Republic Of Genoa Cartography

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

L

I

GU R

IA

L i gu r i a n S e a

ME

DI

TE

RR

AN

EA

N

SE

A

TY

RR

HE

NI

AN

SE

A

Pieve di Teco

Ventimiglia

Roviasca

Segno SavonaGenoa

Levanto

CavanellaBeverino

SarzanaMagra

LericiPortovenere

Bastia

Aleria

Corte

Cauro

Bonifacio

Stura

Magr

a

Scrivia

VAL

POLCEVERA

N E B B

IO

O LT R E

G I O G OA P E N N

I

N

E

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


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


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-


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


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

E S

PIN

A,

PAR

TE

DE

LL

A L

UN

IGIA

NA

,15

92.

Thi

s m

ap i

s fr

om S

pina

s m

anus

crip

t ti

tled

L

ibro

di

pian

te e

t al

tre

dele

ttat

ioni

(a

lso

know

n as

D

iver

se p

iant

e).

Phot

ogra

ph c

ourt

esy

of t

he A

SG (

MS.

423

).

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-


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


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


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


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).


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.


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


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

TA

IL O

F PA

RT

OF

CO

RSI

CA

FR

OM

TH

EC

OR

OG

RA

FIA

XO

FOR

I D

E G

RA

SSIS

[B

OR

DO

NI]

, 159

8.Si

ze o

f th

e de

tail:

ca.

176

24

5 cm

. Ph

otog

raph

cou

rtes

y of

the

Mus

eo N

aval

e di

Peg

li, G

enoa

(N

IMN

348

9).


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.


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-


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.


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.

Documents

Republic Of Genoa Cartography