Circean Promontory

A birds-eye-view of the Pontine Marshes, with the Circe Mount an area of historic marshland in the Lazio region of central Italy. The old city perched atop a mountain resides over a cluster of buildings below, labelled 'S. Felice'.

Engraved by Francis Delaram is an illustration from George Sandy's four volume work 'A Relation of a Journey begun An: Dom: 1610. Foure Bookes. Containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of AEgypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote parts of Italy, and Ilands adioyning' printed in London: W. Barrett, 1615.

Francis Delaram (active 1615-1627) was a British engraver. Nothing is known of Delaram's life apart from what can be deduced from his prints. Most of them are portraits or title-pages, but Delaram was also responsible for some early books of flowers, beasts and birds, and probably the earliest English drawing book (of which no copy survives). While in London he worked for many publishers, including Compton Holland, Sudbury & Humble, Roger Daniell and Maurice Blount. He never acted as publisher himself.

George Sandys (1578-1644) was a British poet and politician. After studying at Oxford he became colonial treasurer for agriculture and industry of the Virginia Company. In his lifetime he was much admired as a translator of Latin poetry. In 1610, he spent a year in Turkey, Palestine and Egypt. His observations soon saw him regarded as a special authority on the Levant. His good documentation and literary bent marks the transition from travel literature of the sixteenth century to that of the seventeenth. It is also representative of those travel narratives that oscillate between geography, history and autobiographical travelogue of fluid and contradictory character. His publication made an essential contribution to the geographical and ethnographical knowledge of its time. It was translated into German and Flemish, and ran through nine editions in the seventeenth century alone.