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Description

The Only Reasonably Obtainable Version of Boazio's View of Drake's Attack on St. Augustine, Florida.

Scarce engraved view of Drake's 1586 attack of St. Augustine, based on the famous map by Baptista Boazio.

The Baptista Boazio version commands many tens of thousands of dollars when it rarely appears on the market.

According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

Five years after leading the first English circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-1580, Sir Francis Drake led a raid against Spanish settlements in the Caribbean including Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena, as well as St. Augustine (in present-day Florida). . . The illustration depicts the attack of Drake's fleet of twenty-three ships on St. Augustine, which was captured and destroyed on May 28-30, 1586. Although Boazio was not on the voyage, he worked from firsthand accounts. The [original] engraving is the earliest known surviving view of a New World city north of Mexico.

The original Boazio illustration was intended to accompany a book describing Drake's 1586 expedition, A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drake's West Indian Voyage (published in 1588-1589) . 

Reference
Cf. Sabin 50; Wüthrich, Merian III, 295; JCB II, 443; Leclerc 265; Muller 636; NDB VI, 677.
Theodor De Bry Biography

Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) was a prominent Flemish engraver and publisher best known for his engravings of the New World. Born in Liege, de Bry hailed from the portion of Flanders then controlled by Spain. The de Brys were a family of jewelers and engravers, and young Theodor was trained in those artisanal trades.

As a Lutheran, however, his life and livelihood were threatened when the Spanish Inquisition cracked down on non-Catholics. De Bry was banished and his goods seized in 1570. He fled to Strasbourg, where he studied under the Huguenot engraver Etienne Delaune. He also traveled to Antwerp, London, and Frankfurt, where he settled with his family.

In 1590, de Bry began to publish his Les Grands Voyages, which would eventually stretch to thirty volumes released by de Bry and his two sons. The volumes contained not only important engraved images of the New World, the first many had seen of the geographic novelties, but also several important maps. He also published a collection focused on India Orientalis. Les Grands Voyages was published in German, Latin, French, and English, extending de Bry’s fame and his view of the New World.