Florida Indians, Couple in Traditional Dress – Mallet America Engraving, 1683
€ 240
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
1683
Sheet size
18.7 × 12.8 cm (7.4 × 5.0 in)
Condition
Good
Reference
BG-14129-3
What the condition grades mean
Excellent
Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good
Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good
Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair
Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Condition
Good condition for a 17th-century hand-colored engraving. General age toning to the paper, with scattered light foxing and minor surface marks. Margins show some wear and soft handling, including small edge nicks. Original hand coloring.
About this sheet
A man and woman of Florida in an original copper engraving with early hand color, from Alain Manesson Mallet's Description de l'Univers, published in Paris in 1683. The sheet is headed "De l'Amérique, Figure CXXX," with the page number 299, and the banner over the figures reads "Ples de la Floride."
The two figures stand in a lightly drawn landscape of hills and water. The man at the right carries a long bow and a quiver of arrows on his back, with a red cloth tied at the waist, and the woman at the left wears a blue skirt and bracelets and anklets of beads, and points as if in conversation. The coloring is bold, in strong red, blue and yellow, over a ribbon banner tinted lilac.
Mallet was a military engineer in the service of Louis XIV, and his work combined cartography, fortification and ethnography in several volumes. Its American costume plates draw on earlier travel accounts, and they were among the most widely circulated images of Native peoples of the Southeast in late 17th-century Europe.
