MERIAN, MATTHÄUS: DANUBE BASIN

The map represents one of many variants of a very popular flow of the Danube River from Regensburg to the Black Sea. Merian, as he very often did, used a slightly older map of J. Blaeu and reduced it by slightly more than 1/3. He also moved the cartouche from the upper right corner to the lower left, but left the same motif, i.e. a symbolic division of the Christian West and the Islamic East, embodied in the character of the Austrian Emper.or and the Turkish Sultan. The map was made very cizelized and given the large area it displays, it contains a lot of information and toponyms, including the entire coast to Dubrovnik.