File talk:Great Storm Widecombe woodcut.gif

Provenance of image?

This image has been on the page for over a decade now (uncontested) and features on at least one external site as an illustration of Widecombe. I have tried to find the source of this image by reverse image searching and locating at least three contemporary publications which concern this event but none feature the image in question. The woodcut's style isn't entirely typical of a woodcut from the 1630s either, though some do exist in a similar fashion, so I'm wondering if this illustration is from a later (18th century?) account of the event or concerns another event altogether. In fact, because woodcut illustrations were so frequently reused, there is no guarantee that this illustration pertains specifically to the 1638 event even if it did accompany a contemporary account, although this is something that is impossible to explore without details of the image's provenance. Brumafriend (talk) 01:58, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I have now found the source of the image in question. It comes from John Vicars' Prodigies & Apparitions, Or, Englands Warning Pieces, first published (as far as I can tell) in 1643. It can be directly accessed on EEBO (with a university or library account). It looks as though it has been specifically commissioned for the event and bases it's information on the second edition of a 1638 pamphlet (here on EEBO).

My initial scepticism of the contemporaneousness stemmed from the fact that cheap news reports rarely had such detailed woodcuts at the time, but given that it comes from a larger collection of didactic reports which are likewise accompanied by illustrations, this investment in higher-quality illustration makes sense. Brumafriend (talk) 04:08, 6 February 2023 (UTC)