This coloured copper engraving of the city of Luxembourg appeared in 1599 in Civitates Orbis Terrarum (“The Cities of the World”), published by theologian Georg Braun (1541–1622) from Cologne and the engraver and etcher Frans Hogenberg (1535–1590). The publication is an intermedial (text and image), six-volume description of the largest cities in Europe, Asia, Africa and Central America, of which a total of 363 are systematically recorded in this opulent work through illustrated plates and texts in Latin.
Luxembourg, a city that sits on a mountain top, can be seen depicted in the upper left field of the image. Below the city view, shown in a cavalier projection, is La Fontaine Castle near Clausen (which no longer exists today). In the right-hand field of the image, the third-century Roman burial monument of the gens Secundinia near Igel – known as the Igel Column – vertically spans the entire print. Under Count Peter Ernst von Mansfeld (1517-1604), governor of Luxembourg, the tomb monument was to be dismantled and rebuilt in the castle shown, where the count kept his extensive collection of Gallo-Roman antiquities. However, after damage was caused during the dismantling work, the plan was abandoned, and the tomb still stands today in its ancient location in Igel.
Further Reading
- De Jonge, Krista: Resurrecting Belgica Romana. Peter Ernst von Mansfeld’s Garden of Antiquities in Clausen, Luxemburg, 1563–90, in: Bianca De Divitiis / Kathleen Wren Christian (Ed.): Local Antiquities, Local Identities. Art, Literature and Antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400–1700, Manchester 2018, pp. 237–260.
- Dragendorff, Hans / Krüger, Emil: Das Grabmal von Igel, Trier 1924.
- Klöckner, Anja: Die sog. Igeler Säule in Druckgraphiken des 16.-18. Jahrhunderts, in: Laura Di Carlo / Johannes Lipps / Anna Pawlak / Daniel R. F. Richter (Ed.): Andere Ästhetik meets Andere Ästhetik. Visualisierungen von Antiken nördlich der Alpen in der frühneuzeitlichen Druckgraphik, Tübingen.
- Koller, Ariane: Weltbilder und die Ästhetik der Geographie. Die Offizin Blaeu und die niederländische Kartographie der Frühen Neuzeit, Affalterbach 2014 (Studien zu Kunstgeschichte des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit 13).
- Meganck, Tine Luk: Erudite Eyes. Friendship, Art and Erudition in the Network of Abraham Ortelius (1527—1698), Leiden/Boston 2017 (Studies in the Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 14).
- Michalsky, Tanja: Projektion und Imagination. Die niederländische Landschaft der Frühen Neuzeit im Diskurs von Geographie und Malerei, Munich 2011.
- Voges, Ramon: Pictures and Power. The Visual Prints of Frans Hogenberg, in: Nina Lamal / Jamie Cumby / Helmer J. Helmers (Ed.): Prints and Power in Early Modern Europe (1500—1800), Leiden/Boston 2021, pp. 300—125.
- Zahn, Eberhard: Die Igeler Säule bei Trier, Neuß 1976.
- Braun, Georg / Hogenberg, Frans: Beschreibung der vornehmsten Städte der Welt. Herausgegeben, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Anja Grebe und G. Ulrich Großmann, Darmstadt 2017.
