praise of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) in a diary entry of 22 November 1666: 'my Lord Bruncker did show me Hollar's new print of the City, with a pretty representation of that part which is burnt, very fine indeed'. Clearly intended for a populace taking stock of the damage and beginning the reconstruction of the city, Hollar's prospect would almost certainly have been used by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke in their plans for a new and grander metropolis. The print was sold by the newly established print-seller John Overton ‘at the White Horse, in Little Brittaine, next doore to little S. Bartholomewes gate’. Overton’s shop in Giltspur Street without Newgate had itself been destroyed in the fire, forcing him to relocate to temporary premises near Saint Bartholomew’s Gate, close to where the conflagration had burned itself out. In 1668 the shop was moved back to reconstructed Newgate, as indicated by a change to the address in the third state of the print which shows the new location, adjacent to Saint Sepulchre’s Church, ‘on the corner of the little Old Baly neere the fountaine tauern without Newgate’’.
Despite it clearly having been in some demand, as evidenced by the successive re-addressing of the plate, impressions of this important, historical print are rare. New Hollstein records a total of 27 impressions in public collections, including only eight impressions of the present second state. To our knowledge, this is the only example to have appeared at auction in the last forty years. It prints a little more sharply and richly than the very good, but slightly trimmed impression in the British Museum.