From the Center to the Periphery: Jacopo de’Barbari’s and Marin Sanudo’s Perspectives on the Venetian Mainland Territories

From the Center to the Periphery: Jacopo de’Barbari’s and Marin Sanudo’s Perspectives on the Venetian Mainland Territories

Modern scholarship has consistently praised the exquisite quality of Jacopo de’Barbari’s 1500 bird’s-eye view of Venice (see Figure 1). From a slanted perspective, the artist provides a comprehensive insight into the city as it appeared at the outset of the sixteenth century, translating an urban masterpiece into a two-dimensional artistic representation. The woodcut demonstrates remarkable cartographic skill, particularly impressive given the absence of advanced technical equipment such as modern aerial photography.
Specialists have typically concentrated on the striking portrayal of Venice, which invites viewers to wander through the lanes of the city as it appeared around 1500. This essay, however, shifts attention to the periphery, which depicts a section of the Veneto mainland. It examines how the representation captures both the physical perspective from a high vantage point, with the city in focus and the mainland receding into the background, and the conceptual distinction between the central island and the terraferma as viewed from the heart of the ruling power. To clarify both the artistic and political perceptions of the center and its periphery inherent in the woodcut, contemporary texts by the Venetian chronicler Marin Sanudo will be juxtaposed with Jacopo de’Barbari’s creation.