-
854
34 Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa,Corsica, and
Sardinia in the Renaissance
Massimo Quaini
A summary account of the cartographic activities in
theterritories of the Republic of Genoa immediately faces
theproblem of distinguishing between telling the story ofhow
Liguria and Genoa and its island territories weremapped (by
whatever agents) and explaining the Renais-sance cartographic
culture that sprang from those regions(g. 34.1). The more
traditional approach of providing asequential cartographic history
of these areas throughmany historical periods has been well done in
generalbooks such as Roberto Almagis Monumenta Italiae car-tograca
(1929) or, for Sardinia, Pilonis magnum opus of1974.1 Catalogs of
exhibitions, replete with detailed in-formation and illustrations
of local manuscript maps of-ten gleaned from archives in the
regions, have tended tofocus on the second approach, trying to
reconstruct thelocal cartographic culture. These include my Carte e
car-togra in Liguria and Salone and Amalbertis Corsica:Immagine e
cartograa, both of which list the key bibli-ographical
sources.2
This chapter takes the second approach to the extent towhich
Genoa and its territories developed an independentcartographic
culture during the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies in the period
before the complex cartographicoperation undertaken for Louis XIV,
the making of theCarte de Mediterrane of 167985, which ushered in
anew era. Most scholars who have studied the history of
thecartographic depiction of Genoa and its territories
havedescribed it as revealing that the Republic was chroni-cally
backward compared to either its neighbors (Pied-mont, for example)
or comparable states such as Veniceand its Veneto. For much of
Europe, the early modern pe-riod was marked by a gradual emergence
of a visual car-tography in contrast to that of the Middle Ages,
when thedepiction and description of places depended less on
thevisual than on the powerfully persuasive spoken word.This
predominance of the word meant that all the emptyspaces on a
medieval map were lled with long captionsthat constituted a more
encyclopedic and narrative dis-course, and these were considered
more important andtrustworthy than the actual drawing. Hence, the
discourseof maps was predominantly rhetorical and metaphori-cal;
the study of the world took the form of a moralizedgeography.3
In explaining this extended privileging of word overimage in
Liguria, scholars cite the very low level of localinterest in
visually depicting the landscape or the city.4
Others cite the difculties in modernizing the military
andbureaucratic structures of the state to focus a sustainedeffort
on the government of its surrounding territory.Whichever examples
they choose, however, their discus-sions seem always to be colored
by a traditional com-monplace, nurtured rst by travelers and then
by histori-ans, of depicting Genoa as a purely mercantile city
thatshowed no interest in promoting the arts or sciences.5
Although this general picture has been substantiallymodied in
recent years, Genoa remains a place in whichneither the gurative
arts nor a state-focused politicalculture can be said to have
played a predominant role, par-ticularly when compared to Italy as
a whole.6 Given this,
Abbreviations used in this chapter include: ASG for Archivio di
Stato,Genoa, and Corsica for Anna Maria Salone and Fausto
Amalberti, Cor-sica: Immagine e cartograa (Genoa: Sagep, 1992).
1. Roberto Almagi, Monumenta Italiae cartographica
(Florence:Istituto Geograco Militare, 1929), and Luigi Piloni,
Carte geograchedella Sardegna, reprint of the 1974 edition with the
addition of Cartee cartogra della Sardegna by Isabella Zedda Macci
(pp. 44157)(Cagliari: Edizioni della Torre, 1997).
2. Massimo Quaini, ed., Carte e cartogra in Liguria (Genoa:
Sagep,1986), and Corsica.
3. The felicitous expression was coined by Juergen Schulz in his
Lacartograa tra scienza e arte: Carte e cartogra nel Rinascimento
ita-liano (Modena: Panini, 1990). The gure in which one can see the
mostsignicant mixture of the commonplaces of medieval geography and
thenew notions and conjectures fostered by Renaissance culture is
the Genoese Christopher Columbus, whose skill as a cartographer is
wellknown; see Massimo Quaini, Let dellevidenza cartograca:
Unanuova visione del mondo fra Cinquecento e Seicento, in
CristoforoColombo e lapertura degli spazi: Mostra
storico-cartograca, 2 vols.,ed. Guglielmo Cavallo (Rome: Istituto
Poligraco e Zecca dello Stato,Libreria dello Stato, 1992),
2:781812.
4. Ennio Poleggi, Iconograa di Genova e delle riviere (Genoa:
Sagep,1977), 14.
5. See especially the study of Salvatore Rotta, Idee di riforma
nellaGenova settecentesca, e la diffusione del pensiero di
Montesquieu,Movimento Operaio e Socialista in Liguria 7, no. 3 4
(1961): 20584.
6. As we will see, the most substantial criticism comes from
thosestudies that apply paradigms of microhistory, particularly
from the workof Edoardo Grendi, Diego Moreno, and Osvaldo Raggio,
who haveadopted a topographic approach to the social history of
Liguria. See
-
the more general observations made in Edoardo Grendi, Stato e
comu-nit nel Seicento genovese, in Studi in memoria di Giovanni
Tarello,2 vols. (Milan: Giuffr, 1990), 1:24382.
7. Poleggi, Iconograa di Genova, 14.8. The cities were depicted
in the Flemish manner; a thing which,
because it had never been seen before, was highly pleasing, as
GiorgioVasari comments, pointing out the emergence of a fashion
(Poleggi,Iconograa di Genova, 13). The most recent studies of this
fashion and its inuence on cartography are in Schulz, La cartograa
tra scienzae arte.
9. De Grassi, who was also the creator of cartographic
representa-tions of territory, is discussed later. On the pictvra
antiqvae vrbisGenve, which the Padri del Comune wanted to save from
total ruin,see Poleggi, Iconograa di Genova, 11012, and also
Pierangelo Cam-podonico, La marineria genovese dal medioevo allunit
dItalia (Mi-lan: Fabbri, 1989), esp. 11114 and 16567, which
attributes to deGrassi (or Grasso) many of the naval and
geographical decorations tobe found in the Genoese palazzo of
Angelo Giovanni Spinola.
10. A large number of these sixteenth-century paintings and
minia-turessome from Turkish sourcesare analyzed in Poleggi,
Icono-graa di Genova, which also mentions the nautical map drawn by
Bat-tista Beccari in 1435 (p. 40).
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 855
a focus on cultural history and the patterns of life preva-lent
in the city seems advisable as a starting point for thehistorian of
Genoese cartography. If we avoid a simplechronology of developments
in institutional history, gu-rative arts, or science and technology
(the latter includingthe very uncertain chronology of developments
in cartog-raphy itself), we will no longer see cultural and
institu-tional factors specic to Genoa solely in terms of
back-wardness or anachronism. Rather than consideringthings in
relation to some abstract model of technicalprogress, we will see
how the techniques of cartographyadapted to the territorial and
geopolitical context of theregion or the city itself, a context
very different from thatof any other Italian state.
Poleggi, a scholar with a detailed knowledge of the ur-ban
fabric of the city, has pointed out that the Liguriangovernments
indifference to the portrayal of its setting re-sulted in a lack of
local artists commissions to providelandscapes and city views.7
This explains whywith thesignicant exception of one work
commissioned by theGenoese magistratura in 1481the earliest known
depic-
tions of the city were all commissioned by other princesand
rulers. These included Pope Innocent VIII, who in1484 commissioned
Pinturicchio to decorate a loggia inthe Palazzo del Belvedere with
views of Rome, Milan,Genoa, Florence, Venice, and Naples,8 and
Francesco IIGonzaga (marquis of Mantua), who in 1497 commis-sioned
Giovanni Bellini and Gentile Bellini to paint viewsof Venice,
Genoa, Paris, and Cairo for the City Cham-bers in the no longer
extant Palazzo di Marmirolo.
These painted renditions of Genoa, and their engravedsuccessors,
were substantially similar. They show the cityin its famous villa
landscape and enclosed in a wide cir-cle of hills (which, at the
beginning of the seventeenth cen-tury, would be topped by the
outermost ring of city walls).However, although these
representations were largely byforeigners, their prototype was the
single homemadedepiction of the city produced in Genoa itself. This
largeanonymous picture now lost, celebrating the departure ofthe
eet sent in answer to Pope Sixtus IVs call for the lib-eration of
Otranto from the Turkish invasion (1481), wascopied in Genoa by the
painter-cartographer Cristoforode Grassi in 1597 (g. 34.2).9
These perspective views, and other more developed anddetailed
depictions of the city given in portolan charts,were intended to
promote the classic image of the city andits outlying territories
as seen from the sea. All served thelocal taste for views of Genoa
as a mere backdrop for im-ages of naval reviews directly outside
the port.10
This schema persisted in a substantial corpus of topo-graphical
works: the Corographia Xofori de Grassis(1598), which focused on
Corsica but also covered theEastern Riviera of Liguria and the city
of Genoa (seeg. 34.7), and the Civitas Janue (1616), both works
at-tributed to Gerolamo Bordoni, the Republics maestro del
Weste
rn
Riv ie
ra
Eastern
Riv iera
8
45
44
43
45
44
43
9 10
8 9 10
C O R S I C A
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IA
L i gu r i a n S e a
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AN
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SE
A
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RR
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AN
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A
Pieve di Teco
Ventimiglia
Roviasca
Segno SavonaGenoa
Levanto
CavanellaBeverino
SarzanaMagra
LericiPortovenere
Bastia
Aleria
Corte
Cauro
Bonifacio
Stura
Magr
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Scrivia
VAL
POLCEVERA
N E B B
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O LT R E
G I O G OA P E N N
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S
Capo Corso
Elba
fig. 34.1. REFERENCE MAP OF LIGURIA AND CORSICA.
-
cerimoniale, responsible for compiling a chorography ofthe
Republic, and nally, the view of Genoa found in theBelvedere
Gallery at the Vatican. In this last work, theperspective view is
replaced by a ground plan with fea-tures in perspective, and more
attention is given to the de-piction of the geographical
surroundings; it is possiblybased on a drawing by the painter G.
Andrea Ansaldo,who was sent to the city by Pope Urban VIII.11
Genoan public authorities showed no interest in thefashion for
map galleries popular elsewhere in sixteenth-century Italy.
Likewise, private patrons who drew manyoutside artists into the
city (from as far aeld as theNetherlands) were generally interested
in other subjects.12
The two exceptions to these tastes are slightly knownworks of
rather different quality. The rst is the loggia ofcity views in
what is now the Palazzo Doria-Spinola,commissioned in 1584 by
Giovanni Battista Doria.13 Thesecond is much more difcult to
evaluate, given that itconsists of a largely uncompleted project
for a public col-lection of images depicting Genoas colonies (the
only ex-tant parts are the anonymous mid-sixteenth-centurypaintings
of the island and city of Chios).14
Clearly, the marginal nature of these two projects re-veals the
absence of a felt need for a public map gallery.In fact, only much
later would this limitation be felt, notin the artistic or cultural
context but rather in that of de-veloping the political awareness
of the Republics citizens.
Andrea Spinola, an enlightened member of the republi-can ruling
classes, criticized the lack of adequate carto-graphic
representations of Liguria in the doges palacethus: In the public
loggias of the Palazzo della Signoria,the surrounding walls should
be painted with frescoes de-picting our State in various pictures,
with precise andclear accounts of all the borders. In this way, the
Citizens,when they are waiting there for hours before the Coun-cils
are called, will be able to acquire precise knowledgeof these most
important things.15 However, Spinolas
856 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
11. Here again, the theory was originally put forward in
Poleggi,Iconograa di Genova, 123. The shift from perspective view
to groundplan can also be seen in the 1638 painting Domenico
Fiasella producedfor the Oratororio di San Giorgio dei Genovesi in
Palermo (Iconograadi Genova, 22).
12. On the history of painting and decoration in Genoa, see
EziaGavazza, La grande decorazione a Genova (Genoa: Sagep,
1974).
13. See Poleggi, Iconograa di Genova, 114. Poleggi judges the
fres-coes of poor quality and says their sources coincide with the
city-viewprints to be found anywhere.
14. The plates are now in Genoa, Museo Navale. See the
reproduc-tion in Campodonico, La marineria genovese, 121.
15. Andrea Spinola, Ricordi, under the section Conni
publici(Public borders); Genoa, Archivio Storico Comune (BS MS. 106
B 8).In the same section, Spinola also urges the creation of a
collection of car-tographic maps to be used by the Magistratura dei
Conni. On Spinolaand his writings (which remained in manuscript
form), see Bitossiswide-ranging introduction to Andrea Spinola,
Scritti scelti, ed. CarloBitossi (Genoa: Sagep, 1981), 575.
FIG. 34.2. VIEW OF GENOA, 1481. Copied by Cristoforo deGrassi,
1597, from a large, locally produced anonymous pic-ture of the
city.
Size of the original: 222 400 cm. Photograph courtesy of
theGalata Museo del Mare, Genoa (NIMN 3486).
-
16. Spinola, Scritti scelti, 29394.17. Poleggi, Iconograa di
Genova, 15.18. Giovanni Assereto, Dallamministrazione patrizia
allammini-
strazione moderna: Genova, in Lamministrazione nella storia
mo-derna, 2 vols. (Milan: Giuffr, 1985), 1:95159, esp. 99100.
19. Edoardo Grendi, Il sistema politico di una comunit
ligure:Cervo fra Cinquecento e Seicento, Quaderni Storici 46
(1981): 92129.
20. Grendi, Stato e comunit, 27576.21. In particular, see
Edoardo Grendi, Il disegno e la coscienza so-
ciale dello spazio: Dalle carte archivistiche genovesi, in Studi
in memo-ria di Teolo Ossian De Negri, III (Genoa: Stringa, 1986),
14 33, aswell as idem, Cartograa e disegno locale: La coscienza
sociale dellospazio, in Lettere orbe: Anonimato e poteri nel
Seicento genovese(Palermo: Gelka, 1989), 13562.
22. In the sense in which the term medieval is used at the
begin-ning of this chapter, and in which it has often been outlined
by JacquesLe Goff (whose work on this proceeds from that of Lucien
Febvre), seeMassimo Quaini, Il fantastico nella cartograa fra
medioevo ed etmoderna, Atti della Societ Ligure di Storia Patria,
n.s. 32, no. 2(1992): 313 43.
proposal went unheeded, as did his proposal for a navalschool to
teach geography and nautical cartography.16
Poleggi offers a reading of social behavior and a mentaloutlook
linked to the very structure of the city:
There was something specically medieval about theway the city
continued to grow and develop. It was thisthat lay behind the
reluctance of the Genoese to por-tray their city and the incapacity
of others to under-stand the hidden but revolutionary rhythm
withinGenoas spatial distribution. The fact is that one can-not
have city views without large public squares, andGenoa does not
have large public squares. . . . Onecannot use city views to
celebrate a space that is exclu-sively private, and certainly not
intended for collectiveenjoyment and use.17
This highly convincing reading can be extended from
theorganization of Genoas urban space to include the or-ganization
of the Republics territory as a whole. By theend of the fteenth
century, the process of Genoese terri-torial expansion was
complete, and yet the state itselfcontinued to have a weak
political structure with no clearsense of identity. This is amply
illustrated by the fact thatbetween 1485 and 1515 a private body,
the Banco di SanGiorgio, was entrusted with the government of
sizeableand strategically important parts of Genoese
territory:Corsica, Lerici, Sarzana, Pieve di Teco, Ventimiglia, and
Levanto.
The complex territorial organization of the Republicinvolved a
whole host of privileges and immunities grantedto various local
communities. Numerous feudal enclavesexisted, often related to the
same aristocratic families thatconstituted the citys ruling class.
These paralleled the fac-tional divisions in the Genoese nobility,
who even withinthe city occupied different alberghi
(neighborhoods), thusdividing the urban space into spatially
distinct areas in-habited by different clans.
Lacking a wholesale restructuring of the territorial
ad-ministration of the state, along with armed forces worthyof the
name, a recognized common interest, delity to aparticular dynasty,
and certainly a solid ethnic or culturalcohesion, the law was
almost the sole cement holding thestate together.18 A sort of ad
hoc territorial solidarity ex-isted, under which various other
forms of associationmight be at work (for example, families,
parishes, con-fraternities, and plebs); internal local cohesion
seems tohave been guaranteed only by external conict, either
withneighboring communities or with the central govern-ment.19 The
result was that, despite numerous (but inef-fective) requests to
modernize by the more enlightenedmembers of the ruling class
throughout the period of theold Republican regime, it was never
possible to stan-dardize the administrative map of Genoese
territory. Ac-cording to Grendi, The political language of the
Statecontinued to be based on tradition, recognizing immuni-
ties, privileges, conventions, and local statutes whoseprestige
rested upon their antiquity.20
Such is the complicated context one should bear inmind when
trying to understand cartographic develop-ments in the Republic of
Genoa. In many parts of Europe,the relationship between the
development of cartographyand the modernization and strengthening
of the state wasclear; the shift toward a centralized state was the
basis ofits modernization. However, the local and
heterogeneoussocial awareness of urban space in Liguria means that
acorrect analysis of cartographic development must rest onother
assumptions. The map served as an instrument forlocal social bodies
to use to assert their identity, and thiscontrasted with the
general models of European cartog-raphy, where the map was viewed
more as an analyticaltool to provide a complete and efcient picture
of the lay-out of territorial structures in the state.21
Given the continuing survival of a medieval view oftime and
space throughout Liguria,22 and given a politi-cal structure that
could be dened as premodern, thedevelopment of state cartography
there was signicantlyhandicapped. What is more, the situation
throughout theregion as a whole was far from homogeneous, and
theterm medieval can be applied to some local areas longafter the
date by which the Middle Ages is considered to have ended. The
continuing predominance of text todescribe geographical facts
underlines this premoderncharacter.
For example, in 1536, the City Council of Savona setabout
resolving border disputes by calling on the servicesof Agostino
Abate, who had a solid grounding in geom-etry and architecture.
Abate saw no point in attemptingto resolve the various disputes by
xing the borders on amap. He did make an on-site survey to
reestablish the ex-act termini (boundary stones). But his key
sources were
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 857
-
the minds and memories of the older inhabitants, part ofan oral
tradition handed down from generation to gener-ation. In the
future, all such disputes were to be decidedon the basis of the
scrittura autentica (authentic writtenrecords) of the city clerk
who had accompanied Abateand ofcially recorded his ndings in the
form of text, notmaps and drawings. Likewise, the annual
inspections bythe podest (authorities) of the borders of the
Genoesestate were recorded as a verbal description, not traced
outon a map.23 It was not until 1643 that the Genoese gov-ernment
ruled that its borders should be drawn and ex-actly entered word
for word for posterity.24
To those aware of the importance of nautical cartogra-phy for
the mercantile eets of medieval Genoa and Li-guria, who argue that
terrestrial cartography was simplya continuation of nautical
cartography, this privileging oftext over graphic seems
improbable.25 But it was not un-til the second half of the
sixteenth century that Genoafelt the need for an accurate map of
its territory, and bythen the importance of nautical cartography
had becomemarginal, due in part to the shift of Genoese
interestsaway from maritime trade to international nance inwhat has
been dened as the rst world-economy.26
The main gures involved with territorial cartography inthe city
were painters, architects, military ofcers, and,to a lesser extent,
men of letters and notaries, people withvery different training
from that found in the familyworkshops where a magister chartarum a
navigando(master of navigation charts) produced nautical maps
andinstruments.27
Nautical terms did have an inuence on terrestrialmaps, but it is
not always clear whether these were derivedfrom sailing directions
or maps. For example, the varioussixteenth-century descriptions of
the mountainous bor-ders running through Val Polcevera use
expressions takenfrom sailing directions, such as a mount known
asTuirano being engulfed between these communities orfrom the coast
to Mount Scaglia di Corno there is abouta three-mile gulf measured
by the rod.28
A trace of nautical chart inuence can be seen in theadoption of
a nautical unit of measure (the goa), a scalebar, and a depiction
of the wind directions recalling con-temporary nautical maps in the
surveys drawn up forland maps such as the Pianta del sito delle
marine diVado (1569) (g. 34.3). The connection with nauticalsources
is even stronger when one learns that the pre-sumed cartographer,
Battista Sormano, an architect fromSavona, based his map on a
compass survey taken froma point at sea.29
Similarly, one cannot rule out that nautical maps andsailing
directions were also source material for the earlyregional textual
descriptions of Liguria. The Descriptioorae ligusticae (1442 48) by
Giacomo Bracelli is in theform of a periplus that focuses on the
coastline from Varo
to Magra, which was inuenced by the description andpicture given
of Italy by the Ancients.30
The extent to which Agostino Giustiniani used mapsfor his
Descrittione della Lyguria (1537), the rst full de-scription of
Liguria as a whole, is a matter for debate. Inhis work Giustiniani
focused great attention on the ac-count of inland Liguria
(including the areas across theAlps and Apennines) and used the
river courses as the ba-sic framework of his description. This
suggests that, if heused maps at all, it was not ofcial maps
structuredaround political boundaries but land maps that focusedon
the natural watercourses. However, another explana-tion might be
that Giustiniani made systematic use of di-rect on-site
observations, which was clearly the case fromhis account of some
areas.31
858 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
23. On the podest, see Massimo Quaini, ed., La conoscenza del
territorio ligure fra medio evo ed et moderna (Genoa: Sagep,
1981),2829. The traditions of boundary visits continued into the
follow-ing century. And in eastern Liguria, even as late as
1656when the useof maps was already widespreadthe local authorities
continued thetradition of periodic visits to boundaries in the
company of communityelders, who were to indicate the position of
the termini, and youths offteen years old, who were to memorize
what they were shown and thus perpetuate this form of territorial
knowledge.
24. ASG, MS. 712, carte 4r, and p. 862 and note 42 in this
chapter.25. See, for example, Emilio Marengo, Carte topograche e
coro-
grache manoscritte della Liguria e delle immediate adiacenze,
conser-vate nel R. Archivio di Stato di Genova, ed. Paolo Revelli
(Genoa,1931), 3.
26. See Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century:
Money,Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London: Verso, 1994), 13
and10926.
27. Moreno argues that the supremacy of pictorial representation
andthe deeply-rooted persistence of city-views as cartographic
docu-ments were such that they delayed and conditioned the
emergence ofmodern terrestrial cartography; see Diego Moreno, Una
carta ineditadi Battisa Carrosio di Voltaggio, pittore-cartografo,
in Miscellanea digeograa storica e di storia della geograa: Nel
primo centenario dellanascita di Paolo Revelli (Genoa: Bozzi,
1971), 10314, esp. 105.
28. Quaini, La conoscenza del territorio ligure, 2728.29. On the
map and its author, see Massimo Quaini, Il golfo di Vado
nella pi antica rappresentazione cartograca, Bollettino
Ligustico 23(1971): 27 44, and Magda Tassinari, Le origini della
cartograasavonese del Cinquecento: Il contributo di Domenico
Revello, BattistaSormano e Paolo Gerolamo Marchiano, Atti della
Societ Ligure diStoria Patria, n.s. 29, no. 1 (1989): 23379. The
technique continuedto be practiced in the eighteenth century, as
one can see from drawingsby Matteo Vinzoni. On the units of
measure, see Pietro Rocca, Pesi emisure antiche di Genova e del
Genovesato (Genoa, 1871), 59.
30. As one can read in the Italian translation of Flavio Biondos
workRoma ristaurata et Italia illustrata, trans. Lucio Fauno, new
and cor-rected reprinting (Venice, 1558), 6974. Bracellis work was
revised andincluded in Biondos Italia illustratacompleted in Rome
in 1453.
31. On the role of on-site observation in the work of
Giustiniani, seethe discussion of his description of Corsica later
in this chapter. For themost recent bibliography, see Aurelio
Cevolotto, Agostino Giustiniani:Un umanista tra Bibbia e Cabala
(Genoa: ECIG, 1992). For a facsimileof the Descrittione, see
Agostino Giustiniani, [Castigatissimi] Annalecon la loro copiosa
tavola della eccelsa & illustrissima republi de Genoa(Bologne:
A. Forni, 1981), bk. 1.
-
32. See Roberto Almagi, LItalia di Giovanni Antonio Magini ela
cartograa dellItalia nei secoli XVI e XVII (Naples: F.
Perrella,1922), 7980.
33. In the eighteenth-century edition, Borgonios map would be
ex-tended to cover the whole of Liguria.
Whatever the sources, Giustinianis verbal descriptionclearly
anticipates what is to be found in later manuscriptmaps; it adopts
a point of view from within rather thanwithout. It describes not
the striking visual appearance ofthe coast seen from the sea, but
the regions specic localfeatures. It focuses on the minute
fragmentation of the re-gion into cities, castles, towns, villas,
and villages, allforming part of wider social and territorial
wholes, buteach with its own identity.
Giustinianis description inuenced the cartographyand chorography
of the region for at least two centuries.An analysis of the
place-names in the sixteenth-centuryprinted maps of the region from
Giacomo Gastaldi to Giovanni Antonio Maginis Italia reveals that
theywere clearly derived from Giustiniani (even if the wealthof
place-names in the Descrittione far outnumbers thatin even the most
detailed printed map). And when, asin the case of Magini, these
later cartographers de-scribed their working methods, they admitted
thatthey had checked their own maps against Giustinianis
account.32
Difculties in Constructing a Map of the Genoese State
The cartographic equivalent of Giustinianis Descrittionewas not
produced until Giovanni Tommaso Borgonio cre-ated his large map of
most of western Liguria (1682) andJos (Joseph) Chafrion drew his
map of the entire terri-tory of the Genoese Republic (1685), works
that I take asthe end-markers of my discussion.33 This delay is
furtherproof of the primacy of verbal description in Liguria.
Onecannot, however, dismiss the 150 years of Genoese car-tography
between Giustinianis text and Chafrions mapas a blank page in the
history of Italian cartography. Thisperiod saw no production of
cartography on a regionalscale; instead, maps were local documents,
with cartogra-
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 859
FIG. 34.3. BATTISTA SORMANO, PIANTA DEL SITODELLE MARINE DI
VADO, 1569.
Size of the original: 60 85 cm. Photograph courtesy of theASG
(Raccolta cartografica, b. 19, vado 33).
-
phers seeing the region as so many fragments rather thana single
whole.
This difculty is illustrated by the lack of sources avail-able
to Magini in compiling his maps of the Western andEastern Rivieras
of Genoa (Riviera di Ponente and Ri-viera di Levante) for his rst
printed versions of the Italia(1597). For the Western Riviera of
Genoa, he was able todraw on a good map obtained from the duke of
Mantua,while his source for the Eastern Riviera, a drawing by
theGenoese Orazio Bracelli, proved totally inadequate. As aresult,
Magini appealed to various powerful and suitablepersons, but nally
reached the conclusion that inGenoa there is no one who has a taste
for this profes-sion.34 However, by 1609 Magini had established
moreprotable relations with the Genoese government, andthe new 1613
maps, particularly that of the Eastern Ri-viera, are markedly more
informative than their prede-cessors.35
For public administrators, the small scale of Maginiswork was
inadequate for even the most basic tasks in themilitary and
administrative organization of state territory.Maginis maps
belonged to a genre that was essentially in-tended as celebratory
rather than meeting the require-ments of administrative efciency.
The governing classesin Genoa would show themselves indifferent to
programsof either celebratory cartography, such as that promotedby
Carlo Emanuele II, duke of Savoy, in the TheatrumSabaudiae, or
administrative cartography, such as thatthe Venetian Republic was
already promoting in the f-teenth century.36
The general lack of interest of public administrators ina map of
the region is demonstrated by the fact that therst proposal to draw
up a map of the entire territory ofthe Republic of Genoa was made
by a private body, theBanco di San Giorgio, and even that attempt
almost im-mediately came to nothing. The initial proposal for the
SanGiorgio project came from a native of Sarzana, ErcoleSpina, who,
before being nominated mayor of his nativetown in 1587, had taken
part in various military cam-paigns in France, Italy, and elsewhere
throughout theMediterranean. His rst known contacts with the
Bancodi San Giorgio date from 1579, when Paolo Moneglia andGiovanni
Battista Spinola commissioned him to reformthe picture . . .
wherein was described the whole of Li-guria that was then kept on
the banks premises. It musthave been a fairly old painting (given
that it is described ascorroded and spoilt by time), in which were
painted toscale . . . borders and roads.37 However, Spina
consideredthe representation far from adequate, and as a result
waswilling to go around all the borders of this Most
SereneDominion, so that having seen them with my own eyes Ican
describe them more clearly and better draw them (theinformation we
have regarding Spina is largely taken froma manuscript work of his,
which contained maps, for ex-
ample, g. 34.4).38 The main purpose of the project musthave been
to achieve a more precise account of roads and,above all, borders,
which were important for trade and,therefore, for the tax duties
collected by the bank.
Almost immediately aborted by an outbreak of theplague, the
project was taken up again in 1587 by Gero-nimo Canevaro at Spinas
suggestion. Rather than redoingthe painting, Spina had in mind a
kind of atlas of Liguria,with details of the boundaries drawn on
the map and de-scribed in words in the margin. Such a work would,
ac-cording to the author, be as useful to the public authori-ties
as it would be beautiful to leave to posterity.39 Heundertook to
make his observations in two months anddraw up the maps in Genoa in
six. His proposal was ac-companied by a model sheet showing what
the mapswould look like.
The plan was not followed up, and only in the secondhalf of the
seventeenth century would a similar scheme beput into effect by the
Giunta dei Conni (Border Author-ities) after Andrea Spinola and
other enlightened mem-bers of the governing classes had argued the
need for suchmaps. However, a comparison of Spinas model sheetwith
this later work reveals the full modernity ofSpinas project.40 Its
innovative character lies not only inits coverage of large,
previously unmapped areas of themountainous terrain in the
Republic. Spina proposed astandardized sheet size of ten miles
square divided ac-cording to degrees of longitude and latitude,
features that
860 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
34. Almagi, LItalia, 155.35. We do not know the author of the
new cartographic sources re-
ceived by Magini; Almagi repeats the unconrmed traditional
attribu-tion to Father Domenico Ceva, a Dominican friar at the
monastery ofSanta Maria di Castello and a talented mathematician,
who died in1612 (LItalia, 29). Further support for the attribution
comes fromthe fact that Ceva, the author of the treatise De chartis
chorographicisconscribendis, calculated the geographical
coordinates of Genoa.
36. Even if, around 1630, the Republic did not hesitate to
celebrateits own magnicence (upon the occasion of the proclamation
of royal title and dominion over the Ligurian Sea). However, here
again, the celebration was more literary and verbal than
cartographic; see ClaudioCostantini, La Repubblica di Genova nellet
moderna (Turin: UTET,1978). On the Theatrum Sabaudiae, see pp.
84753 in this volume. Onthe Venetian model, see chapter 35 in this
volume.
37. Massimo Quaini, Dalla cartograa del potere al potere della
car-tograa, in Carte e cartogra in Liguria, ed. Massimo Quaini
(Genoa:Sagep, 1986), 760, esp. 29. Paolo Moneglia is known to have
been oneof Orteliuss Genoese correspondents; see Luigi Volpicella,
Genova nelsecolo XV: Note diconograa panoramica, Atti della Societ
Liguredi Storia Patria 52 (1924): 24988.
38. The manuscript work has two titles: Libro di piante et altre
delet-tationi, given by the author, and Diverse piante, given by
the archivistand written on the front cover of the manuscript (ASG,
MS. 423).
39. Quaini, Dalla cartograa del potere, 29.40. The model sheet
is Tavola del ne della Liguria e principio della
Etruria che contiene di spacio X miglie per ogni verso quale
serve permodelo de la intencione di E. S., ASG, Raccolta
cartograca, Busta D,69, illustrated in Quaini, Dalla cartograa del
potere, 29.
-
FIG
.34.
4. E
RC
OL
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PIN
A,
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A L
UN
IGIA
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92.
Thi
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s m
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Phot
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ph c
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esy
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).
-
only much later became the norm in Italian and
Europeancartography.
Compare this approach to that used in some of themaps in the
later work commissioned by the GenoeseGiunta dei Connia work in
which the planimetricrepresentation of the borders is given
separately from aperspective view of the landscape.41 A ruling on
27 No-vember 1643 recognized the need for a systematic map-ping of
the Republics borders, resulting in the productionof two atlases,
one covering the efdoms of the WesternRiviera, known as Atlas A,
and one covering the Oltre-giogo area (the valleys of Stura, Lemme,
and Scrivia),known as Atlas B.42 The technicians involved in this
proj-ect were in part architects, in part painters; none of themhad
the professional competence of Ercole Spina. Atlas A(165055),
however, is much more coherent and homo-geneous than Atlas B
because all the illustrations were thework of the
painter-cartographer Pier Maria Gropallo(plate 29). The difference
between the maps of Spina andthose of Gropallo can be explained by
reference to thecultural backgrounds of the two cartographers.
Spinastraining was more scientic, military, and
mathematical,drawing on the treatises of Niccol Tartaglia,
GiovanniFrancesco Peverone, Giovanni Antonio Magini,
GiuseppiMoleti, and Girolamo Cattaneo. Gropallos work wasmore in
the tradition of a painter and less in the traditionof geometrical
representation of terrain and landscape.
Though today we would judge Gropallos atlas as re-vealing an
insufcient command of mathematical cartog-raphy, the work was much
appreciated by the authoritiesin Genoa, who in 1662 were still
referring to Gropallo asa gentleman of great expertise in the
drawing of mapsand someone who would be perfectly qualied to makean
exact and conscientious delineation of . . . contestedareas,43 a
statement that reveals their misunderstandingof Gropallos grasp of
quantitative mapping.
Gropallos standing as a painter, on the other hand,was such that
he was included in Soprani-Rattis Vite depittori, where the
versatility of Gropallos gifts are em-phasized:
With his lively and fervent genius, his passion for theFine Arts
was such that he could not settle for just one ofthose Arts alone.
Thus he also studied Civil Architec-ture . . . and then passed on
to the study of Geometry,working on the measurement of land sites
and the de-lineation of terrain . . . so that whenever the
SerenissimiCollegi required some topographical plate for the
de-nition of the States borders or the strict identication
ofaparticulararea, they turned tohim,whoaswell aspro-ducing a work
of most exact measurement would alsoembellish and decorate it in
the nest taste, so that theseworks are a delight and marvel to look
at.44
Gropallo was certainly prolic (the archives of bothGenoa and
Turin contain various other maps that are
signed by or attributable to him). We also know that hewas
called on to draw up a precise map of the external bor-ders of
eastern Liguria as part of the overall boundary in-spection that
was planned but never took place.45 The pe-riod of Gropallos
activity, from 1650 to 1670, was alsosignicant because during that
time the Genoese authori-ties were involved in various ambitious
road-building proj-ects designed to improve communications both
eastwardand in the Po Valley area.
There is a lack of homogeneity in Atlas B (1648), whichcontains
a mixture of maps based on site visits made tothe Oltregiogo area
in 1644 45 by architects includingGiacomo Ponsello and Lorenzo
Cravenna with othersthat were the work of painters including
Bernardo Car-rosio (g. 34.5).46 The text in Atlas B gives a precise
ac-count of the clear division of labor between the engineerand the
artist. The architect was required to measure thecompass directions
that regularized the outline of the bor-
862 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
41. I discuss this separation, which survived as a consolidated
tradi-tion right up to the end of the eighteenth century, in Matteo
Vinzoni,Pianta delle due riviere della Serenissima Repubblica di
Genova divisene Commissariati di Sanit, ed. Massimo Quaini (Genoa:
Sagep, 1983),36 37. On Gropallo, see Luigi Sartori, Pier Maria
Gropallo, pittore-cartografo del Seicento: I, Il Libro dei Feudi
della Riviera Occiduapalestra dellarte cartograca del Gropallo,
Bollettino Ligustico 23(1971): 83106; idem, Nel capitaneato della
Pieve: La visita generaledei conni e lopera di Pier Maria Gropallo
(1653); and idem, PierMaria Gropallo nel contado dAlbenga
(16501656), the last two inCarte e cartogra in Liguria, ed. Massimo
Quaini (Genoa: Sagep,1986), 9298 and 137 44.
42. ASG, Raccolta cartograca 12681292, Atlante A (MS. 39),
ti-tled Feudorum orae occidentalis cum eorum nibus, and Atlante
B(MS. 712), titled Visita, descrittione et delineatione de conni
del Do-minio della Serenissima Repubblica di Genova di l Giogo.
43. Quoted in Teolo Ossian De Negri, Pier Maria Gropallo,
pit-tore-cartografo del Seicento: II, Pagine sparse di Pier M.
Gropallo maestro della cartograa genovese, Bollettino Ligustico 23
(1971):10719, esp. 110.
44. Raffaele Sopranis original work dates from 1674, and was
thenadded to by Carlo Giuseppe Ratti in 1768. An anastatic reprint
waspublished: Vite de pittori, scultori, ed architetti genovesi, 2
vols. and index (Genoa: Tolozzi, 1965); for the references to
Gropallo, see 1:29597, quotation on 296.
45. Commissioner Gio. Batta Raggio, who had already worked
withGropallo in western Liguria, called him to Portovenere in
October 1656to undertake a new visit to the boundaries of eastern
Liguria. Duringthe May 1656 visit made by Commissioner Carlo
Spinola, the drafts-man seems to have been a certain Maestro
Bartolomeo Quadro, who isnot known to have produced any maps. In
1662, Gropallo produced aplate concerned with the controversy
between Beverino and Cavanella;see De Negri, Pier Maria Gropallo,
10913.
46. See Gaetano Ferro, I conni della Repubblica di Genova in
dueatlanti manoscritti del 1600, Annali di Ricerche e Studi di
Geograa 18(1962): 736. On Bernardo Carrosio, see Moreno, Una carta
inedita diBattista Carrosio. In addition to Ferro, for an overall
description of theatlas, see Marengo, Carte topograche e
corograche, 245 46. The de-scription in Caterina Barlettaro and
Ofelia Garbarino, La raccolta car-tograca dellArchivio di Stato di
Genova (Genoa: Tilgher, 1986), 433ff.,is totally unreliable, lled
with errors and far-fetched readings.
-
47. For a description of the map, see Pietro Barozzi, La Carta
de laRivera de Genova di Joseph Chafrion (1685), in La Sardegna
nelmondo mediterraneo, 2 vols. (Sassari: Gallizzi, 1981), 1:14365,
andfor further details on the Genoese reaction, see Quaini, Dalla
car-tograa del potere, 15.
48. The episode of the map is discussed in Nilo Calvini, Ancora
sulgeografo Ludovico della Spina di Mailly, La Berio 8, no. 3
(1968): 3137, which takes up the more descriptive study presented
in FrancaParodi Levera, L Historia geograca della Repubblica di
Genova diLudovico della Spina da Mailly, La Berio 6, no. 3 (1966):
527.
ders, while the painter was practically a subordinate g-ure who
drew the landscape (fig. 34.6).
Although they stretch the limits of our historical pe-riod, two
other incidents illuminate the attitude of the Ge-noese authorities
toward accurate maps of the Republic.These authorities actively
tried to hinder the publicationof the Carta de la Rivera de Genova
con sus verdaderosconnes y caminos (Milan, 1685) by Jos Chafrion
(g.34.7), a Catalan military engineer at the service of thegovernor
of Milan, and considered withdrawing the en-graved plates before
printing to protect the states militaryand diplomatic status.47 The
second episode concernedthe French cartographer Ludovico della
Spina, who in1696 presented the Genoese authorities with a map
oftheir state, and as Geographer to the King offered theRepublic
his services. Although they judged the mapvery diligent, duly
adjusted to the facts . . . and worthyof seeing the light of day,
the Genoese government nev-ertheless asked the author not to print
it.48
The Republics wariness of printed maps stemmed fromthe fear that
the publication of a new ofcial map might
spark diplomatic conict by resurrecting border
disputes,particularly with the Republics more aggressive
neighbor,theDuchyofSavoy.TheRepublicadoptedasortofprudentneutrality,
relying more on its system of natural and man-made defenses than on
force of arms, while the Duchy ofSavoy followed a much bolder and
more aggressiveforeign policy. As one can see from the Borgonio map
(seeg. 33.10) and the Theatrum Sabaudiae, Savoy saw car-tography as
a celebration of its own territorial might andperhaps even as a
means of provoking new border disputeswith the Republic of Genoa.
As one can see from the
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 863
FIG. 34.5. MAP FROM ATLAS B, 1648. Photograph courtesy of the
ASG (Raccolta cartografica12681292, MS. 712).
-
episode of the Chafrion map, the Republic expressedconcern not
over simple maps but over maps that revealedknowledge of mountain
passes and of the weaknessof [military] sites,49 works that met the
needs of the mili-tary campaigner or the territorial administrator.
We willnowlookat the limitations that resulted
fromthiswariness.
The Development of a LocalTopographic Cartography
The map collection in the Archivio di Stato in Genoa con-tains
many of the maps used by both state and local au-thorities in the
performance of their administrative du-ties.50 Only a very small
proportion of such material datesfrom the sixteenth century.
Similarly, only very rarely arethere written references to the use
of maps in extant gov-ernment documents. The picture, as we have
seen, wasthat of a number of scattered, fragmentary
chorographiesbased not on quantitative surveying by engineers but
onlandscape paintings made by artists.
This was true for town plans even into the early seven-teenth
century. Only the Magistratura dei Padri del Co-
mune of the town of Genoa (responsible for town planningand port
management) is recorded as having employed aregular architetto di
camera (resident architect), some-thing that we do not nd in
records of any of the othermagistratures concerned with the civil
or military govern-ment of the Genoese state. It was the Padri del
Comunewho, in 1656, commissioned architects to draw up a
largeplanimetric map of the city.51
The making of this map was not part of the creation ofa
cadastral land register, and thus the project was not ex-tended to
other areas. In fact, up to the Napoleonic pe-riod, cadastral
information in ancien rgime Liguria wasbased on the traditional
system of descriptive evaluationthat had originated in the Middle
Ages, did not involvethe use of maps, and respected various local
styles of landsurveying techniques. One can identify interesting
casesof continuity in different areas.52
In the seventeenth century, specic government mea-sures taken in
response to the innumerable territorial dis-putes reveal
interesting discussions of the actual use ofmaps. An illuminating
example can be drawn from a verycommon form of local government
intervention, the adju-dication of woodland resources. In 1647, the
senate or-dered Giovanni Battista Baliani, the Genoese physicistwho
was a correspondent of Galileo, a conscientious ad-ministrator of
the provinces of the Genoese state, and gov-ernor of Savona, to
visit the Bosco delle Tagliate to settlea woodland ownership
dispute involving two local com-munities, Roviasca and Segno. His
instructions were pre-cise: to see the disputed woodland and
terrain for your-self and then to review or have redone those
measurementsor drawings that you think necessary.53 The purpose
wasto assign to the inhabitants of Roviasca a portion of wood-land
equivalent to that used by the inhabitants of Segno.
This case appears very similar to the dispute in whichAgostino
Abate from Savona had been involved a centuryearlier. And here
again, the local inspector was left free todecide whether to use
maps in registering the new on-sitemeasurements. However, the
extant documents in this
864 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
49. Quaini, Dalla cartograa del potere, 1819.50. Barlettaro and
Garbarino, La raccolta cartograca.51. The architects were G. B.
Garr, Stefano Scaniglia, Pietro Anto-
nio Corradi, Gio. Battista Bianco, Antonio Torriglia, Gio.
BattistaGhiso, Gio. Battista Storasio, and Gio. Battista Torriglia;
see Ennio Po-leggi and Paolo Cevini, Genova (Bari: Laterza, 1981),
13839. Poleggiclaims that the map is comparable to the rather more
famous map ofMilan by Francesco Richini.
52. This is the case, for example, with the relevaglie, which
weretypical of the areas in the Sarzana region subject to periodic
ooding bythe river Marga; see Massimo Quaini, Per la storia del
paesaggioagrario in Ligurio, Atti della Societ Ligure di Storia
Patria, n.s. 12,no. 2 (1972): 201360, esp. 23032. One might see
Ercole Spinaswork as dictated by the same requirements and needs,
even if that workwas carried on by only a few gures after Spinas
death.
53. ASG, Connium, 56 (25 October 1647).
FIG. 34.6. DETAIL OF MAP FROM ATLAS B, 1648.Photograph courtesy
of the ASG (Raccolta cartografica12681292, MS. 712).
-
54. Massimo Quaini, Le forme della Terra, Rassegna 32, no.
4(1987): 6273, esp. 63.
55. On the emergence of this corps, see Massimo Quaini, Per la
storia della cartograa a Genova e in Liguria: Formazione e ruolo
degli ingegneri-geogra nella vita della Repubblica (1656 1717),
Atti dellaSociet Ligure di Storia Patria, n.s. 24, no. 1 (1984):
21766.
case seem to reveal a greater awareness of the questions
in-volved. In fact, in his reply Baliani discussed the pros andcons
of visiting the site himself or sending qualied peopleto draw up a
map of the area:
The way to know a large area of territory is to visit itin
person; if, that is, one wants to discover its qualities,to know if
it is good or bad land, if it is cultivated and,if so, what crops
are grown there. However, if you needto view it as divisible, then
I consider it much better tosee it on a map, where with a single
glance you canmake out all the distinct parts; while if you went
ontothe terrain itself, mountains and hills would block fromview
areas that were only a short distance away. Andthis is the case
hereI am sure that if I wanted to knowthe streets of a city, I
would perform the task better intwo hours of studying a map than
two weeks of run-ning around the city. For this reason, I persuaded
theparties involved to have a map drawn up that was asaccurate as
possible.54
These thoughts, jotted down in a simple governmentdocument,
reveal the difculties that a mountainous re-gion such as Liguria
posed for both on-site inspection andcartographic representation.
At the same time, Balianialso insisted that a map was a necessary
complement torsthand visual reconnaissance. Although the map
of-fered a geometrical view of an entire homogeneous
regionconceived in two dimensions, if one wished to appreciatethe
qualities of the territorythe heterogeneous, dis-continuous, and
three-dimensional landscapersthandvisual inspection was
necessary.
From the middle of the seventeenth century, with theincreasing
centralization that was becoming a feature ofgovernment in Genoa as
elsewhere, the Republic madegreater use of its own trained
technicians, who were sentout to map particular areas. This trend
decreased the lo-cal communitys ability to represent itself; it
reversedthe tradition of cartographic information owing fromcenter
to periphery to one in which such informationowed from periphery to
center. Such a centralized pro-gram, however, necessarily required
a more efcient statecorps of engineers and topographers, something
thatwould become fully established in the Republic only dur-ing the
rst decades of the eighteenth century, due largelyto the increasing
role of military engineering.55
Corsica under Genoese Rule: An EarlyCase of Colonial
Cartography?
The case of Corsica further illustrates the anomalies in
thestructure of the Genoese state. The Genoese were undis-puted
masters of the island of Corsica from 1347 to 1729,with the
exception of the brief period of French rule(155359). However, the
Genoese authorities entrusted
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 865
FIG. 34.7. JOS CHAFRION, MAP OF LIGURIA, 1685.Carta de la Rivera
de Genova con sus verdaderos confines ycaminos.
Size of the original: ca. 88.4 196.5 cm. Photograph courtesyof
the BL (Maps K. Top. 77.55.2 TAB).
-
866 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
56. Roger Caratini, Histoire de la Corse (Paris: Bordas, 1981),
28.The same verdict occurs in more recent studies, from that in
MichelVerg-Franceschi, Histoire de Corse, Le pays de la grandeur, 2
vols.(Paris: Editions du Flin, 1996), 1:22526 (which speaks of a
beauti-ful 17th century in which Corsica is without doubt much
happier andbetter nourished than most of its contemporaries) to
that in AntoineLaurent Serpentini, La coltivatione: Gnes et la mise
en valeur agricolede la Corse au XVIIe sicle: La dcennie du plus
grand effort, 16371647 (Ajaccio: Albiana, 1999). A more complex and
nuanced judgmentis given in Antoine-Marie Graziani, La Corse
gnoise: conomie, so-cit, culture, priode moderne, 14531768
(Ajaccio: Editions AlainPiazzola, 1997).
57. Gianni De Moro, Lisola assediata: Difendere, progettare,
de-lineare nella Corsica del Cinquecento, in Corsica, 2126.
Grazianialso notes that the opinion Genoese governors and
commissioners ex-pressed with regard to the Corsicans is not very
different from the oneGenoese had of the inhabitants of the
Ligurian riviera and of the Apen-nine valleys in particular (La
Corse gnoise, 34).
58. More is said about these operations and their results (works
ofoutstanding artistic beauty) later.
59. Franck Cervoni, Image de la Corse: 120 cartes de la Corse
des origines 1831 (Ajaccio: Fondation de Corse, La Marge
dition,1989), 11.
60. Particularly Codex XXXIX, 25, in Florence, Biblioteca
MediceaLaurenzianawhich Almagi formerly attributed to Enrico
Martello,dating it around the 1470s and considering it preparatory
material forMartellos Insularium illustratum. Other copies are to
be found in theBNF and the BL; on the latter, see the summary
description in ErsilioMichel, I manoscritti del British Museum
relativi alla storia di Cor-sica, Archivio Storico di Corsica 6
(1930): 37188, esp. 37273. Theearliest printed map of Corsica is
that in Benedetto Bordone, Libro diBenedetto Bordone nel quale si
ragiona de tutte lisole del mondo, anisolario rst published in
Venice in 1528 (see pp. 27071 in this volume).
61. For a later example of nautical cartography that pays
particularattention to Corsica and its interior, see Giuseppe
Caraci, La Corsicain una carta di Vesconte Maggiolo (1511),
Archivio Storico di Corsica11 (1935): 4175.
62. This is the conclusion that Caraci reaches in La Corsica: It
hasbeen shown that, in 1511, there was a fairly large land map that
con-tained a good number of place-names relating to the interior
(p. 74).Caraci also suggests that before he left for Corsica as
bishop, [Gius-tiniani] provided himself with a map such as that by
Maggiolo, who af-ter 1519 was producing maps in Genoa for the
Republic (p. 75).
63. The Dialogo was widely read in manuscript form, and there
arevarious extant copies; see Agostino Giustiniani, Description de
la Corse,intro. and notes Antoine-Marie Graziani (Ajaccio: A.
Piazzola, 1993),quotation on 4 5. On the historical and cultural
context of Giusti-nianis work, see Cevolotto, Agostino Giustiniani,
and on the fortunesof the Dialogo in cartographic circles, see
Roberto Almagi, Cartee descrizioni della Corsica nel secolo XVI, in
Atti XII Congresso Geo-graco Italiano (Cagliari-Sassari, 1934),
289303.
all territorial authority to a private organization, theMaona di
San Giorgio (a trading company), later theBanco di San Giorgio.
It is increasingly argued that, far from being an ex-ploitative
colonial relationship, the Genoese cartographyof Corsica reects
political and economic improvementsof both the private and
subsequently the public adminis-tration of the islandthe latter
guaranteeing Corsicans150 years of social peace and relative
prosperity.56 In-deed, the evident parallels between the Corsican
situationand that on mainland Liguria have led more than onescholar
to suggest that the island be considered a thirdGenoese
riviera.57
As in Liguria, the period under discussion here culmi-nated in
more exact cartography to meet the requirementsof France as a naval
power in the wider geopolitical con-text of the Mediterranean. In
1679, well-equipped andhighly qualied French technicians started
their surveys ofthe coasts of the area and of the Ligurian coast
itself.58 Onthe whole, however, these surveys remained in secret
statearchives, which explains why, until well into the eigh-teenth
century, the received commonplace was that theprinted maps of
Corsica were hopelessly out of date. Theanonymous author of the
Histoire des rvolutions de lislede Corse (1738) was simply reecting
scholarly opinionwhen he claimed that it hasnt been long since
Corsicawas almost as unknown to us as California and Japan.59
Hence, it is no surprise that in the fteenth and
sixteenthcenturies the dominant image of the island was that
pro-vided by nautical charts and isolari. This was the case withthe
rst known map specically dedicated to Corsica,which is to be found
in some manuscripts of CristoforoBuondelmontis Liber insularum
archipelagi.60 Themap takes the outline of the island given in
nautical chartsand completes it with information about the
interior, in-cluding the mountain chain that divides the two
regionsidentied as di qua do monti (on this side of the moun-tains)
and di l da monti (on the other side of, or be-yond, the mountains)
and more than seventy-ve namedrivers and settlements.61
All of this leads one to suppose that alongside the nau-tical
charts there were various manuscript land maps ofthe island long
before Agostino Giustiniani created thenow-lost map that scholars
tend to take as having estab-lished the original model for the
depiction of the island.62
Giustiniani, whom we have discussed in the context of
hisDescrittione della Lyguria (1537), drew the map at aboutthe same
time as he wrote his Dialogo nominato Cor-sica, where he said: I
have described the Island of Cor-sica in minute detail, as
something useful to my coun-try . . . and then having rendered the
description in a clearpicture, I presented the work to the
magnicent San Gior-gio ofces.63
As bishop of Nebbio, Giustiniani visited the island
pe-riodically between 1522 and 1531. Although far from
frequent, those visits were put to good use in
collectinginformation for his detailed narrative and map. He
wasclearly aware that his work was innovative not only in itsmethod
of rsthand observation but also in the fact thathis description of
the place was to serve the administra-tive reform of the island:
The Bishop does not aim to re-count the history of Corsica . . .
but only to describe theplace as it is, to indicate the lie of the
land, with place-names and how it is now governed. This latter
point ismade even more explicitly in the dedication of the Dia-
-
64. The quotes are taken from Grazianis edition of Giustiniani,
De-scription de la Corse, 2021 and 6 7, which has nally replaced
theunreliable edition of Vincent de Caraffa, Dialogo nominato
Corsica delRmo Monsignor Agostino Justiniano vescovo di Nebbio
(Bastia, 1882),which was used by all previous scholarsoften
resulting in misleadingconclusions.
65. I do not think that Giustinianis comment on the drawing of
themap should be interpreted in a rigid chronological senseunless,
thatis, one argues (as Caraci seems to) that Giustiniani used
another map assource material for both his own map and his
Dialogo.
66. Giustiniani, Description de la Corse, 226 27.67. This small
clue again directs us more toward the Bordoni-Magini
model than the Gastaldi-Alberti model for which Almagi argues
(dis-cussed later).
68. Giustiniani, Description de la Corse, 6 7.69. As Cervoni
observes in Image de la Corse, 13. As Almagi
pointed out, there are two Gastaldi depictions of the island.
The rst istitled Lisola di Corsica, coi territor, citt et castelle
forti et aperti,monti, laghi, umi, gol, porti et isolette, ecc. . .
. Giacomo di Castaldipiamontese; fabius licinius exc. It is
undated, but denitely earlier thanthe second depiction in the 1561
edition of Italia, which is simplied insome ways but also contains
some improvements (Monumenta Italiaecartographica, 32).
70. It is part of Mercators Italiae Slavoniae et Graeciae
tabulae geo-graphicae (1589).
71. There is no independent conrmation of the visit to Corsica
thatPaolo Moneglia says that he made in his letter to Ortelius; see
AbrahamOrtelius, Abrahami Ortelii (geographi antverpiensis) et
virorvm ervdi-torvm ad evndem et ad Jacobvm Colivm Ortelianvm . . .
Epistvlae . . .(1524 1628), ed. Jan Hendrik Hessels, Ecclesiae
Londino-BatavaeArchivum, vol. 1 (1887; reprinted Osnabrck: Otto
Zeller, 1969), 68788.
72. Here I disagree with Almagi, and various other scholars of
theday, who saw the map introduced by Avanzi as the sole extant
trace ofGiustinianis lost map. Corsican historiansfrom Andr
Berthelot andF. Ceccaldi in Les cartes de la Corse de Ptolme au
XIXe sicle (Paris:E. Leroux, 1939), 8789, to Cervoni in Image de la
Corse, 13haveindicated that they believe differently.
73. In the same period, it was also made available to Ortelius
by PaoloMoneglia, who judged it more complete and accurate than the
Albertimap thatto the scandal of the Genoese commissioner Francesco
MariaGiustinianithe former opted to use; see Serpentini, La
coltivatione.
74. On this theme, and those more generally related to questions
ofterritory, see Massimo Quaini, Ingegneri e cartogra nella Corsica
ge-novese fra Seicento e Settecento, in Corsica, 27 41.
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 867
logo to Andrea Doria: I have mentioned all the cities,all the
castles, all the parish churches, all the villas, andthe quality
and business of the inhabitants . . . [becauseonly] the
consideration of these things will teach one howuseful the Island
can be to our country.64
Many details suggest that Giustiniani wrote this de-scriptive
dialog with his sketch map at hand.65 For ex-ample, in describing
the city of Bonifacio he used ametaphor that appears to have been
inspired by a map im-age: This area seems to be attached to Corsica
more byArt than by Nature herself; it is almost an island and
lookslike a round apple that in its minuteness is stuck on to
theside of Corsica.66 This description might serve as a use-ful
clue in identifying the maps that were based on the lostGiustiniani
original.67 In fact, Giustiniani himself seems tohave considered
text and image interchangeable. In hisdedication, he wrote that the
reader will see the coast ofthe Island described, practically
painted, yard by yard.68
As Giustinianis map is lost, our knowledge of the car-tographic
history of the island during the sixteenth centuryrests above all
on extant printed maps. Two models of de-velopment can be identied.
One can be traced to nauticalcharts and drawings by Gastaldi
engraved between 1555and 1560 to satisfy the curiosity aroused by
the Frenchcampaigns on the island in the period 15531559.69
This model gradually evolved into a squat and chubbyCorsica
(partly as a result of the outsized rendition of thegulfs and bays
on the eastern and, above all, westerncoasts). The ratio of width
to length of the island is about60:100 in nautical maps and 64:100
in Gastaldis maps.The printed maps following this model range from
that en-graved by Fabio Licinio in Venice around 1555 to that
at-tached to the 1567 edition of Leandro Albertis Descrit-tione di
tutta Italia by the Venetian printer LodovicoAvanzi (a map with a
ratio of 54:100, subsequentlyadopted by Abraham Ortelius in 1573
and then by Gerar-dus Mercator).70
The other model is rather more elongated, with a veryslim Capo
Corso and an almost straight eastern coast. Itmay be traced back to
the large perspective view titledCorographia Xofori de Grassis
(1598) (gs. 34.8 and34.9). As Cristoforo de Grassi was simply the
restorer ofthis painting, the proper attribution should really be
toGerolamo Bordoni, Genoas master chamberlain from1564 to 1588. As
Bordoni had no direct knowledge of the island,71 it is feasible to
argue that he used the Giusti-niani map, which must still have been
in the archives ofthe Banco di San Giorgio.72 Its outline
corresponds to theratio of width to length of the island in
Giustinianis nar-rative (43.5:100, a ratio that he presumably also
pre-served in his map). This second model made its rstprinted
appearance in Maginis Italia, having been com-municated to Magini
by Orazio Bracelli in 1597.73
The Genoese requirements for maps of Corsica werethus determined
by reforms, heralded by Agostino Giu-
stiniani and the more enlightened Corsicans themselves,that
involved the Magistrato di Corsica in undertaking acoherent program
of universal cultivation to developcoastal areas and properly
exploit the interior of the is-land.74 However, just as the drive
to develop agriculturedid not lead to the drawing of a cadastral
land registry, sothe general desire to better exploit the
territorial resourcesand improve their defenses against raiders who
tradition-ally preyed on the island did not lead to any
systematiccartographic projects.
Clues of maps that may have been made do exist. Forexample,
after a series of on-site visits, Francesco MariaGiustiniani,
commissioner for agriculture from 1639 to1645 and the Genoese
functionary most fully involved inthis project, wrote: To the best
of my ability, I have madedrawings on paper of the parishes I have
seen in this last
-
868 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
75. Serpentini, La coltivatione, 204.76. Serpentini, La
coltivatione, 201 and 203.77. See, for example, Corsica: Relatione
della qualit e stato delle
fortezze del Regno e del ume Tavignano in Aleria, by
GiovanniBernardo Veneroso, governor from 1649 to 1651. On this
relatione, seeAnna Maria Salone, La Corsica di Gio. Bernardo
Veneroso, in Studiin memoria di Teolo Ossian De Negri, III (Genoa:
Stringa, 1986), 34 55.
78. On some of these people and their work, see Jean-Marc
Olivesi,Larchitettura barocca in Corsica nei documenti dellArchivio
di Statodi Genova: 16501768, in Corsica, 1319; Quaini, Per la
storia dellacartograa; and idem, Ingegneri e cartogra nella
Corsica, passim.
79. See the description in Corsica, 101 (nos. 167 and 168).
round of visits, with the position of mountains, rivers andmain
plains, plus the location of lands, villas and farm-houses together
with the proportionate distance betweenthem, so that I can take
drawings of the rest and thus forma geographical map of the Paese
di qu da monti, beingashamed to see in Abraham Ortelius that the
map of Cor-sica is drawn any old how. It is interesting that
Giusti-niani also admitted that the maps used by the Genoese
au-thorities were limited to the main areas only, in the sameway as
in [maps of] Africa they used to give the Kingdomof the Abicini or
other suchlike unknown countries.75
To correct this situation, Giustiniani asked the Genoesesenate
for an outline of Corsica that he could ll inwith the information
he had gathered. The Portrait ofCorsica he received was not as
exact as he had expected,but he expressed condence that with this,
the map thatis in the Governors Hall and the notes I have taken
my-self it would be possible to make a map of the Regnodi qu da
monti more copious in information and per-haps more accurate than
the others.76 Such a map wasprobably never completed.
Thus, the need for an overall view of the kingdom wasstill met
by governors reports recounting visits to partic-ular sites, often
embellished with humanistic ourishes oferudition.77 The situation
here was the same as it was onthe mainland: cartographic
representations were frag-mented and produced in connection with
specic proj-ects, primarily those that required the presence of
skilled
personnel who knew how to draw plans, as in the case
offortications or other public works projects.
The dozens of hand-drawn manuscript maps accom-panying
government documents in the sixteenth and sev-enteenth centuries
were the work of a number of archi-tects, engineers, and military
ofcers already known to usfor their work on the Ligurian mainland
(e.g., DomenicoRevello, Pier Paolo Rizzio, Domenico Pelo,
BernardinoTensini, and Giovanni Battista Costanzo or families
suchas the Cantone, Bianco, Ponzello, and Scaniglia fami-lies).78
As an example of the very rare drawings by nativeCorsicans, one
might cite the 1602 plan of Porto Cardoby the ingegnere del regno
Mario Sisco from Bastia.79
Thus, the development of cartographic representationsof Corsica
parallels that of mainland Liguria. In older
FIG. 34.8. COROGRAFIA XOFORI DE GRASSIS [BOR-DONI], 1598.
Size of the original: 234 440 cm. Photograph courtesy of
theMuseo Navale di Pegli, Genoa (NIMN 3489).
-
FIG
.34
.9.
DE
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OF
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RA
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, 159
8.Si
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24
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. Ph
otog
raph
cou
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9).
-
870 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
80. Described and reproduced in Corsica, 64 67 (nos. 58 and
59).81. In Corsica, 164 and 166 (no. 350).82. In Corsica, 124 25
(no. 235) and 142 (no. 281).83. As an early example of the use of a
painter-cartographer, see the
Modello dela casa di Polidoro (1541)an effective perspective
rep-resentation of the inhabited area of Corteby a certain Pietro
SalvagoDella Chiesa, in Corsica, 169 and 172 (no. 359).
works, there was a rather geometric style, whose sparselines
were accompanied by ample captions in calligraphy.This gradually
gave way to a more mannered painterlystyle, with greater emphasis
on color. This resulted partlyfrom the growing role of
painter-cartographers, who con-sidered the more spartan geometric
style of military engi-neers old-fashioned, and partly from the
preference for aperspective rather than ground plan rendition of
citiesand fortications.
To trace this development, one might start with the two1484 city
maps of Aleria that accompanied a detailed re-port drawn up by
Nicol Todesco (g. 34.10)80 and thesimilarly small-scale 1613 map of
the parishes of Cauro,Ornano, and Telavo (Taravo) and the towns of
Istria sentto Genoa by Governor Giorgio Centurione.81 As signi-cant
end-markers one could take the anonymous pic-turesque view of the
promontory of Bonifacio (1626) sentto Genoa by Commissioner
Agostino Chiavari or the sim-plistic perspective map of the Paduli
della Padulaltadrawn by a certain Gio. Vincenzo Giacomoni, who
wassent to the area in 1668 by the Genoese government.82
As far as the content and type of maps is concerned,one sees a
preference for geographical scale primarily inthose government
documents dealing with coastal de-fenses (giving ground plan and
perspective renderings ofthe coast). The mapping of the interior of
the island ismuch more fragmentary and almost exclusively
pictorial(with a general tendency toward topographical
scale).83
A Comparative Case: Sardinia
In the most recent historical surveys of the cartography
ofSardinia,Sardinianhistorianshavestressedaquestion that,for all
their nationalism, their Corsican counterparts havenot poseda
question that arises from the fact that from
FIG. 34.10. NICOL TODESCO, CITY MAP OF ALERIA,1484. Pen sketch
in brown ink.
Size of the original: 22 31.5 cm. Photograph courtesy of theASG
(Fondo Cart. Misc. n. 253).
-
84. Isabella Zedda Macci, La forma: Lastronomo, il
geografo,lingegnere, in Imago Sardini: Cartograa storica di unisola
mediter-ranea (Cagliari: Consiglio Regionale della Sardegna, 1999),
1795,esp. 24.
85. Zedda Macci, La forma, 24 25.86. Zedda Macci recognizes that
this process started only with the
reforms in Piedmont (La forma, 25); however, the cartographic
col-lection in the Simancas Archives does not seem to have been
taken fullyinto consideration. I limit myself here to repeating
Pilonis amazementat the lack of cartographic works describing
Spanish Sardinia (Carte geo-grache della Sardegna, XII).
87. Piloni, Carte geograche della Sardegna, 5152: For the
rsttime a depiction of the interior contains the name of the
Giaraemontes; as for place-names in general, a note in the spirit
of Giusti-niani points out that all these names are new and are
currently in use(referring the reader to the Ptolemaic plate to
satisfy his taste for antiq-uities). Arquer also drew up a
topographical plan of Cagliari, which isfull of detailed and
previously-unpublished information regarding theurban structure
[and] established itself as a model which was accepteduntil the
middle of the eighteenth century; see Isabella Zedda Macci,La
conoscenza della Sardegna e del suo ambiente attraverso
levoluzionedelle rappresentazioni cartograche, Biblioteca
Francescana Sarda 4(1990): 31974, esp. 335.
88. Zedda Macci, La conoscenza della Sardegna, 335.89. Zedda
Macci, Carte e cartogra della Sardegna, 450.90. Antonello Mattone,
La cartograa: Una graca dellarretra-
tezza, in La Sardegna, 2 vols., ed. Manlio Brigaglia (Cagliari:
Edizionidella Torre, 1982), vol. 1, pt. 1, 522, esp. 13.
91. Mattone, La cartograa, 16.
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 871
the very earliest cartographic representations of the
island,right up until the end of the eighteenth century, there
areonly two signicant cases of local cartographers: Sigis-mondo
Arquer (in the sixteenth century) and GiuseppeCossu (second half of
the eighteenth century).84
The rigorously self-centered approach adopted inthe work of
Zedda Macci not only brings out new prob-lems but also raises many
doubts as to the effective valueof an entire cartographic
tradition:
There are an ample number of cartographic worksdealing with
Sardinia, but such maps were predomi-nately produced by others. As
a result, the relation be-tween Sardinians and their own territory
was mediatedby outsiders, formed within an original juxtapositionof
false synoptic pictures . . . pictures that weredrawn to a small
(or very small) scale in places and ar-eas that were substantially
unassociated with the is-land. The ear of the cartographer
prevailed over his eye;and the geography of hearsay, of
explorations inpublic and private libraries, played a much more
im-portant role than direct experience. Consequently, eru-dition
was dominant in creating the image of theislandthus perpetuating
and codifying errors in as-tronomical measurement, geographical
inaccuracies,the often negative tales told about a distant land,
andall the other commonplaces generated by the geo-graphical
literature.85
As we have seen, seventeenth-century Liguria and Corsicawere the
object of state-sponsored surveys that, to a cer-tain extent,
involved local cartographers in the creation of detailed,
large-scale maps. Such was never the case inSardinia.86
All of this makes the personal history of the most im-portant
Sardinian cartographer of the Renaissance notonly symbolic but also
powerfully moving, for instead ofbeing involved in the state
administration of his home is-land, Sigismondo Arquer, a scal
lawyer from Cagliari,ended up condemned by the Inquisition. On 4
June 1571,he was burned at the stake in the city square of Toledo
forhis collaboration with the heretic Sebastian Mnster. Inthe 1550
Latin edition of Mnsters Cosmography, thereis not only a Sardinia
brevis historia et descriptioawork that was subsequently
republished by Lodovico An-tonio Muratoribut also a map titled
Sardinia insvla,which, although clearly drawing some inspiration
fromthe Ptolemaic representation of the island, locates
manycontemporary places with their correct names inland
(g.34.11).87 Arquer was the author of both.
Even though it was incorporated in Mnsters very suc-cessful
work, Arquers map was soon forgotten and wasreplaced by the
representations of the island in the atlasesof Ortelius, Mercator,
and, above all, Magini.88 As a resultof their small scale and lack
of sources based on detailedsurveys, however, they largely failed
to improve the carto-
graphic representation of the island, a point stressed byZedda
Macci.89 Indeed, even of the Arquer map it hasrightly been observed
that though this is important as therst example of a visualization
of the island by a Sardin-ian intellectual, it still remains a
schematic sketch, of nopractical use for military or navigational
purposes.90
It is to military considerations that one must look in or-der to
see how the cartographic representations of Sar-dinia developed in
response to precise demands and re-quirementsas instruments of
defense or, more generally,as a means of exercising territorial
control. From the earlyyears of the sixteenth century, the threat
posed by theTurks and the Barbary nations of North Africa
madecoastal defense a priority; to meet this priority, rulersneeded
exact geographical knowledge of the island; theywere no longer able
to rely solely on reports and accountsdrawn up by Spanish
functionaries, no matter how well in-formed.91 The rst project for
a systematic cartographicrendition of the island seems to have been
put forwardduring the reign of Philip II. Conte dElda, viceroy of
Sar-dinia (157075), entrusted the task to Geronimo Ferra,Pintor del
Cerrio Ribera de Genoa, who was commis-sioned to produce a
description of the island noting fea-tures of interest and the
distances between them. Docu-mentary evidence of Ferras visit to
the island is found in areport to the viceroy in which Ferra
mentioned that he hadtraveled the length and breadth of the island,
at great ex-
-
872 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping
92. See Piloni, Carte geograche della Sardegna, 56.93. Zedda
Macci, La forma, 51. The comment was made in 1577.94. The
Cappellino manuscript is in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vati-
cana, Vatican City, and is published in detail in Sebastiano
Deledda, Lacarta della Sardegna di Rocco Cappellino (1577),
Archivio StoricoSardo 20 (1936): 84 121, and 21 (1939 40): 27
47.
95. Zedda Macci, La forma, 57.96. The one extant copy of the
Descripcion is in the BNF, Dparte-
ment des Cartes et Plans (Port. 8022). See the reproduction of
themap and the ample discussion of it in Piloni, Carte geograche
dellaSardegna, 8793, quotation on 89, which is essentially based on
stud-ies by Osvaldo Baldacci.
pense and risk to himself and his assistants, but the mapand
written description seem to have been lost.92
What have come down to us are the maps drawn by themilitary
engineer Rocco Cappellino of Cremona, whowas appointed in 1552 to
strengthen the defenses ofCagliari. He stayed on the island for
twenty years, and itwas during the course of his various
fortication projectsthat, dissatised with existing maps, he decided
to drawup and publish a new one: Because it seems to me thatthe
form of this said island has never been drawn as itshould be . . .
I did not want to fail to portray it in thebest possible form, in
order that people might know that
this land is not to be held in such low account and esteemas is
sometimes the case.93
Cappellinos map is known to us in three versions,which are to be
found in a manuscript accompanied by tenpartial drawings, generally
city plans, fortress groundplans, and some stretches of
coastline.94 Although neverpublished, Cappellinos worktogether with
its inherenterrors and those generated in later versions by the
lack ofclear orientation in the originalproved to be very
long-lasting, surviving in printed maps produced not only inItaly
(such as the works of Egnazio Danti and GiovanniAntonio Magini) but
also by publishers in the Netherlandsand France. His work fell into
disuse only when super-seded by the cartographic surveys of
Piedmont engineers.95
The Descripcion dela isla y reyno de Sardena has beenlinked with
Francesco de Vicos Historia general del laisla, y reyno de Sardea,
published in Barcelona in 1639.While it may well be true that the
two are connected, andthat both were Vicos splendid act of homage
to his Sov-ereign, Philip IV, the map itself is to be traced back
toSardinian circles, though one may rule out that it was ac-tually
printed in Sardinia or that it was produced by Vicohimself, whose
role seems to have been that of patron.96
There is no question that the anonymous cartographer re-vealed
direct knowledge of at least a part of Sardinian ter-ritory, and he
also gave particular care to the account ofcities and settlements,
classifying them according to sizeof population. The question of
the source material used isstill an open matter. The map
illustrates the persistence oftraditions other than those having to
do with commercialmap publishing or the work of military
engineers.
Conclusions
Cartographic activity in Liguria and Genoa and its terri-tories
provides an interesting example of a delay in thesupplementation of
textual topographic descriptions withgraphic maps. This had to do
with the persistence of themedieval methods of land administration
in the area anda lack of centralization. In the case of Genoa
itself, theform and layout of the town, squeezed between
themountains and the sea and possessing few internal vistas
FIG. 34.11. SARDINIA INSVLA BY SIGISMONDO AR-QUER, 1550.
Reproduced in Sebastian Mnsters Cosmo-graphia uniuersalis lib. VI
(Basle: Apud Henrichum Petri,1550).Size of the original: ca. 25.4
15.5 cm. Photograph courtesyof Special Collections and Rare Books,
Wilson Library, Uni-versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
-
Cartographic Activities in the Republic of Genoa, Corsica, and
Sardinia 873
and public squares, may have contributed to the lack of
aperceived need for geometrical plan view representationsof the
city and to the predominance of views of the townas seen from the
sea.
The persistence of locally motivated solutions to legaland
administrative issues involving maps, such as thoseinvolved in
boundary delineation and the apportionmentof woodland, water, and
agricultural resources, gave riseto a large number of manuscript
maps and sketches stillpreserved in local and state archives,
particularly theASG, based on rsthand observation, that now
provideuseful historical information concerning land use. In
thelate seventeenth century, the local surveyors, cartogra-phers,
and painters responsible for these images were em-ployed to produce
systematic regional surveys. The atlasof Pier Maria Gropallo
produced in 165055 is an ex-cellent case in point. This was true
not only for the im-
mediate surroundings of Genoa, but for its territory ofCorsica.
By contrast, Sardinia, under the Spanish controlof the House of
Aragon until 1708 and preoccupied withcoastal defenses, saw few
local surveys made by Sardini-ans and no systematic state surveys
during this period.
These local maps came about as a result of concretepractical
needs such as defense, navigation, trade, andeconomic exploitation
of territorial resources. Very littleof the information provided in
these maps found its wayinto the large atlas projects that included
small-scale re-gional printed maps published for the general
commercialaudience of merchants, scholars, politicians, and
states-men. This underlines the importance of the approachtaken
herefocusing on the locally produced manuscriptmaps drawn by direct
observation rather than the exter-nally produced commercial atlases
that often drew onvenerated but outdated sources.