Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) produced two spectacular elevated panoramas of London and the Thames. One, known as the “Long View”, is taken from Bankside looking north over the old London Bridge to the City between old St Paul’s and the The Tower, where this one is from above Lambeth, less grandiose in presentation, but even more ambitious in visual scope. Looking left to right, it extends from Peterborough House near Parsons Green, the most westerly town house in Westminster, viewed across the broad Thames as it flows on past Westminster Abbey, Parliament House and Westminster Hall, before being obscured behind a sweeping view across the gardens and fields of Lambeth and Southwark, with the City of London forming a distant backdrop. It is this right half of the panorama that contains the alterations necessitated by the extensive rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666, which distinguish this second state from Hollar’s rare first state, thought to have been created around 1647. Hind pointed the difference in the quality of engraving between the two left-hand plates, with Hollar’s work untouched, compared to the reworking of the two right-hand plates, often also resulting in a somewhat weaker impression, particularly in the third sheet. The plates were listed in John Bowles’s catalogue of 1753, then later printed by Robert Sayer, before passing on to his successors and erstwhile employees, Robert Laurie and James Whittle, who were active as a partnership between 1794 and 1812.