1599 Native Javanese Musicians Playing Music.

Gestalt der Becken oder Kessel/Welche sie fur ihre Blocken und fur ihre musicalische instrument gebrauchen. By: Theodor de Bry Date: 1599 (circa) Amsterdam Dimensions: 11.75 x 8 inches (30 cm x 20.3 cm) This interesting copperplate engraving by Theodor deBry was composed by him according to stories and illustrations of European expeditions and explorations that were being made at the end of the sixteenth century. This is print XXX in his series on the city-sultanate Bantam in Java, located across the straits from Sumatra. Here de Bry depicts musical instruments including large hanging gongs which a man is striking with a mallet and smaller metal plates attached to wooden frames, perhaps the ancestors of modern day xylophones. Having started his professional career as an engraver, during the three years he lived in London de Bry became acquainted with the geographer Richard Hakluyt, whose stories of expeditions to exotic foreign lands engendered in de Bry a desire to make the discoveri