View of Geneva in 1548

Here is a beautiful colored engraving, representing a view of Geneva, taken from the northeast, above the current Eaux-Vives district. In the medallion with the city's coat of arms, we can read the date 1548.

It is an early work by the artist Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch (1525-1571). The latter's father, the Bernese painter, poet and politician Niklaus Manuel Deutsch (1484-1530), actively participated in the establishment of the Reformation in the city of Bern.
This first “authentic” engraved view of Geneva appeared for the first time in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia universalis. This famous work, published in Basel in 1550, offered its reader a description of the world through splendid illustrations by renowned artists, including Holbein the Younger, and was reprinted many times until the first half of the ^17th century. .

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View of Geneva

Colored engraving from 1548 representing a view of Geneva, taken from the northeast, above the current Eaux-Vives district.

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Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch
View of Geneva, 1548

© International Museum of the Reformation (MIR), Geneva

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