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Unusual Seutter map of the Iberian Peninsula, with a remarkably elaborate and finely engraved title cartouche, bearing 16 regional coats of arms of the various provinces and a larger coat of arms of Spain, surmounted by an elaborate allegorical cartouche showing two cherubs gathering the wealth and conquest of Spain at the feel of Queen Isabella.
The map includes a remarkably detailed treatment of Spain & Portugal, with tremendous topographical and geographical detail which includes many more roads and other details than are present on contemporary maps of Spain by other mapmakers.
What is both curious and extraordinary about the map is the size and fine elaboration in the printed cartouche and its similarity to a map of a similar title by Pieter Schenk of Amsterdam. It would seem almost certain that Seutter had access to and improved upon Schenk's map, which was engraved about 30 years before this map. A curious variant edition of the map seems to have also been published by Probst circa 1790.
Matthäus Seutter (1678-1757) was a prominent German mapmaker in the mid-eighteenth century. Initially apprenticed to a brewer, he trained as an engraver under Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremburg before setting up shop in his native Augsburg. In 1727 he was granted the title Imperial Geographer. His most famous work is Atlas Novus Sive Tabulae Geographicae, published in two volumes ca. 1730, although the majority of his maps are based on earlier work by other cartographers like the Homanns, Delisles, and de Fer.
Alternative spellings: Matthias Seutter, Mathaus Seutter, Matthaeus Seutter, Mattheus Seutter
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