hellovenezia

This plan, drawn over three years from 1498 to 1500, is an extraordinary piece of teamwork that still amazes today owing to the techniques adopted and the results achieved.

We are still amazed today at the renowned map of Venice produced by Jacopo de’ Barbari in 1500.

It astonishes us because it shows the city from above in all its aspects and owing to the care taken in research into detail, the result of which is a city fully alive in all its everyday features, with a precision in surveying that even went to the point of providing three different versions of the cusp of the bell tower of St. Mark’s in the known printed versions.
Jacopo de’ Barbari was very probably born in Venice in a year somewhere between 1436 and 1450, on the basis of assessments of this artist’s works and the archive sources that follow his movements. What is sure is that de’ Barbari’s lot in life was linked to his contacts with the German world, so much so that he is considered the master of Albrecht Dürer, who was born in Nurembourg in 1471, or in any case a person that had a great influence over the greatest Northern painter of the time. Jacopo de’ Barbari arrived in this northern city in 1490 and his relations with the young German were such that he is thought to have taught him, and him alone, the canon of the proportions of the human body. The expression him alone was used by Dürer himself. At Nurembourg, Jacopo de’ Barbari was already an established artist inspired by the Venetian Vivarini tradition, obviously also influenced by Andrea Mantegna, all reworked with a careful eye to the aesthetic refinement of the almost calligraphic techniques of German origin.
After his first period in Nurembourg, he came back to Venice and there is evidence that he lived in the city from 1494. Four years later the herculean task of drawing up a map of Venice started. The publisher, meaning the originator and the client for this job, was Antonio Kolb, a German who, not by chance, also came from Nurembourg. An official document allows us to get a preliminary feel for the magnitude and importance of this work: it is a petition to the VenetianSignoria from Kolb, requesting permission to print the map duty-free and in all the lands in which it could be sold, with the privilege of protection from counterfeits for a period of four years. The petition also states the time required to complete the work, three whole years, and mentions the great difficulties encountered in design, engraving and printing, coordinating a large team of cartographers and engravers, all engaged in the task full-time.
The map was prepared on the basis of a survey carried out by pertigatori (similar to the modern Italian surveyors), which had to be put into scale correctly measuring dimensions by following the angles that emerged from the reading of the compass (the venti, winds) on the part of a group of dissegnatori(architects). All this was presented graphically by de’ Barbari, who transferred the paper drawing onto wooden blocks, which were then engraved and cut with blade and graver.
How such an excellent result, both in terms of mapping and planning, could be achieved remains a minor mystery, as there is no documentary evidence nor are there any similar works to compare it with. Certainly the surveyors took their measurements from the highest points in the city, bell towers, altane (roof platforms) and the roofs of palaces and houses, but what remains to be explained is how such a consistent, uniform harmony was obtained, leading to a single viewpoint over the city from the air. The characteristics of the incisions on the walnut wood are just as consistent, making us think of a single hand, almost unequivocally pointing to de’ Barbari himself, in spite of a few doubts. There is an affinity in style with the master’s engravings and with the presence of Mercury in the woodcut, portrayed while he brandishes the serpent rod, an emblem that the artist used as a signature.
The Correr Museum, whose entrance is in St. Mark’s Square (nearest stop San Marco Vallaresso) preserves some copies of the map in its different states and the famous woodcuts, recently carefully restored. There are six blocks, almost equal in size, with borders so that when the 100 x 70 cm sheets were joined together they could be trimmed.
The assembled map measures 139 by 282 cm, and three “states” are known of, namely three main editions printed at different times between 1500 and 1513 with some changes, examples of which are the different depictions of the cusp of St. Mark’s bell tower. The views of the bell tower, in fact, give us an interesting insight into the city’s life and events. On 8 August 1489, the bell tower has a mediaeval style belfry surmounted by a terrace and pillars with a fairly short pyramid-shaped marble cusp. After it had been struck by a bolt of lightning that burned the entire summit of the tower, restoration started and the proto, the Venetian Republic’s chief engineer, designed a new one, again pyramid-shaped and in stone. Meanwhile the tower was covered with a simple pantile and board roof. This is how it was in the first state of de’ Barbari’s plan in 1500, confirmed by Giorgione’s Oxford Madonna in 1510.

On 26 March 1511 a violent earthquake shook the city. The bell tower wobbled, the temporary roof collapsed and the Signoria decided, without further delay, to adopt Spavento’s design, which had been revised by Bartolomeo Bon in the meantime, and to terminate the bell tower. The work was done between May 1511 and October 1514, even if the official completion date, when the gilt angel was placed on the summit, was 6 July 1513.
Carpaccio’s famous painting of The Lion of St. Mark (1516), which can be seen in the Doges’ Palace, is evidence that the bell tower was completed in this way. The second version of the map of Venice belongs to this period, with three plugs correcting the bell tower cusp, inserting the angel and correcting the date from MD to MDXIII (1500 to 1513).
At this point the publishers make a curious about-turn. They realise that perhaps too many changes have taken and are taking place in the look of the city, certainly less conspicuous that those affecting St. Mark’s bell tower, but that there is no reason for chasing after them by continuously altering the woodcuts, and above all for altering the date of the work, which in practice photographs Venice as it was in the year of the first successful edition.
The third state of the plan, then, restores the bell tower to its lowered condition, that is without a cusp and with a roof of pantiles and boards, but, incredibly, the publishers forget to deal with the plug above that inserts the angel of the second edition. And so the third version of de’ Barbari’s map brings us a curious fifteen-year flashback, but overlooking, and consequently abandoning, the angel of the bell tower to flutter alone above the roofs of Venice.

The Correr Museum keeps the woodcuts and some prints of de’ Barbari’s map and also has some different sections devoted to Venetian art and history. From the Napoleonic Wing, the nineteenth century headquarters of kings and emperors, with works by Antonio Canova (1757-1822), we go to the Procuratie Nuove, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552-1616), where the Republic’s most important magistrates resided. This part shows various aspects of Venetian civilisation. On the second floor there is a splendid picture gallery with important masterpieces of Venetian art from the origins to the sixteenth century.

Alessandro Rizzardini (riproduzione riservata ©)