Unearthed: Oldest known sketch of the city of Venice
ROME: A Renaissance historian has unearthed the oldest known image of Venice dating from the 14th century, showing how even then the city of canals gripped the imagination of visitors.
Sandra Toffolo, a researcher at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, found the sketch in a manuscript describing Italian pilgrim Niccolo da Poggibonsi’s 1346-1350 voyage to Jerusalem which took him through the bustling port city.
“The discovery of this view of the city is of great importance for our understanding of images of Venice, because it shows that even from very early on, the city held great fascination for contemporaries,” Toffolo said in a statement published by Saint Andrews earlier this month.
The drawing in pen, while quite rudimentary and lacking the linear perspective which was only to be adopted in the following century during the Renaissance, shows what appears to be a crowded city with churches, palaces with parapets, canals and even gondolas.
Besides the Holy Land, da Poggibonsi’s travels also took him to Damascus in Syria and
Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt.
The manuscript was likely written shortly after his return to Italy in 1350.
A specialist in Venetian Renaissance history, Toffolo discovered the image in a library in Florence in May while working on a detailed study of Venice, due to be published this year.
Throughout history, Venice has fascinated visitors, not only for its watery mazes of islands, lagoons and canals, but for its unique architecture. Only maps and nautical charts indicating the city of Venice predate the newly discovered sketch.