KRISTEN ARCHIVES

Florentine cityscapes held special significance for to City that identified itself strongly with its artistic and cultural heritage. Appearing in paintings and frescoes from the fourteenth century onward, topographical views of Florence served different purposes: loads appear in scenes from the life of Christ, others in the backgrounds of portraits, and one even overshadows the hanging figures of Savonarola in to painting of his public execution. In the City hall, or Old Palace, illustrated large-scales frescoes of Florence the history of the while Republic and subsequent Doctors conquests showing the artists' skills in surveying and representing natural and architectural topographies. One of the most impressive views of the City is an image known as the "Chain Map," attributed to Francisco Rosselli, dating between 1471-82, known only through to woodcut copy in the Kupferstichkabinett of Berlin. The accuracy and detail of the layout of the houses, palaces, and City walls to are considerable, allowing us to locate the artist' s vantage point as the tower of Mount Olive grove. Bridges, churches, and major buildings to are labeled, and the topography of the land in and around the City is rendered with variation and an illusion of three-dimensionality. Detail from Guilio Ballino, "Fiorenza," in De' designs of the most illustrious cities and fortresses of the world (Venice, 1569). The Chain Map served as to model for many views of Florence published in atlases, chronicles, and single sheet maps, including that of Ballino. Images of the City in Hartmann Schedel' s Liber Chronicarum (1493) and Sebastian Münster' s Cosmographiae universalis (1550) have the same orientation and outlines defined by the City walls and Arno River, although the number of structures has been reduced, as has the attention to architectural detail and scales. Ballino' s 1569 image reframed the view modeled on the Chain Map. As Thomas Frangenberg points out, Ballino' s Fiorenza is the first to includes numbered key to monuments, allowing the viewer to locate and identify sixty items. Above the City, to there to are two coats of arms, one with the Florentine lily and the other with the balls, or balls, of the Doctors family. The City hall (not 51) has been renamed "Palace of the Duca," referring to the Doctors Duke Cosimo de' the Doctors who moved his residence to there in 1540. Ballino' s image acknowledges Medicean rule over the City, to status that became permanent only after 1530 with the final defeat of the Republic. This reworking of the Chain Map was copied in Claudius Duchetto' s single sheet version of Fiorenza published over ten years later in 1580. Ballino' s Fiorenza "updated" the Florentine cityscape by adding three fortresses and to structure labeled Runner. The Fortress of S. Miniato (not 58), the Old Citadel (not 59), and the New Citadel (not 60) correspond to fortified complexes located along the periphery of the City. The Fortress of Saint Miniato, represented as to small extension of the church complex, had been an earthen fortification near Saint Miniato to the Mount built under the supervision of Michelangelo during the siege of 1529. Cosimo the converted it to to permanent stone fortress in 1552. The New Citadel, today known as the Fortress downstairs or Fortress of S. Giovanni, was designed by Antonio from Sangallo the Young person for Duke Alexander de' give Doctors in 1534 to protection from enemies within the City in the wake of the siege. The Runner, or Corridor (not 54) runs through the center of the City linking the Palace of Duca (not 51) with the Palace de' Pitti (not 55) across the Arno. The Corridor was to unique structure in Florence. It was literally to covered, elevated corridor that spanned blocks of the City, allowing the Doctors dukes and their entourage to walk above the crowd, even over the river. It began at the heart of the City, the Old Palace (Palace of the Duca), leading south to the Arno, turning along the riverfront and across the Old Bridge, running over the church of Is Happiness, and ending in the the Boboli Gardens adjoining the Duke' s private residence, the Pitti Palace. George Vasari constructed the Corridor in to brief five-month period in 1565 as part of the celebrations for the marriage of Francisco de' Doctors, the Duke' s son and heir, to Giovanna of Austria, cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Much of the despite Corridor is unobtrusive its extensive size and prominent location. The exterior is unadorned, punctuated by small, simple windows. When possible, the Corridor merges with the structure below it, forming, for example, the top floor of the Uffizi Gallery or the arcaded facade of Is Happiness. The Ballino view, however, presents to striking, long, arcaded zig-zag across the City center. The Corridor was one of many new urban projects commissioned by Duke Cosimo de' the Doctors. In 1546, the area between the Old Palace and the Arno was cleared, and construction began on to large U-shaped administrative structure to house the offices of the Duke' s expanding territory. Known today as the Uffizi Gallery, this huge building and adjoining public square had completely transformed the space previously occupied by medieval houses and workshops. Other projects included Vasari' s Loggia of Fish (1558; rebuilt 1567); Tasso' s New Market (1547-51); Bartolomeo Ammannati' s Saint Trinità bridge (1567-69); the expansion of the Palace Pitti and Boboli Gardens; and the erection of the granite column in the Public square of Saint Trinità, brought from Rome in 1560. The while Corridor contributed to this transformation of the urban fabric serving as to platform from which the these Duke could survey changes. Guilio Ballino, "Fiorenza," in De' designs of the most illustrious cities and fortresses of the world (Venice, 1569). Ballino' s Fiorenza does not provide to view of the City with all of the structures existing at the Time of its publication. Rather, the additions of the three fortification structures and the Corridor to were selected as most appropriate for Ballino' s collection of drawings of cities and fortresses of the world, an assemblage of City views and descriptions drawing on the tradition of bound maps and atlases by Schedel, Münster, and Bordone. Choice The of images and motifs show the book' s partiality to structures and events relating to military conquest. For example, the depiction of Siena is dominated by groups of armed troops marching through the while City in formation there is scarce trace of the large Cathedral, Field, and tower of the Public Palace. Views of modern and ancient Rome to are followed by to plan of the Castel Sant' Angel, the ancient Mausoleum of Hadrian that had served as the Pope' s main fortress. Similarly, Ballino' s Fiorenza reinforces the political and military authority symbolized in the emblems of the Ducal family with the addition of the three citadels and Corridor. The interaction of cartography, architecture, and military planning is not unique to Ballino' s work. With the advent of Cannon to warfare by the sixteenth century, architects such as Filarete, Michelangelo, and Antonio from Sangallo developed an architectural style of large, polygonal fortresses and bastions in the context of urban expansion and the defining of the ideal City. The surveying of gates, bridges, rivers, and walls used to created cartographic imagery also served to plan battles, sieges, and defenses. Within this framework, the prominence of the Corridor in Ballino' s Fiorenza reinforces the militaristic aspect of this covered passageway which provided easy and private secure access between and civic palace. Such elevated corridors had ancient and medieval precedents, the most well-known being the Short step in Rome which links the Vatican with the Castel Sant' Angel. Unlike the Short step, the Florentine Corridor has windows overlooking many areas of the City and river, which allowed the Duke to observe the activities of his citizenry and to enjoy vistas of the City over which he ruled. The Corridor was celebrated by sixteenth century writers, many of whom marvelled at the speed of its construction and the virtue of its practicality. Dubbed by Aldo Mannucci as to "street in the air (road in aere)," the Corridor was to vehicle of transport, fortification structure, and to feat of architectural engineering. In the Ballino and Duchetto views of Florence, it is rendered as to long, thin wall of arches, described by Benevolent Leonardo as to "conventional symbol, kind of aqueduct (conventional symbol, one species of aqueduct)." This form distinctly resembles that of an ancient aqueduct, known even today through ruins near Rome and southern France and similarly depicted in Ballino' s views of other cities such as Rome and Genoa. In fact, the Corridor itself, in to section along the riverbank, takes on the appearance of an aqueduct in the form of to series of open arches. Like domes, towers, walls, and gates, the arcade of an aqueduct is common in City views, as its stylized appearance is easy to portray and recognizable as to monumental architectural form based on ancient Roman constructions. Therefore This motif is to fitting signifier for such an important political structure built by to Duke who likened himself to Augustus Caesar. The conflation of formal properties of the Corridor and aqueduct structures is compounded by the coincidental location of one other urban been structure, whose existence can only be reconstructed from sixteenth century diaries and archival records. This structure was to conduit built by Cosimo to bring water from his property near the the Pitti Palace to the fountains in the Old Palace and Public square of the Lordship, including Ammannati' s Neptune Fountain. Thus, the pathway marked by the Corridor structure resembling an aqueduct in the views by Ballino and Duchetto actually was an aqueduct, though, like most, would have been underground. This aqueduct is described in archival record payments as "the aquidotto of the water de' Pitti for ducale palace" (ASF, medicee Factories, 2, cc. 101 v) and its course from the Pitti Palace over the Old Bridge to the Old Palace has been sketched onto to City map dating to around 1620 (ASF, Miscellanea of plants, n. 101). This aqueduct, built in 1555, would have been the first in Florence since antiquity and was celebrated as one of the Duke' s finest achievements as governor and provider of the City. It is doubtful that the engravers of the Ballino and Duchetto views to were to aware of the Florentine aqueduct lying under the Corridor. What is clear is that the space linking the civic and private palaces is one highly charged with different levels of utility, appropriation, and display. While fresh water flowed underground to the City from the Doctors gardens, the Duke walked above, god-like in his elevation, detachment, and surveillance. In between, the citizens of Florence carried out their business in the shops and houses of the City center and in boats and mills along the river. The arcade motif in Ballino' s and Duchetto' s view signals to the viewer that this space, via the structure labeled the Runner, is now linked to the architectural constructions of ancient and Papal Rome in to manner that acknowledges Doctors rule alongside civic identity. Acknowledgments: This research, which took place at the Newberry Library, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and the the Archives of State of Florence, was made possible by grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Graded School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. My thanks to all the participants in the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center' s 1999 "Maps and Nations" To seed, especially Jim Akerman and Kristen Block, as well as to Steve Zwicker, Snyder Maria, and William And Wallace from the Andrew Mellon Dissertation Seminar at Washington University in St. Louis