Mechanical arts: title page of the Nova reperta

Title: Nova Reperta (New Discoveries / Inventions)

Object type: engraved title page

Producers: indicated lettering in margins below images 'Aloysio Alamannio Florno.’ (commissioned by the Alamanni family); ‘I. Strad. Invent. DD. / 'Ioan. Stradanus invent.’ (designed by Jan van der Straet); 10 plates engraved by Philips Galle, and 10 by Hans Collaert; ‘Theodorus Galle excudit Antuerpiae' (originally published by Philips Galle; this edition later published by his son, Theodor Galle).  See further in Hollstein (below).

Place of production: Antwerp

Date of production: c. 1590

Dimensions: 206 mm high, 266 mm wide

Source: Bodleian Library, shelfmark Don. b.8 (1)

Description: This is the title page of a series of twenty engravings illustrating ‘recent inventions and discoveries’, mostly technologically inventions unknown in antiquity.  It therefore represents graphic evidence of Europeans’ consciousness of living in a new historical era, defined by technological advances on antiquity.  The title page also serves as a visual table of contents of the series: the sequence with this the inventions are numbered here (with Roman numerals in the image and Arabic numerals in the legend below) corresponds to the order of the engravings which follow.  The four pictured most prominently on this title page – America, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, and printing – are also the first four discoveries treated in the series of engravings.

Literature: Uta Bernsmeier, ‘Die Nova Reperta des Jan van der Straet : ein Beitrag zur Problemgeschichte der Entdeckungen und Erfindungen im 16. Jahrhundert’ (PhD dissertation, Universität Hamburg, 1986); F W H Hollstein, The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450-1700 (Amsterdam, 1993); Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Jan van der Straet, detto Giovanni Stradano, flandrus pictor et inventor (Milan, 1997); Susan Dackerman et al.. Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (New Haven and London, 2011), cat.no.1; A. Baroni and M. Sellink, Stradanus 1523-1605: Court artist of the Medici[exhibition catalogue, Groeningemuseum Brugge, 2008-2009] (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 300-306, cat. no. 99-107.

*To read more about the Nova Reperta individual plates, please click on the Related Sources on the right side of the page.