Jacopo de Barbari

JACOPE DE BARBARI (Venice, ca. 1445/1470 - Brussels, 1515/1516)
"Map of Venice", 1500.
Etching.
Measurements: 64 x 134 cm; 82 x 153 cm (frame).

Spectacular perspective view of Venice by Jacopo de Barbari in 1500, considered one of the highlights of Renaissance engraving and a feat halfway between art and cartography. The original matrices are preserved in the Correr Museum in Venice.

The work offers a detailed representation of the city at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century: every bridge, palace, street, square, 114 churches, 103 bell towers, along with thousands of windows, chimneys, boats and scenes of daily life. The plan is also animated by allegorical figures: Sephiro, Mercury and Poseidon, dominating the sky and the waters.

The commission came from Antonio Kolb, a German merchant living in Venice, who wanted to show the grandeur of the Serenissima. The result was a visual icon of the city, reproduced and admired for centuries.

Jacopo de Barbari, a painter and engraver of great originality, moved to Germany in 1500, becoming the first major Italian Renaissance artist to work in northern Europe. His production includes some thirty copper engravings and three large woodcuts that exerted a notable influence on cartography and European art of his time.

This map is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary urban views of the Renaissance, a collector's item for its historical, aesthetic and documentary value.