[SOUTHEAST AFRICA].
Le grand Roy Mono-Motapa.
A beautiful early engraving of a sub-Saharan king. It was issued by Pierre Bertrand in the late seventeenth century, and was originally included in a series of engravings of foreign monarchs.
The engraving is of Mavura Mhande Felipe, who reigned as Mwenemutapa (the king of Mutapa) from 1629 to 1652. He was converted to Christianity and put on the throne by the Portuguese, after the previous Mwenemutapa (Nyambu Kapararidze) had led a failed uprising against the colonists. The long french caption below the portrait gives a brief account of the size and wealth of his Kingdom, which covered modern-day Rhodesia, Kalahara, Mozambique, and part of South Africa. It also records the year of his baptism as 1631.
Rare. WorldCat locates only one copy, at the BNF. We have found three further copies, at the British Museum, the Royal Collection Trust and the New York Public Library.
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