Featured AQUA (Water) copper engraving by Nicolaes de Bruyn

Agree. Think s would have been used as the single letter abbreviation if that was meant.

 

The question in my mind is: how did it lose the inscription? Generally, the plate of an image to be accompanied by an inscription leaves sufficient room on the plate for the inscription to be added, as you can see on your Louvre re-strike. In this case, you show examples of the image with an inscription and without, but the plate mark on yours, and on the Riksmuseum b, is very close to the bottom edge of the image. This is a devil's-in-the-details situation for which I have no explanation.

 

Sometimes things like text or armorials could be added with separate plates. There's an immense amount of stuff about old prints that I don't know.

I have this image from 1762:


So far as I can tell it is composed of 5 separate plates:
the outside border
the title
the image
the right column of text
the left column of text



Of course, I could be reading it wrong.