[Title page] Voyage de C. de Brun.

Title pages from Cornelis de Bruijn's first travel book, engraved by J.Mulder.
Cornelis de Bruijn (c.1652-1727) was a Dutch artist and traveler. He is best known for his drawings of the ruins of Persepolis, the first reliable pictures of this palace to be accessible for western scholars, but his visits also included the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Jerusalem, Russia and the East Indies.
De Bruin left for Italy on 1 November 1674 and he remained there for four years before departing for Smyrna, whence he visited Asia Minor, and Egypt. In 1684 he returned to Venice, where he lived for eight years and studied painting with Carl Loth. On 19 March 1693 he arrived in the Hague. He spent the next five years writing his first travelogue (Reizen van Corn. de Bruyn door de vermaardste deelen van Klein Asia, de eylanden Scio, Rhodus, Cyprus enz. mitsg. de voornaamste steden van Aegypten, Syrien en Palestina, Delft, 1698) and preparing the 215 engravings that illustrate it.
A French version (Voyage au Levant . . . dans les principaux endroits de l’Asie Mineure) was published by H. de Krooneveld in Delft in 1700 and reprinted in Amsterdam in 1714 (though Paris is given as the publisher’s address) and was the basis for an English translation (A Voyage to the Levant. Or Travels in the Principal Parts of Asia Minor, etc., London, 1702).