London. The long view

Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art  reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religion, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history, architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials. 

Between 1636 and 1644 Hollar was employed as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest art collectors of his era. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.

London: The long view is probably Hollar's most famous work. It depicts a panorama of London based on drawings done while Hollar was in London in the early 1640s. Unlike earlier panoramas of London, Hollar's panorama takes a single viewpoint, the tower of St Saviour in Southwark (now Southwark Cathedral), from where he made the drawings. It shows the River Thames curving sinuously from left to right past the viewpoint.

The work was etched on six plates, with the two ends printed from a single plate so the impression must be cut in half to assemble the full panorama. Each print measures about 46 cm by 38 cm, so the assembled work is about 2.7 m long. The prints were published by Cornelis Danckerts.

The panorama includes, from left to right, on the north bank, on the first plate, the Palace of Whitehall, Scotland Yard, Suffolk House, York House and Durham House; on the second plate, Salisbury House, the New Exchange on the Strand, the Savoy, Somerset House, Arundel House, Covent Garden, Essex House, the Temple and St Clement Danes, Blackfriars and Baynard's Castle; on the third plate, Queenhithe, St Andrew's, Holborn, Old St Paul's Cathedral, with Highgate Hill behind in the distance; on the fourth plate, the Steelyard, Bow Church, the Guildhall, Coalharbour, All-Hallows-the-Great, St Laurence Pountney, the Royal Exchange, The Old Swan, St Michael's, St Peter's, Fishmongers' Hall, St Magnus-the-Martyr, Old London Bridge, Greyfriars, St Dunstan-in-the-East, Billingsgate, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, the Customs House, the Tower of London, and meanders of the River Thames past St Katharine Docks towards Greenwich. On the south bank are the Bankside theatres the Globe and Hope (mislabelled), Winchester House, Southwark and St Olave's. Each large sheet frames a particular view: the Bankside theatres, St Paul's Cathedral, the City and Southwark, the Bridge, and the Tower. Downstream of London Bridge, the Pool of London throngs filled with a variety of ocean-going vessels.

The view is not entirely accurate, with some alignments adjusted for aesthetic effect. For example, St Paul's Cathedral is depicted too far west, and St Olave's in line with the Tower. Hollar's dependence on old drawings is demonstrated by the presence of the Globe Theatre (mislabelled as "Beere bayting", that is the Beargarden) in a print made three years after it was demolished. Copying an error in the 1616 Visscher panorama, the round theatre labelled "The Globe" is actually the Hope). The Swan and the Rose theatres had fallen into disuse by the 1630s.

Various decorative elements are arranged around the scene. To the lower left of the first plate is a symbolic figure representing the law (with a sword) above a dedication to Mary, daughter of the Duke of York and wife of William of Orange, the future Queen Mary II, and a poem to "Nympha Britannorum", with an inset panel denoted with an asterisk continuing the panorama to the left past Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey; overhead are three cherubs, one wearing a lion skin. The second plate has three cherubs in the sky with a pile of books, and one bearing aloft a caduceus. Above St Paul's in the third plate is a figure of Mercury in Roman costume, with winged boots and hat, holding a caduceus. The central fourth plate has a large decorative cartouche with the word "LONDON" with the arms of the City of London and lion supporters. A winged figure, possibly Fame, blows a trumpet at the top of the fifth plate. The sixth plate has three more cherubs, carrying a chain, a crown, a jewel chest, and a bird. The seventh plate has a river god above a 34 line Latin poem by Edward Benlowes, with another cherub in the sky above, dressed as an American Indian and leading with an ostrich.

Hollar's panorama was preceded by the Visscher panorama of 1616, which straightens out the river so buildings on each bank are displayed in a line, and John Norden's Civitas Londini of 1600, both of which are composite drawings made from a variety of different viewpoints. Hollar published another panorama of London and Westminster in 1666, showing views of the city from Lambeth "before" and "after" Great Fire of London.

A 1661 reprint by Justus Danckerts has a few changes, with a maypole in Covent Garden, a dome for St Paul's, and the Monument. Accurately copied lithographs were printed by Robert Martin in 1832 and here in 1879 by Hamel & Ferguson, Melbourne, inserted into a folio volume edited by Gracius Browne.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_View_of_London_from_Bankside