Lot 188: [LORCK, Melchior (1526/7-after 1583), artist. Eberhard Werner HAPPEL (1647-

[LORCK, Melchior (1526/7-after 1583), artist. Eberhard Werner HAPPEL (1647-90), editor] – Der T5rckische Schau-Platz. Hamburg:
Thomas von Wiering, 1685. 2° (321 x 197mm). 138 (of 139) woodcuts, folding engraved map with contemporary hand-coloured cartouche, engraved plan, woodcut
initials, head- and tailpieces. (Lacking quire B4 and fo. 110, title and map mounted, plan in partial facsimile and mounted, numerous repairs
occasionally affecting several letters, numerous leaves shaved at lower edge with loss or partial loss of one line, fo. 118 torn with a little loss,
some staining.) Contemporary calf over thin pasteboard (rebacked and –cornered, rubbed, modern endpapers). Provenance: Gustav A. von
Krachl (?; deleted title inscription) Ö J. A. Lagergren (late 19th/early 20th-century inscriptions).
First edition of a series of news-sheets issued during the Great Turkish War, in the wake of the Battle of Vienna (1683), and third edition
of an important series of woodcuts by Melchior Lorck which provided early visual documentation for a culture of great importance to
western Europe. As stated in the introduction, the aim of the work was to present a report on Turkish society, customs, beliefs, manners, as
well as fortifcations and recent battles. Depicted are archers, weaponry, horses and camels, architecture, civil costume, Sultans and Sultanas,
tradespeople, mosques, and city panoramas. The work is prefaced by an account of the Battle of Vienna, illustrated with a folding map and plan.
The news-sheets were initially issued bi-weekly as T5rckischer Estaats- und Krieges-Bericht in 1683-84 and in 1685 were gathered together with a
general title-page and prefatory matter; both issues are known as Krieges-Bericht.
Each of the 137 news-sheets consists of a woodcut illustrating some aspect of Turkish life, a description of the woodcut, and news items from
Vienna, Linz, Prague, Basel, Strasbourg, and elsewhere. All but 9 of the woodcuts are those by Melchior Lorck which frst appeared in 1626 in
a work commonly known simply as ‘The Turkish Publication’. That work, itself also very rare, had no accompanying text; Erik Fischer in his
extensive study of Lorck and the Turkish Publication argues that the text describing the woodcuts in Krieges-Bericht either is or is closely derived
from Lorck’s own lost manuscript. Krieges-Bericht thereby represents the frst edition joining Lorck’s text to his images, completing his life’s
work, created during two extended stays in Constantinople as part of an Imperial embassy in the mid-16th century.
rare. Fischer knew of only one copy of Der T5rckische Schau-Platz, owned by a Mr Jark in Denmark. Other copies are recorded at the British
Library, Erfurt, Dresden, Rostock, Vienna, and Wolfenbüttel, and one was sold at auction in 2002. Erik Fischer, Melchior Lorck, 2009, vol III
passim. VD17 23:231261H