Analysing a Veduta

Abstract

From 1668 to 1669 the Tuscan prince, Cosimo de Medicis, embarked on a journey through Spain, Portugal, Ireland, England, Netherlands, Flanders and France. If the official diary, written by Lorenzo Magalotti, includes the description of the places and characters with whom the prince contacted, the graphic records by Pier Maria Baldi, at the Laurentian Library of Florence, reveal a vision of the seventeenth-century Portuguese urban environ-ment (Lisboa; Santarém; etc.) and rural landscape (Aldeia Galega; S. Pedro de Rates, etc.). However, Baldi's vision does not correspond to an objective representation. In these vedute both data from the real sight along patterns of the author’s cultural background are projected simultaneously. At the same time the sum of different viewpoints are detected in the same veduta as well as signs, anticipating the future, stimulated by the act of drawing. Observing incongruities in the veduta’s amplitude, scale and characterization of the repre-sented sight, we depart from Santarém’s Veduta in search of the identification of the view-points, assembled in the same image, along with the represented structures in order to confront the urban reality (allowing to evaluate the city’s seventeenth-century image) with the new features introduced by Baldi (figuring out his architectural imagery). As such the poster explores drawing and projective qualities inherent to the veduta’s gen-re, especially those that combine the registration of the real environment, the inclusion of external formal references, along with the assembling of data concerning the composition of a global image of the city.