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Palermo.
Cologne: Braun & Hogenberg, [1572–1616]. Hand-colored engraving, 12.75” x 19.625” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, damp-stain in top margin, toning consistent with age. A fascinating and detailed view of Palermo from Braun & Hogenberg’s groundbreaking world atlas of city views. This view of the port city of Palermo on the island of Sicily was produced during the era of Spanish Habsburg rule on the island. The view contains a wealth of information about the organization of the city, its major sites, and its role within the Spanish Empire. Much of the city’s historical importance is owed to its strategic location and natural harbor: the Port of Palermo appears prominently in the lower right, servicing over two dozen large ships of all types. The smaller port of La Cala (to the left) extends into the city proper and serves smaller vessels. The Phoenician-era street called Il Cassaro (now Via Vittorio Emanuele II) is recognizable as the main east-west axis of the city (it runs vertically upwards from La Cala in this view). Palermo is viewed from the northeast and presented in plan, though individual buildings are depicted in perspective—a technique sometimes called a “perspective plan.” The legend lists in Italian no less than 162 numbered sites divided into fifteen sections organized into thematic categories. These include: parish churches, convents, abbeys, hospitals, companies, streets, colleges, plazas, ports, bastions, gardens, and bridges. Sites #1 and #2 are treated separately, owing to their importance. Site #1 is the Palermo Cathedral (called “Il domo”), which appears in an unassuming depiction near the top of the map with a blue roof, to the right of Il Cassaro. Site #2 is “S. Pietre del palazzo,” a church that is part of the Norman Palace complex, a twelfth century structure that served as the home of the Spanish viceregal government (#72) and the main fortification (#142) of Palermo’s western wall. The city is surrounded on all sides by fortifications, complete with over a dozen heart-shaped bastions. Outside the city walls are cultivated fields, rivers, horse-drawn carriages, and several structures—including numbered convents in the top right of the view. The Latin title is “PAMORMVS Corona Regis et Vrbium Sicularum maxima Emporium celebratissimum [Palermo: the Crown of the King and the most celebrated trading center of the Sicilian cities],” enclosed within an ornamental frame containing the seal of the Kingdom of Sicily. The title reflects the city’s economic and strategic importance to the Spanish Crown, serving as a hub for Mediterranean trade and as a buffer against Ottoman and North African attacks. The word “PALERMO” appears on the right within a similar ornamental frame, featuring a seal with an eagle symbolizing the city. A compass rose in the center of Palermo Port contains letters—G, L, S, O, A, P and M—which correspond to the Italian names for Mediterranean winds (Grecale, Libeccio, Scirocco, Ostro, Autan, Ponente, Maestro). This view appeared in Civitates Orbis Terrarum, a landmark atlas of city views from around the world produced by the Cologne-based duo Braun & Hogenberg—writer Georg Braun and engraver Frans Hogenberg—along with their large team of writers and artists. Its authors intended the atlas as a supplement to Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1570), which is considered the first modern atlas. The work spanned six volumes, published between 1572 and 1617. The exhaustive compilation of some 546 city views represented a significant contribution to the legitimacy of local geography (then known as “chorography”) within the field of geography as a whole. The authors claim to have relied exclusively on first-hand information when compiling the atlas, reflecting their stated commitment to accuracy and truthfulness. In the late sixteenth century, a view was considered more “truthful” if it provided more information about a place, even at the expense of scientific perspective. Engravers, including Hogenberg, used differing perspectives across scales to create composite views from imagined vantage points. The result was a clearer, more legible depiction of the city as a cohesive whole, easily understood by both rulers and general readers. Georg Braun (1541–1622) was a Catholic cleric and writer from Cologne who edited Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Inspired by Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, he spearheaded the information-collecting initiative behind the project and was responsible for writing nearly all the descriptions of cities. Braun assembled an extensive team of artists and writers to help complete his vision. He died in 1622, the only member of the original team to live to see the completion of the atlas. Frans Hogenberg (ca. 1540–1590) was born in Mechelen and spent his early career in Antwerp illustrating a wide variety of subjects including portraits, historical events, and allegorical scenes. Around this time he worked on Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published 1570. A Protestant, Hogenberg was banned from Antwerp (then part of the Spanish Netherlands) in 1568 for producing anti-Catholic works, after which he is known to have lived in England. By 1570, Hogenberg was working in Cologne, a religiously tolerant city in the Holy Roman Empire, where he spent the rest of his career engraving portraits, scenes, and views, including the majority of the works in Civitates Orbis Terrarum. REFERENCES: Rumsey 12126; Nuti, Lucia. “The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: The Invention of a Representational Language,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 76, No. 1 (1994), pp. 105–28; Keuning, Johannes. “The ‘Civitates’ of Braun and Hogenberg,” Imago Mundi, Vol. 17 (1963), pp. 41–44; “Haerlem (Haarlem) by Franz, or Frans, Hogenberg” at Library of Congress online.
Item #3666
Price: $950.00
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