Eguisheim 1450

[Chlodowech]

After several weeks of work on this piece i can finally call it finished.

This drawing shows the small Alsacian town of Eguisheim (or Egisheim, or back in the middle ages Hegensheim/Egensheim/Egesheim/Egisheim, just as you need it ) by the middle of the 15th century.
The place had a very long history. It was mentioned already in documents before the year 1000, then in the 11th century it played a role as the likely birthplace of a pope - Leo IX. By the 13th century the place had developed into a veritable market town, and a centre of wine production. During that century the octogonal castle - a rare example of its type, the large romanesque church, the first town wall, and a set of monastic granges were built. During the 14th and 15th century, this urban structure gradually became more stable, with larger houses built on the granges and also by the townspeople, which were mostly winemakers and -traders. The major catastrophy of those times - the Black Death - wasn't able to harm the economical strength of the town long-term.

The town was drawn with a pencil (a simple traditional pencil, HB), and then 'watercoloured' (what i actually used was indian ink diluted with a lot of water). I tried to keep the elements of the map in style with a period that did not know any top-down views of towns and barely any vedutas - therefore, i had to mix styles of book illustration and miniature (border style inspired by the 1513 Lucern Chronicles of Diebold Schilling, the font - textura - taken from the Gutenberg Bible). I did not include a map key, simply because i didn't want to flood the town with signs and numbers and all that stuff that comes with it. Also, writing those four words with that textura was a real pain already, and i can't imagine writing a whole map key like that .

FINAL2.jpg

As i made a WIP thread of this map (by a slightly different name), i shall link it here.

And finally, i hope this will only be the first one of a series of similar town drawings.

PS: Whoever finds missing shadows may keep them