Description
Sir Thomas Bodley was a Fellow of Merton College who carried out several diplomatic missions for Queen Elizabeth I and was married to a wealthy widow. After his retirement from public life, from 1598 until his death in 1613, he devoted himself to fundraising and planning the improvement and expansion of the library at Oxford. Construction began on what would become the Bodleian Library the day after his funeral and continued until at least 1624. To this day, it is the main research library of Oxford.
David Loggan was a British engraver, draughtsman and painter. Descended from an Anglo-Scottish family, he first studied in Danzig under Willem Hondius and then in Amsterdam, before arriving in London in the 1650s. He mainly produced engravings, though was also well known for his miniature portrait drawings in graphite on parchment. In 1662, he engraved the title page for the folio Book of Common Prayer. By 1669, he was living in Oxford, and was appointed “public sculptor” (in the sense of the Latin meaning of the word “sculptor,” i.e. “engraver”) to the university. He then proceeded to draw and engrave all the Oxford colleges in bird’s-eye views for his famous folio Oxonia Illustrata, published in 1675, the year that he was made a British citizen. He later published Cantabrigia Illustrata, a collection documenting Cambridge University, and held the position of engraver to the university.
Condition: Generally very good with the usual light toning, wear, soft creases. Vertical center fold, as issued, with some wear. Faint small brown spot on one print, unobtrusive.
References:
“David Loggan.” The Grove Dictionary of Art. New York: Macmillan, 2000.
The Bodleian Library Oxford. pp. 4-6. Online at: Bodleian Libraries. http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/docs/historybodleian.pdf (17 December 2013).
