Theodor de Bry

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Theodor de Bry

Theodor de Bry , also Dietrich de Bry , Johann Theodor de Bry , Theodoor de Bry and Dirk de Bry (* 1528 in Liège ; † March 27, 1598 in Frankfurt am Main ), was a goldsmith , engraver and publisher from the Principality of Liège and belonged to the ancestors of the Calvinist artist family de Bry .

Life

Youth in Liège and the time in Strasbourg

Theodor was born in Liège in 1528 as the son of the wealthy Protestant de Bry family in Liège . It is very likely that he learned goldsmithing and engraving in copper plates from his father Thiry de Bry "the younger".

In 1560 we find Theodor de Bry in Strasbourg, where he married a Catherine Esslinger and started his household. The information on the reasons for moving from Liège to Strasbourg is contradicting one another. Older sources indicate that around 1570 Catholic Spain, which was occupying the southern Netherlands, began persecuting Flemish Protestants. Theodor de Bry was allegedly accused of heresy, his property was confiscated and he was banished from his homeland. The fact that he was already based in Strasbourg 10 years earlier makes an escape from the Liège ban unrealistic. From today's perspective, Liège was at that time as the Principality of Liège a sovereign corporate state alongside the duchies of Brabant, Luxembourg and the Spanish / Austrian Netherlands. The official religion, however, was Roman Catholic and it may well be that the Protestant de Bry was skeptical about future prospects. In any case, the independent Strasbourg was also wealthy at the time, but turned towards Protestantism and had gained an important artistic reputation through the many religious refugees that were taken in: They made Strasbourg a flourishing city of goldsmithing and engraving (engraving).

Native Americans with dugout canoes when fishing in the English colony of Virginia . ( Engraving by Theodor de Bry 1585 after a watercolor by John White)

The time in Frankfurt

In 1578, Theodor de Bry went to Frankfurt am Main with his family, founded an engraving and publishing company and applied for citizenship.

Between 1586 and 1588 he stayed in London for a while, worked with the geographer Richard Hakluyt and began collecting reports and illustrations of various European research expeditions. After his return in 1589 he worked out his plans for new publications with his sons.

From 1590 to 1634 Theodor de Bry published two of the most important travelogue collections of the early modern period in Frankfurt . The West Indian Travels (also called "History of America") and the East Indian Travels. The whole collection came under the title “Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam Orientalem et Indiam Occidentalem XXV partibus comprehensae; opus illustratum figuris aeneis Fratrum de Bry et Meriani ” . In this, as well as in his other work, de Bry was supported by his two sons Johann Theodor (1561-1623) and Johann Israel (1570-1611).

In the propaganda war between Catholics and Protestants at the time, the Calvinist de Bry placed himself in the service of the latter. In particular , he depicted the work of the great Catholic power Spain in the New World in the darkest colors and thus also contributed to the emergence of the Leyenda negra .

Theodor de Bry died on March 27, 1598 at the age of 70. His widow Katharina de Bry and his two sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel continued to run his company.

Works

Depiction of the Jamestown massacre on a woodcut by Matthäus Merian. De Bry 1628

The two travelogue collections published by Theodor de Bry in Frankfurt are among the most important of the early modern period and have established its reputation for posterity:

He created the Arrival of Columbus in the New World in 1594 . The West Indian Journeys (ed. 1590–1618) reported the discovery and conquest of America by the Europeans, while the East Indian journeys followed the rise of Holland as a trading power in Asia around 1600. Both series appeared in German and Latin , were intended for a European audience and richly illustrated with copperplate engravings .

Theodor de Bry was only able to publish six parts of his complete works. After his death, his sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel, who also worked as engravers, and then Johann Theodor's son-in-law Matthäus Merian continued the work until 1634. In the end it contained 25 parts and over 1500 copperplate engravings. Sebastian Furck succeeded the brothers as engraver and publisher .

With their global publishing project, the de Bry developed a world of images that was shaped by the wonders and horrors of the newly discovered worlds as well as by the stereotypical ideas and artistic traditions of Europeans with regard to the other and the foreign. The result was an archive of images that is still actively used today and that still influences our perception of early colonial history.

In addition, Theodor de Bry together with Jean Jacques Boissard (1528–1602) published 100 scholarly vitae with copper engraving portraits (1597–1598). His sons continued the work that became known under the name Bibliotheca chalcographica , which at the end comprised 438 portraits of scholars, together with the Frankfurt writer Johann Adam Lonicerus , a son of Adam Lonitzer .

literature

  • Margarete Braun-Ronsdorf:  de Bry, Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 693 ( digitized version ).
  • Henry Keazor : Theodore De Bry's Images for America. In: Print Quarterly. Volume 15, No. 2, (June) 1998, pp. 131-149.
  • Henry Keazor : 'Charting the autobiographical, selfregarding subject'? Theodor De Brys self-portrait. In: Reporting, Telling, Dominating - Perception and Representation in the Early Colonial History of Europe. Edited by Susanna Burghartz , Maike Christadler and Dorothea Nolde (= time leaps - research on the early modern times. Volume 7, issue 2/3), Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 395–428.
  • Jennifer Speake: Literature of Travel and Exploration: Vol. 1, A to F , Fitzroy Dearborn (Eds.), Taylor & Francis Books Inc., New York 2003 Excerpt from pages 134-135: Theodor de Bry and Catherine Esslinger
  • Travel to Oriental India: Knowledge of Foreign Worlds around 1600, Dorothee Schmidt, Cologne, Weimar Vienna 2016.
  • Andrea Ubrizsy: Contribution à la connaissance des œuvres de Clusius. Istor, Vol. 28, No. 4 (OCTOBRE 1975), pp. 361-370, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23632092

Web links

Commons : Theodor de Bry  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Warning: risk of confusion with his son of the same name
  2. ↑ see web link biography Théodore de Brys in the art collection of the University of Liège
  3. ^ Albrecht Sauer: Another stroke of luck for the library: Acquisition of the "Große Reisen" (1590–1634) from the de Bry publishing house. In: Deutsche Schiffahrt 2011, H. 2., S. 21 f. with a list of the 8 titles acquired.
  4. ↑ Pérez, Joseph, La légende noire de l'Espagne , Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-213-64304-5
  5. ↑ Katharina is named as co-editor of the illustrated books by Jean Errard
personal data
SURNAME Bry, Theodor de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Flemish engraver and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH 1528
PLACE OF BIRTH Liege
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1598
Place of death Frankfurt am Main