Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733), after David Loggan (1634–1692)

Magdalen College, Oxford (1727)

Engraving

12 x 16 cm

A magnificent eighteenth-century view of Magdalen, engraved by Pieter van der Aa after David Loggan, the noted engraver, draughtsman, and painter. Magdalen was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete, and is considered by many to be Oxford’s most beautiful college. The college is organised around five quads; the irregularly shaped St John’s Quad is the first on entering the college, and connects to the Great Quad (the Cloister) via the Perpendicular Gothic Founders Tower, which is richly decorated with carvings and pinnacles and has carved bosses in its vault. Chaplain’s Quad runs along the side of the Chapel and Hall, to the foot of the Great Tower. St Swithun’s Quad and Longwall Quad (which contains the Library) date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and make up the southwest corner of the college.

Pieter van der Aa of Leiden was a Dutch publisher best known for preparing maps and atlases, though he also printed editions of foreign bestsellers and illustrated volumes. He is noted for the many engravings he produced after David Loggan’s series of Oxford and Cambridge colleges and costumes. In 1727 Van Der Aa illustrated “Les Delices de la Grande Bretagne & de L’Irelande” by James Beeverell, the book in which this engraving appears.

Condition: a small area slightly lacking in ink.

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