The drawing was discovered by expert Sandra Toffolo during her research for the publication of her book Describing the City, Describing the State. Representations of Venice and the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance, scheduled for 2020.
The sketch comes from a manuscript retracing the journey of Niccolò da Poggibonsi, an Italian pilgrim who went to Jerusalem in the 1340s. The manuscript would have been written soon after da Poggibonsi’s return to Italy in 1350. During his pilgrimage, he crossed the City of the Doges, which he took care to describe in detail as well as visually render.
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Dr Toffolo, a specialist in the history of Venice during the Renaissance, discovered the work in May 2019 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.
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Working for years on representations of Venice during the Renaissance, the specialist quickly realised, on seeing the work, that the representation of the city was prior to all those before known. This nevertheless excludes maps, the oldest of which illustrates the Serenissima and was produced by Fra Paolino, a Franciscan brother from Venice, around 1330.
The discovery of this city view has great consequences for our knowledge of depictions of Venice
A series of small pinpricks found on the original illustration suggests that the original illustration had been copied for wider distribution. This technique, formerly used in the reproduction of images, consisted in drilling a series of holes on the contours of the drawing and pouring a very fine powder, which, once passed through, transferred the features of the work to another support.
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According to Dr Toffolo, “The presence of these pinpricks is a strong indication that this city view was copied. Indeed, there are several images in manuscripts and early printed books that are clearly based on the image in the manuscript in Florence.”
Since this major discovery, Dr Toffolo has spent most of her time checking, analysing and comparing the sketch by consulting all the resources available.
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“The discovery of this city view has great consequences for our knowledge of depictions of Venice, since it shows that the city of Venice already from a very early period held a great fascination for contemporaries."
