This hand-colored engraving depicts the compass rose with the names of the winds in several languages (Latin, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French and German). The figures in the corners represent the seasons. The banner at top reads: “TABULA ANEMOGRAPHICA seu PYXIS NAUTICA, vulgo COMPASS. CHARTE / Ventorum Noia septem linguis græca seil latina, italic, hispanica, gallica, hollandiea et germanica repræsentantio / succinate elaborate / À TOB. CONRAD LOTTERO, CHALCOGRAPHO ET GEOGRAPHO AUGUSTANO” as well as “Cu. Gr. et Pr.S.R.I. / part Rheni, Svev et Jur.” and “Vicariatg. in / Franconici.”
Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) was a cartographer and engraver in Augsburg who worked with Mattheus Seutter, married Seutter's daughter Euphrosina, and succeeded to part of the business after Seutter’s death in 1757.
This print might have been sold separately or bound in an atlas. It is, for instance, plate #2 in the Atlas Geographique (Nuremberg, 1778).
Ref: Michael Ritter, “Seutter, Probst and Lotter: An Eighteenth-Century Map Publishing House in Germany,” Imago Mundi 53 (2001): 130-135.
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