Kim_Venice and Tenochtitlan

The President and Fellows of Harvard College and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics.

http://www.jstor.org

The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

Uneasy Reflections: Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone's "Isolario" Author(s): David Y. Kim Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 49/50 (Spring - Autumn, 2006), pp. 80-91Published by: acting through the The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum

of Archaeology and EthnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167695Accessed: 25-08-2014 18:18 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 25 Aug 2014 18:18:06 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pfhc

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pmae

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pmae

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167695

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


80 RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006

PRIMO X

La gran citta di Tcmiftitan.

Figure 5. View of Tenochtitlan from Benedetto Bordone, Isolario, 10 recto. Woodcut. Photograph: courtesy of Harvard

Map Collection.



Uneasy reflections

Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone's Isolario

DAVID Y. KIM

Renaissance voyagers often remarked on the

similarities between Venice and cities in the New World.

The conquistador Alonso de Hoejda, for instance, named the city on the Maraca?bo bay the diminutive

"Venezuela" because "it is a village built on pillars, with

bridges connecting each other, mak[ing] it look like a

little Venice."1 An isolario, or "book of islands,"

published in 1547, noted a resemblance between

Venice and Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City. The author of that book, Thomaso Porcacchi da

Castiglione, wrote that whereas other cities were

founded by men, Tenochtitlan was "another Venice, founded by blessed God ...

by his very holy hand."2

There was even a miniature version of Venice in this

"other Venice." Porcacchi states that one of the islands

surrounding Tenochtitlan, once called Cuetavaca, "is now called Venetiola, which is a rather grand and good

place."3 Expressing pride in their New World capital,

Spanish humanists even claimed that Tenochtitlan, while

resembling Venice, had surpassed the Republic in

magnificence. In Francisco Cervantes de Salazar's

treatise on New Spain, a foreign visitor touring

Tenochtitlan exclaims: "Look at the large number of

skiffs there! How many cargo canoes, the best for

bringing in merchandise! There is no reason for missing those of Venice."4

Venetian cartographers, travelers, humanists, and

diplomats also demonstrated a special interest in

Tenochtitlan.5 Gaspare Contarini, the Venetian

ambassador to the Spanish court, composed a number

of dispatches informing the doge, Antonio Grimani, of

Cort?s's arrival in Tenochtitlan. His letters concentrate

particularly on the wealth of the newly discovered

lands, a subject of great interest to the Signoria. On

November 24, 1522, he wrote, "Hernando Cort?s

reconquered the great city of Tenochtitlan . . . [H]e sends back in ships a present for the emperor of pearls,

jewels and other precious things from this land, which are worth 10,000 ducats."6 Contarini adds, perhaps in an ominous tone, that the New World "promises great

things for the future."7 The renowned Venetian humanist

Pietro Bembo foresaw the consequences of these recent

geographic discoveries in his Istoria Vinziana.8 He

described the Portuguese and Spanish discovery of

1. Bruzen de la Martini?re, Grand Dictionnaire g?ographique,

historique et critique (Paris: Les libraries associ?s, 1769): "Un village b?ti sur pilotis, dans de petities isles, avec des ponts de

communication de l'une ? l'autre, ce qui la lui fit regarder comme une

petite Venize." Cited in Frank Lestringant, Le Livre des ?les. Atlas et

R?cits Insulaires de la Gen?se ? Jules Vernes (Geneva: Droz, 2002), p. 111. For a general treatment of Venice's relation with the New World

see L'impatto del la scoperta dell'America nella cultura veneziana, ed.

Angela Arico (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1990).

2. Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione, L'isole piu famose del

mondo, descritte da Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione Arentino e

intagliate da Girolamo Porro Padovano. Al Sereniss. Principe et

Signore II. S. Don Giovanni d' Austria, General della Santiss. Lega (Venice: Simon Galignani, 1572), p. 105: "La citt?, e ?sola di

Temistitan Messico, ? nella provincia del Messico nella nuova Spagna, Mondonuovo: & tanto vien commendata per bella, bene ornata, &

ricca da tutti gli Scrittori, che non senza maraviglia vediamo un'altra

Venetia nel mondo, fondata da Dio benedetto, p?amente parlando; con la sua santissima mano: dove Pa?tre son fondata da gli huomini."

Cited in Lestringant (see note 1), p. 111.

3. Porcacchi da Castiglione, (see note 2), p. 106: "Il lago d'acqua dolce ? lungo, e stretto, & ha alcuni bei luoghi, corne sono Cuetavaca, hora detta Venetiola ch? assai grande & buon luogo."

4. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and Loyal

City of Mexico in New Spain and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico as Described in the Dialogues for the Study of the Latin

Language Prepared by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar for Use in His

Classes and Printed in 1554 by Juan Pablos, ed. and trans. Minnie

Shepard and Carlos Casta?eda (Austin: University of Texas Press,

Austin, 1953), p. 57.

5. Denis Cosgrove "Mapping New Worlds: Culture and

Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice," Imago Mundi 41(1992):83. 6. Marino San uto, / Diarii di Marino San uto, 1496-1533,

dal ?'aut?grafo Marciano ital, cl. Vil, codd. 419-477. Publicatti per cura

di Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolo Barozzo, Guglielmo

Berchet, Marco Allegri, auspice la Regia Deputazione V?neta di Storia

Patria (Venice 1879-1902), vol. 33, col. 557: "Fernando C?rtese ha

recuperate la gran cita di Temistitan, con tutti quelli paesi et provincie che vi ho mandate in nota . . . Manda su in queste nave un presente a

l'Imperator, di perle, gioie et alter cose preci?se de quell paese." Cited

in Italian Reports on America, 1493-1522, Letters, Dispatches, and

Papal Bulls, ed. G. Symcox, G. Rabitti, trans. P. Diehl (Turnhout:

Brepols2001), p. 87.

7. Ibid., "et prometeno gran cose et intrade per I'advenir."

8. Pietro Bembo, Delia Istoria Viniziana (Milan: Delia Societ?

Tipogr?fica de'Classici Italiani, 1889).




:-^^?;H

Figure 1. Detail from Battista Agnese, Atlante N?utico, 1553. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.

new lands and trade routes as "a misfortune" to Venice, but nevertheless characterized Tenochtitlan as a

"distinguished city, in a lake of salt water."9 Venetian interest in Tenochtitlan expressed itself

visually in the form of cartographic representations. For

example, on Battista Agnese's world map (1536), and

later on his map Atlante N?utico (1553), Tenochtitlan is the largest depicted city (fig.1 ).10 The map

accompanying Pietro Martire d'Anghiera's Historia de

llndie Occidentali, published in Venice in 1534, also

illustrates Tenochtitlan. Likewise, Giacomo Gastaldi's

Universale d?lia parte del mondo nuovamente ritrovata

(1556) prominently exhibits the New World capital.11 Such images of the Americas entered Venetian

collections, both private and public. A globe which

included the Yucatan peninsula on its world view was

once housed in the Palazzo Ducale's Sala del Maggior

Consiglio, the meeting place of the highest Venetian 9. Ibid., p. 347: "Alla citt?, da cotali incomodi percossa, un maie

non pensato da lontane genti e regioni eziandio le venne." Ibid., p. 359: "Con que'popoli, che di sopra detti abbiamo, Messico, nella

contrada Temistiana citt? egregia, in un laco di salsa acqua." 10. Ibid., p. 83. 11. Ibid.



Kim: Uneasy reflections 83

magistrates.12 Venetian citizens demonstrating a marked

interest in the American city included Alessandro Zorzi, a writer known for his travel accounts of Ethiopia. Zorzi

collected a number of documents on the New World, most notably a bird's eye view of Tenochtitlan.13

The Venetian fascination with its New World twin was not without reason. The two cities shared a

common urban fabric, with buildings built on water, interlaced with canals and bridges. However, a deeper

examination reveals that Venice's relationship with her

New World counterpart did not merely consist of

surface comparisons. While Venetians recognized the

similarities with Tenochtitlan and at times attempted to

mirror their city after the newly discovered capital, they also wielded a civic rhetoric that simultaneously

negated these homologies. A paradox thus ensued:

Venice and Tenochtitlan were thought to be like and

unlike, similar yet fundamentally different.

Bordone's Isolario

Benedetto Bordone's Isolario, published in Venice in

1528, best illustrates the oscillating rapport between the

two cities (fig. 2).14 A cartographer, woodcutter, and

illuminator of manuscripts, Bordone was active in Venice

and the V?neto between the late fifteenth and first quarter of the sixteenth centuries.15 In addition to being a prolific painter of miniatures, Bordone has also been linked to

the design of the famous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,

published in 1499 by the humanist printer Aldus

Manutius.16 A hybrid of antiquarian treatise and

romance, this lavishly illustrated book presents the

dream voyage of a young man Polifilo searching for his

beloved in a mystical landscape of gardens and

classical ruins.

In a similar vein, the Isolario guides its reader through a wondrous voyage. Previous isolarii, such as those by Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, were primarily concerned with the Aegean archipelago.17

In his Isolario, Bordone extended the range of distances

covered by previous isle manuals, transporting the

reader on an itinerary through the Mediterranean,

Atlantic, and Indian oceans (fig. 3). Condensing the

global archipelago into the format of the book, Bordone's Isolario conjures a sensation of virtual travel,

which would be impossible given the constraints of

geography and notation.18

Of all the world's islands depicted in the Isolario, the

only two island cities included are Venice and

Tenochtitlan. For his representation of Venice, Bordone

could have drawn from a number of city views, most

notably Jacopo de' Barbari's monumental map of la

Serenissima published in 1500.19 For his rendering of

Tenochtitlan, Bordone modified the famed Nuremberg map, the first image of the New World capital to reach a

wide European audience (fig. 4).20 Published in 1524,

12. Studi biografici e bibliografici sulla storia del la geograf?a in

Italia, vol. II (Rome: Societ? Geogr?fica, 1882), p.164. 13. For a brief biography and references on Zorzi, see Ethiopian

Itineraries circa 1400-1524 Including those Collected by Alessandro

Zorzi at Venice in the Years 1519-24, ed. O. G. S. Crawford

(Cambridge: University Press, Cambridge, 1958), p. 24.

14. Bendetto Bordone, Libro di Benedetto Bordone nel quale si

ragiona da tutte l'isole del mondo con li lor nomi antichi e moderni, historie e favole, & modi del loro vi ver? & in quai parte del mare

stanno & in quai parallelo e clima giacciono (Venice: Nicolo

d'Aristotile, 1528). Later editions were published in 1534, 1540, and

1547. For a bibliographic note on Bordone's work see the preface by Umberto Eco in Benedetto Bordone, Isolario (Torino: Les belles lettres,

2000).

15. See Helena K. Sz?pe, "The book as companion, the author as

friend: Aldine octavos illuminated by Benedetto Bordone," Word &

Image 11 (1995):77-99.

16. For this attribution, see Lilian Armstrong, "Benedetto Bordone,

Miniator, and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice," Imago Mundi 48 (1996):65-92.

17. Among the literature on Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber

insularum archipelagi (1420) and Bartolomeo dal I i Sonetti's Isolario

(1485) see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian

sense of the past (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1996), pp. 160-161 and Lestringant (see note 1). See also Ian R. Manners,

"Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of

Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum

Archipelagi," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, no. 1 (1997):72-102.

18. See Tom Conley, "Virtual Reality and the Isolario," Annali

d'ltalianistica 14 (1996):121-130.

19. See Juergen Schulz, "Jacopo de'Barbari'sView of Venice: Map

Making, City Views and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500," The Art Bulletin 60 (1978):425-474.

20. The attribution of the map is still contested. An indigenous Culhua-Mexican attribution is argued by Barbara Mundy, "Mapping the Aztec Capital: The 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its

Sources and Meanings," Imago Mundi 50 (1998):11-33. An argument for the map's use of the European mappa mundi tradition can be found

in Emily Godbey, "The New World Seen as the Old: The 1524 Map of

Tenochtitlan," Itinerario 19 (1995):53-81. For further bibliography on

the Tenochtitlan map, see Jean Michel Massing, "Map of Tenochtitlan

and the Gulf of Mexico," in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. Jay Levenson (Washington: National Gallery of Art; New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1992), p. 572. It should be noted that Bordone

employs Cort?s's letter as a source for his commentary on Tenochtitlan.

However, Bordone alters the text, removing sections recounting the

interactions between Cort?s and Montezuma as well as Cort?s's

arduous journey toward the capital. Absent of the Spanish

conquistador's heroic narrative, Bordone's text becomes a verbal atlas,

reciting place names and geographic features of the New World.




Figure 2. Title page of Benedetto Bordone, Isolario (Venice, 1547). Woodcut. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.

this map accompanied the Latin edition of Hern?n

Cort?s's Second Letter narrating his New World

conquest.21 Bordone encountered the map either

through this Nuremberg edition or through its Italian

translation published in Venice six months later.22

It is important to emphasize, however, that Bordone

did not simply replicate his cartographic sources for his

Isolario. Playing one map off the other, the artist's

representation establishes a series of visual homologies between Venice and her New World counterpart (figs. 5

and 6).23 Both cities are set in enclosed lagoons. Though distorted from their appearance in reality, the 21. Preclara Ferdinadi. Cortesii de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania

Narratio, Nuremberg 1524. For a list of sixteenth- and early

seventeenth-century publications of the 1524 Nuremberg map of

Tenochtitlan, see Mundy (note 20), p. 32.

22. La preclara Narratione di Ferdinando C?rtese del la Nuova

Ispagna del Mare Oc?ano (Venice: Bernardino de Viano, 1524).

23. Mario Sartor in his La citt? e la conquista: mappa e documenti

sulla trasformazione urbana e territoriale nell'America centrale del 500

(Reggio Calabria: Casa del libro, 1981) briefly comments on the




LIBRO

mjptt fe h mnBOdoyae Je loro falmaooM fcoo cwc fcoBMtt6c,?flff qM?k ?jcuno tuotDOyHKirdd tempo encepa loto tMnJimo?cotteflecoflttoyf< tiolfifejtMBonti'Je twttftrn cu Queue cstxfBCwooo k loe iHttt.fi dueoctattow

Figure 3. Caribbean islands from Benedetto Bordone, Isolario, 18 verso. Woodcut. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.

surrounding land acts as a frame, offering the viewer

similar vistas of the cities. Venice and Tenochtitlan also

display the same method of organization. Outlying islands depart from a main urban cluster. In addition,

both cities exhibit a dense urban texture. Blocks of

houses and other buildings are tightly grouped together,

imparting a sense of teeming habitation. The upper and

lower ridges of Venice and Tenochtitlan also mimic one

another, following the same meandering contours.

Dissolving the rigid T-O format of the Nuremberg map, Bordone seems to have employed Venice's urban form to

shape his representation of Tenochtitlan. Likewise, the

view of Venice seems to borrow the format of enclosure

within a lagoon from Tenochtitlan. By means of these

cartographic similarities, Bordone enacts a visual and

semantic counterpoint between Venice and Tenochtitlan.

His text, in fact, emphasizes these analogies. In addition

to Tenochtitlan's bridges, canals, and gates, the narrator

similarities between Venice and Tenochtitlan. See p. 92, note 46: "La si

confronti con la mappa di Venezia presente nel medismo volume con

cui condivide non pochi aspetti formali; ed ancora le due insieme."




Figure 4. Map of Tenochtitlan. Hern?n Cort?s, Second Letter to Charles V (Nuremberg, 1524). Woodcut.

Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.

declares that "there are . . . many other things that make

this city like Venice/'24

Discrepancies, however, coexist with the striking similarities in the cities' urban layout. Unlike Venice, Tenochtitlan is provided with a clearly defined center.

Dedicated to the Culhua-Mexican gods, this plaza

served as the sacred precinct where religious rites,

including human sacrifice and heart extraction, occurred.25 Emphasizing this central precinct is an idol

with outstretched arms assuming a cruciform posture.

Departing from the template of the Nuremberg map, the

24. Bordone (see note 14), 7v: "Ce ne sono anchora di molti altri

per esser la citta corne Venetia, posta in acqua, la provincia ? tutta

circondata da monti grandissimi, & la pianura ? de circoito di miglia

ducent'ottanta, nella quale sono duoi laghi postri, liquali una

grandissima parte ne occupano, percio che questi laghi hanno di

circoito dintorno cento miglia, & l'uno ? d'acqua dolce, & l'altro ? di

falsa ripieni, & il piano ? da quelli per alchune coline separate, & nel

fine questi laghi sono congionto da uno stretto piano, & con barche

alla detta citta, & ville si conducono gl'huomini, & il lago salso, cresca

& scema, corne fa il mare & la citt? di Temistitan siede nel salso."

25. The Culhua-Mexica erected two temple pyramids on this site, one dedicated to the ancient agricultural and water god Tlaloc, the

other to the tribal deity Huitzilopochtli. See Mundy (note 20), pp. 16-20.




S E C O N D O

Figure 6. View of Venice, from Benedetto Bordone, Isolario, 29 verso, 30 recto. Woodcut. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.

city's perpendicular avenues mirror the idol's rectilinear

shape. As will be explored below, such a visual gesture draws a meaningful equivalence between this pagan idol and the moral character of the New World city.

Venice, by contrast, has no clearly defined center.

Instead, islands such as Chioggia and Lido encircle the

city. These floating satellites are, in fact, named with

churches: Santa Mich?le, La Certosa, Santa Spirito, and

Santa Chiara. Whereas in Tenochtitlan a pagan religious

symbol defines the urban center, Venice, without a focal

point, is surrounded by island churches forming a holy corona. The notion of conceiving Venice as inviolate

and virginal, suggested by Bordone's map, was often

remarked upon by Venetians and foreigners alike. For

instance, the sixteenth-century Venetian patrician Marcantonio Sabellico wrote that his city "for a certain

novelty of placement and opportune position . . . was by

itself the only form in all the universe so miraculously

disposed."26 A century earlier, the Spanish traveler Pero

Tafur commented that even "if the whole world came up

against the city, the Venetians could sink a ship . . . and

26. Marcantonio Sabellico, Del Sitio di Venezia (Venice 1502), ed.

Gildo Meneghetti (Venice: Stamperia gi? Zanetti, 1957), p. 10. Cited

in Patricia Fortini Brown, Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (New

York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), p. 15.




be safe."27 The humanist Alvise Cornaro proposed a plan to renovate the Bacino of San Marco in order "to

preserve the virginity of my dear patria and the name of

the Queen of the sea."28 In another treatise on the

"santo lago," Cornaro referred to Venice's "immaculate

virginity," calling his city "holy daughter of God."29

Bonifazio de'Pitati's triptych Cod the Father above

Piazza San Marco (1544) alludes to the myth that Venice

was founded on the day of the Annunciation, thereby

declaring the city's connection with the Virgin.30 Bordone's representation of the two cities thus poses

a paradox. Tenochtitlan is depicted as an aggressively

pagan city, whereas Venice shows herself, almost

defensively, as the Christian Republic. Tenochtitlan's

wondrous urban layout, however, finds a counterpart in

Venice herself. The two maps thus bring together an

unlikely pair of twins, reflecting in the unified scheme of

the book contradictory aspects of both likeness and

otherness.

Uneasy reflections

The tension between "mimesis and alterity," as one

scholar has termed it, was not unique to the Venetians.31

The Spanish conquistadors, for instance, recognized the

"otherness" of the New World in themselves. As the

upheavals of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

unfolded, idolatry became an accusation applicable not

only to the Indian. Just as the conquistadors toppled Aztec devotional images, so too did Catholics witness

the destruction of their own sacred objects in the tumult

of Northern European iconoclasm.32 Thus, Aztec idolatry and Catholic veneration of images could be seen and,

indeed, were accused as being one and the same.

These parallels at times reached improbable extremes. In certain situations, even cannibalism, a

ritual synonymous with the New World, became a

shared practice. Describing the Aztec consummation of

human flesh, the historian Pietro Martire d'Anghiera wrote: "The wylde and myschevous people called

Cannibales or caribes whiche were accustomed to eat

mannes flesshe . . . molest them excedyngly invadynge

theyr countrey, takynge them captive, kylling and eating them."33 Cannibalism, however, was not an exclusively Indian practice. On several documented occasions,

Spanish conquistadors ingested their crewmates to

survive shipwrecks and abandonment. In 1527 Alvar

N??ez Cabeza de Vaca, attempting to return to Mexico

City after enduring a shipwreck in Florida, came across

the remains of "five Christians who were in a ranch on

the coast, and who came to such extremity that they ate

each other, until only one was left, who being alone had

no one else to eat."34 Furthermore, the endorsement for

the Spanish to eat human flesh can be found in Juan Focher's Itinerarium Catholicum (1574), a treatise

discussing the proper interaction between missionaries

and Indians.35 At one point Focher comments: "In effect, God prohibited in Genesis human meat, but there are

two occasions in which it is permitted."36 Focher's first case concerns the consumption of human flesh for

medicinal purposes. The second alludes to the scene

witnessed by Cabeza de Vaca, a situation of extreme

necessity. "In this case," Focher writes, "it is permitted to

the Christian to eat the meat of a dead human, whether or not it has been dedicated to the devil."37 Ruminations

on such scenarios demonstrate just a sampling of the

vexing circumstances in which New World otherness 27. Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 1453-39 (New York and

London: Broadway Travellers, 1926), pp. 156-172. Cited in Brown (see

note 26), p. 10.

28. Document by Alvise Cornaro on the San Marco Basin, Archivo

Stato Venezia, "Savi ed Esecutori alle Acque," busta 986, filza 4, cc.

23-25: "Havendo dimostrato il modo, che vi ? per conservare la

virginit? a questa mia cara patria, et il nome di Reina del mare, che il

mode ? con conservare lo suo porto, e la sua laguna." Cited in

Manfredo Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, trans. Jessica Levine

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989), pp. 159-160.

29. Alvise Cornaro, Trattato di Acque (Radova, 1560), 3r-3v:

"Eternamente questo lago si conservera, per esser sempre

vigilantissimo Custode dell' immaculate verginit? di questa sacrosanta

figlioula di Dio." Cited in Vincenzo Fontana, "Modelli per la Laguna di

Venezia. Alvise Cornaro e Girolamo Fracastoro," in Renzo Zorzi, ed.,

// paesaggio: Dalla percezione alia descrizione (Venice: Marsilio,

1999), p. 179.

30. Brown (see note 26), pp. 91-92.

31. Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of

the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993).

32. See Thomas B. F. Cummins "To serve man: Pre-Columbian art,

Western discourses of idolatry, and cannibalism," RES 42 (2002):

109-130.

33. Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, The decades of the Newe Worlde or

West India (New York: Readex Microprint, 1955[1555]), folio 3. Cited

in ibid., p. 116. Cummins mentions that this 1555 translation of the

work would eventually serve as the material that inspired

Shakespeare's Caliban.

34. N?nez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios (1542) (Madrid: C?tedra,

1998). Cited in Cummins (see note 32), p. 120.

35. Juan Focher, Itinerarium catholicum profiscentiurn, Spanish trans. Antonio Eguiluz (Colecci?n de Libros y Documentos referentes a

la Historia de Am?rica, vol. XXII, Madrid; Liberia General Victoriano

Suarez, 1960). Cited in Cummins (see note 32), pp. 119-120.

36. Ibid., pp. 312-313.

37. Ibid.




could be located in the European self. The Spanish

struggled to overlook these symmetries between

themselves and the Indian. Implementing a policy of

evangelization and idol destruction, the conquerors of

the New World sought to avoid the disturbing image of

resemblance, to separate otherness from likeness.

An ?deal city

Bordone's representation of Tenochtitlan not only

posits a paradox based on direct statements (Venice is

like Tenochtitlan or not like Tenochtitlan): The map of

Tenochtitlan also operates in a hypothetical mode,

dispensing both prophetic vision and damning exhortation. It shows what Venice should and should not

become. On one hand, Tenochtitlan represented in its

architectural form the ?deal city. Its straight lines and

wide causeways corresponded uncannily to the Utopian schemes devised by Filarete and Francesco Giorgio di

Martini.38 As the Spanish visitor to Tenochtitlan in

Salazar's treatise exclaimed, "How the view of this street

exhilarates the mind and refreshes the eyes! How long it

is, how wide! How straight, how level it is!"39 It has

even been proposed that Tenochtitlan served as the

model for D?rer's scheme of the well-defended ideal

city, as represented in his treatise Etliche underricht zur

befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken.40

Venetians, too, acknowledged that Tenochtitlan

exhibited features of the ideal city. They thought of

transforming the Old World, their world, into the New.

Indeed, the humanist Girolamo Fracastoro proposed that

Venice become a new "Themestitan."41 He

recommended that the Republic should develop an

urban infrastructure similar to those shown in Bordone's

illustration of the New World metropolis. Fracastoro was

particularly entranced by Tenochtitlan's network of

canals bringing fresh water to the heart of the city. In

addition, Alvise Cornaro's previously mentioned

renovation of the Bacino of San Marco included a

fountain of "fresh flowing water" in the piazza of San

Marco.42 Cornaro's fountain concept derives in part from

Tenochtitlan's rectilinear canalization bringing water

from a river into the barrio of Mexico.43 Such projects

inspired from the New World urban design were not

restricted to the sixteenth century. Later thinkers in the

seventeenth century thought of developing a pedestrian

bridge linking Venice to Murano, similar to the network

linking Tenochtitlan to the surrounding mainland.44

Such projects for urban renewal not only fulfilled

Venice's need for practical amenities; these schemes

also transported the wonder of the New World directly to Venice, thus reinforcing the notion of Venice as

mundus alter, another world.45 After stating his

proposals for Venice to model herself after Tenochtitlan, Fracastoro declared that if such a plan were

implemented, Venice would become "the most

beautiful, the most commodious city that one could

imagine."46 Moreover, such a city would "not only be

inhabited eternally, ... it would be called the happiness

and elected of God."47 Envisioning his grand urban

projects for Venice, Alvise Cornaro likewise exclaimed,

38. Among the vast literature on Renaissance ideas of utopia, see

the insightful essay in Robert Klein, Form and Meaning: Essays on the

Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. Madeleine Jay and Leon Wieseltier

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

39. Salazar (see note 4), p. 38.

40. Edwin W. Palm, "Tenochtitlan y la cuidad ideal de D?rer,"

Journal de la Soci?t? des Am?ricanistes 40 (1951 ):59-66. Massing,

however, disputes Palm's argument, stating that symmetrical layout of

the Greek military camp, as described by Polybius, could have been

the source for Diirer's conception of the ideal city. See Massing (note

20), p. 572.

41. Girolamo Fracastoro, Lettera di Girlamo Fracastoro sulle

lagune di Venezia, ora per la prima volta pubblicata ed illustrate

(Venice: Tipograf?a di Alvisopoli, 1815), pp. 9-10: "E qui una d?lie due

cose si potria fare, ovver allagar tutte le valli predette tra li argini, e

cosl ?Themistitna, ovvero non le allagar tutte, ma far canali per

quelle, per li quali li rai delli fiumi si potessero condurre, e lasciarne

parte da essere cultivata." On the urban layout of Tenochtitlan as a

model for Venice, see Cosgrove (note 5), p. 83 and Tafuri (note 28),

p. 152.

42. Document by Alvise Cornaro on the San Marco Basin. Archivo

Stato Venezia, "Savi ed Esecutori aile Acque," busta 986, filza 4, ce.

23-25: "et oltra tale bello edificio che molto ornera la Citt? se potr? condurvi f?cilmente una fontana di acqua dolce viva, e pura, et in

diversi luoghi di essa, oltra la piazza di S. Marco." Cited in Tafuri (see note 28), pp. 159-160.

43. Ibid., p. 153. It should also be pointed out that Cornaro's

scheme for a fountain in the heart of Venice has parallels with the

central Italian tradition of civic fountains. Among the literature on this

theme, see Christer Bruun and Ari Saastamoinen, eds., Technology,

Ideology, Water: From Frontinus to the Renaissance and Beyond (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2003).

44. Vincenzo Fontana, "Un Progetto mai realizzato di fine

seicento per collegare pedonalmente Venezia a Murano," Bolletino dei

Musei C?vico Veneziani 4 (1978):93-98.

45. The term is Francesco Petrarch's. See his Familiares XXIII, 16;

Seniles IX. Cited in Brown (see note 26) p. 9.

46. "e all'un modo, e all'altro si rimoveria la malizia dell'aere, e si

faria la pi? bella, la pi? amena citt? che si potesse immaginare, talc he

considerando quello che pu? essere, e farsi di tempo in tempo, e di

et? in et?, io vedo questa citt? non solamente ab?tate eternamente, ma

tale che sar? chimata la felice e la eletta d'Iddio." For reference, see

note 29.

47. Ibid.




"Oh what a beautiful city I see, how it will be truly famous! Oh how admirably virtuous is thought, which

makes us see things before they are made!"48 In the

past, Venetians attributed a variegated identity to their

city, conceiving the Republic as a new Jerusalem,

Byzantium, or Rome.49 As Denis Cosgrove has

eloquently observed, each of these cities were "axes

mundi of the Old World around which the harmon?a

mundi turned: now it [Venice] was to be imagined as a

future Tenochtitlan, great city of the New World."50

A destroyed city

While Bordone's Tenochtitlan served as a model for

Venice's future, the map was also a vision of the past. By the time of its publication in 1528, the city as shown in

Bordone's map no longer existed. Following the dictum

of polic?a, a government policy that legislated the urban

layout of New World Cities, Cort?s razed the temple

precinct, filled the canals with earth and expanded the

centralized grid plan that endures to the present day.51 As Cort?s wrote in his Third Letter to Charles V,

"considering thatTemixtitan itself had once been so

renowned and of such importance, we decided to settle

in it and also to rebuild it, for it was completely

destroyed."52 Describing his progress toward

reconstruction, the conquistador boasted that "each day it [Tenochtitlan] grows more noble, so that just as before

it was capital and center of all these provinces, so it

shall be henceforth."53 Thoroughly transformed by

August 1521, the Tenochtitlan as shown in Bordone's

map was obsolete.

The ultimate cause of the city's destruction was the

heathenism of the Aztec Empire. The Spanish Franciscan

Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote that Tenochtitlan was

"Babylon, a republic of confusion and evil, but now it is

another Jerusalem, mother of provinces and

kingdoms."54 Accordingly, Bordone stamps the center of

Tenochtitlan with a deity, irrevocably equating the New

World metropolis with idol worship. Moreover, the idol's

contrapposto seems to equate the place of the New

World with the time of classical paganism.55 Indeed, travelers to the New World often viewed the culture of

the New World as another classical civilization. For

example, in his description of Tenochtitlan's temple

precinct, Cort?s remarked "[Everything has an idol

dedicated to it, in the same manner as the pagans in

antiquity honored their gods."56 The Spanish humanist

Gonzalo Fern?ndez de Ovideo even compared New

World peoples to the ancient Thracians.57 Bernardino de

Sahag?n carried the metaphor between the New World

and classical antiquity further in his Historia general de

las cosas de Nueva Espana, C?dice Florentino of 1585.

In this work, the illustration of the Aztec god

Huizlopochtli bears the caption "otro Hercules."58

Moreover, New World idolatry was understood as

comparable to classical paganism before the first great wave of evangelization in Late Antiquity. An illustration from Diego Valad?s's Rhetorica Christiana of 1579

shows a Franciscan preaching to an attentive Aztec

audience dressed in Roman garb.59 The comparison of

the New World with classical antiquity thus served an 48. Cited in Tafuri (see note 28), p. 152.

49. Brown (see note 17).

50. Cosgrove (see note 5), p. 38.

51. Legislation regarding urban layout in the New World was

published in 1573 by Phillip II. See Colecci?n de documentos

in?ditos, relativos al descrubimiento, conquista y organizaci?n de las

antiguas posesiones espa?olas de Am?rica y Ocean fa, sacados de los

archivos del reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, ed. Joaqu?n

Pacheco, Francisco de Cardenas, Luis Torres de Mendoza (Madrid:

Ministerio del Ultramar, 1864-1888). For an English translation see

Zelia Nuttall, "Royal Ordinances concerning the layout of new towns,"

Hispanic American Historical Review 4 (1921):743-753; 5

(1922):249-254. Cited in Mundy (see note 20), p, 31, note 48. Mundy notes that although Phillip M's urban policy was established in 1573,

ordinances concerning the planning of New World cities began even

before the conquest of Mexico. On urban ism in the New World, see

especially G. Kubier, "Open Grid Town Plans in Europe and America,

1500-1520," in XXXVIll Internationalen Amerikanistenkongresses,

Stuttgart-M?nchen, 1968 Verhandlungen, vol. 4 (M?nchen: K. Renner,

1969-1972), pp. 105-122.

52. Hern?n Cortes, Letters from Mexico, trans. Anthony Ragden

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 270.

53. Ibid.

54. Juan de Torquemada, Monarchfa Indiana, book 3, Mexico

1615, p. 304. Cited in Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World 1493-1793 (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 151.

55. See Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

56. Cort?s (see note 52), p. 107. For a recent examination on this

subject, see David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical

Models in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 2003).

57. Anthony Ragden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American

Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 25. Cited in Italian Reports on

America (see note 6), p. 21.

58. The image is found on folio 10r of the Florentine Codex.

Cummins (see note 32), p. 121.

59. Diego Valad?s, Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia: Apud Petrumiacobum Petrutium, 1579). Though the Aztecs are wearing tilmas (Aztec cloaks), this dress is represented as being akin to Roman

style togas. Ibid.




ideological purpose. The Americas promised a second

great age of Christian conversion.

Nevertheless, in Bordone's image such a conversion

has not yet swept the Aztec capital. Whereas in

medieval maps, such as the Ebsdorf mappa mundi, an

image of the resurrected Christ occupies the center of

the world, in Tenochtitlan, an idol referencing pagan sacrifice stands resolutely in the midst of the ideal city.60 Such idols, Cort?s remarks, "are bound with the blood

of human hearts which those priests tear out while

beating. And also after they are made they offer more

hearts and anoint their faces with the blood.61

Accentuating the drama of this scene, Bordone

embellishes Cort?s's gory description:

Those idols most people believe in are the biggest ones, and their size is bigger than any man, and they are made of seeds and legumes that they use to sustain themselves, and

they squeeze them and mix them very well, and after

mixing them they drop on that flour some blood that they take from the heart of a child, in order to make a sort of

pulp, enough to satiate those idols, and after that they put them in their temples, they offer to them many children's

hearts, and wet their face with blood. And they have as

many gods as the needs of human life.62

Thus, the deity represented in the center of Bordone's

map does not simply reference idol worship. Rather, combined with the reading of the accompanying text, this image conjures in the reader's imagination the

gruesome scene of extracted hearts, sacrificed children, and idols smothered with blood. The contrast with

Venice could not be more marked. As though to counter

the claims of idol worship and impiety, Venice is shown

without figurative images. Embraced by island churches, the city declares herself resolutely as the Christian

Republic.

Conclusion

For Venice, Tenochtitlan was a "dialectic mirror,"

exhibiting ?mages of like and unlike, the ideal and the

damned. The New World city dramatized a Utopian future for the Republic, yet at the same time

characterized a hedonistic and destroyed civilization.

Bordone does not offer the reader a resolution to these

vexing tensions. Instead, he abruptly ends his Isolario

with a definitive declaration of faith. The last pages of

the book present a letter by the prefect of New Spain

addressing "the most holy and Catholic Majesty"

Emperor Charles V63 After describing the exploits of the

conquistador Francisco Pizzaro and the abundance of

silver found in these New World possessions, the final

sentence of the letter reads: "We do these things in this

way, not only to scatter the infidel, but to demolish them

and above all to annihilate them."64 Bordone's images of

cities, a shimmering mirror fluctuating between likeness

and otherness, shatters into massacre and expropriation.

60. In the Nuremberg map, this idol is represented as headless,

bearing the inscription "idol lapideu[m]." Mundy argues that an Aztec

artist is representing the headless mother of Huizilopochtli, named

Coatlicue. Alternatively, the statue could also refer to the bas-relief of

the Coyolxuahqui. Images of both figures stood in the temple precinct. Cort?s mentions that idols "very much larger than the body of a

big man" stood in the temple precinct, yet these images were made of

seed-studded dough, not stone. See Cort?s (note 52), p. 107. Above

this idol appears the sun rising between two temples, perhaps a

reference to the rising sun of the equinox. See Anthony Aveni,

Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press,

Austin, 1980), pp. 245-249. Also, see Alfred P. Maudslay, "A note on

the position and extent of the Great Temple enclosure of Tenochtitlan, and the position, structure and orientation of the teocalli of

Huitzilopochtli," Acts of the International Congress of Americanists

(London, 1913), pp. 173-175. References cited in Mundy (see note

20), p. 30. In his translation of the Nuremberg map, Bordone has

joined the sun and the headless idol to form a classical statue.

Remaining, however, are the rivulets of blood pouring from the idol's

hands.

61. Cort?s (see note 52), p. 107.

62. Bordone (see note 14), 11 r: "Et quelli idoli che piu vi ?

prestato credenza, sono di maggior forma fatti che non sono gl'altri, &

sua grandezza ecciede ogni grandissimo huomo, & sono fatti di

semenze & legumi, che nel loro vivere usano, prima le tritano, & dopo insieme benissimo le mescolano, & cosi mescolate, col sangue di

fanciulli, che gli cavano del core, & cosi corrente bagnano quella farina, facendola in modo di pasta, & in tanta quantita che possino formar questi loro grandi idii, & ?li medesimi idoli poi che compiuti sono & nelle moschee posti, de molti cori di fanciulli gli offeriscono,

& loro visi col sangue de fanciulli bagnano, Et quante sono le bisogna de mortali, tanti idii hanno per savtori." Note that Bordone uses the

word moschee to refer to Aztec places of worship. That the conquest of the New World paralleled the reconquista of Islamic Spain was

often commented upon. For architectural manifestations of this

correlation, see Valerie Frazer, The Architecture of Conquest. Building in the Viceroyalty of Peru 1535-1635 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1990).

63. Bordone (see note 14), 73v: "Copia delle Lettere del Prefetto

del la India la nova Spagna detta, alia Ces?rea Maesta rescritte. Alia

Sereniss. & Catho. Maesta Ces?rea."

64. Ibid., 54r: "ne gli habbi da mancare re il modo non solo a

discacciare li infideli, ma a distruggerli a anullarli al tutto."



Kim_Venice and Tenochtitlan

Documents