33 • Cartography in the Duchy of Savoy During the Renaissance Paola Sereno

33 • Cartography in the Duchy of Savoy during the Renaissance Paola Sereno The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries creation of cartographic representations. Such a shift in focus necessarily involves a consideration of the cultural and Today, foreign visitors entering Italy via Piedmont and institutional context in which maps were made, and one stopping off in Turin, the capital of an absolutist state important key to understanding the relation between car- throughout the entire modern period, would perhaps be tography and political power has been the study of car- amazed to see that, with the single exception of the rather tographers as professional figures. How did they choose stark and severe facade of the cathedral, the architecture their profession? What controls were exercised over their and layout of the place bear no trace of those Renaissance professional activity? How were their works circulated? models that so influenced other Italian cities. They might This contextual approach to the history of cartography at that point begin to wonder if the city had in some way in the state ruled by the House of Savoy was first adopted eradicated an entire part of its own past. However, if almost twenty years ago, with attention concentrating on these curious travelers were then to cross the baroque the Age of Enlightenment. Before its adoption, the history threshold of the palace that contains the Court Archives of cartography in Piedmont was rather scantily practiced of the old House of Savoy, and there study the maps of and nonsystematic; it was little more than a celebration the dynasty’s territories, they would find another surprise: of local achievements, in the best cases focusing exclu- the cartography of Savoy reveals the same sort of “ab- sively on “major” figures, with the attendant risks of dis- sences” as the urban fabric of Turin itself. In fact, it is torting the picture as a whole. Furthermore, it produced only a slight oversimplification to say that, as a concept, only partial explorations of specific themes that did not “the Renaissance” serves very little purpose in explaining fit together into a coherent body of research. The studies the history of Turin and the region over which it once took for granted that Savoy was peripheral to the cartog- ruled. The reason that the only trace of Renaissance ar- raphy resulting from the voyages of exploration and to chitecture in the city is a religious rather than a secular the way Renaissance geographers in other Italian cities building is that the state as such continued to be a weak were elaborating a picture of the world. The end result entity up to the second half of the sixteenth century— was the application of predefined interpretative categories that is, during the very years when the Renaissance was that tended to blind research to the very thing it was bearing its richest fruits. Similarly, this weakness of the studying. In order to correct this misinterpretation, his- central political power explains certain important char- torical studies of cartography now aim to reconstruct his- acteristics of cartography in the Duchy of Savoy in the tory not merely as a collection of episodes but as a single sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. original whole. To do this, they look at the processes at The absolutist state, which is generally considered to work in cartographic production and investigate not only have emerged around the middle of the fifteenth century, the “silences” in individual maps but also the gaps that undoubtedly played an important role in the development distinguish the history of cartography in Piedmont from of modern cartography. In its eagerness to stress the role its history elsewhere. A natural starting point for this is a played by the great voyages of geographical discovery, tra- study of context and chronology. ditional historiography has too often neglected the part One cannot overlook the attempts made by Amedeo played by political institutions. There is no doubt that VIII of Savoy (r. 1397–1434) to unify under a single dy- such voyages were of key significance, but they should be nasty the various territories of that northwestern area considered as only one factor in a much more complex and of Italy that we will, for convenience, refer to simply as nuanced story. It has been only over the last fifteen or Piedmont. His subtle diplomatic negotiations and well- twenty years—thanks to various scholars’ research into documented legislation were clearly inspired by one aim: the cartography of the Italian states—that this traditional the centralization of power and the construction of a focus has shifted away from the map as finished product modern state that could take its place on the geopolitical and toward the processes of production at work in the chessboard of northern Italy alongside the Duchy of 831 832 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping Milan and the Republic of Venice. However, his project Piedmont, where interest was focused much more on the enjoyed short-lived success, for his achievements were in production of large-scale maps—something that would part squandered by his successor and in part curtailed by remain a constant feature of cartography in the area right Filippo Maria Visconti, who was determined to reassert up to the eve of what we might call the contemporary the dominant role of Milan. If Amedeo VIII’s state had become a consolidated po- Abbreviations used in this chapter include: AST for Archivio di Stato, litical entity, it is highly likely that the history of cartog- Turin; Dizionario for Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Isti- raphy in Piedmont would have been rather different. But, tuto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960 –); Rappresentare uno stato for after his death, Piedmont entered a century in which the Rinaldo Comba and Paola Sereno, eds., Rappresentare uno stato: Carte standing of the ruling dynasty continued to decline and e cartografi degli stati sabaudi dal XVI al XVIII secolo, 2 vols. (Turin: the region itself became a battleground occupied by Allemandi, 2002); and Theatrum Sabaudiae for Luigi Firpo, ed., The- atrum Sabaudiae (Teatro degli stati del Duca di Savoia), 2 vols. (1984 – French and Spanish troops—“a chessboard on which 85), new ed., ed. Rosanna Roccia (Turin: Archivio Storico della Città di everyone plays,” to use Gian Galeazzo Visconti’s pitiless Torino, 2000). description.1 1. Paolo Brezzi, “Barbari, feudatari, comuni e signorie fino alla metà This brief outline of events serves to explain why the del secolo XVI,” in Storia del Piemonte, 2 vols. (Turin: Casanova, Renaissance “passed by” Turin and Piedmont— or, to 1960), 1:73–182, esp. 171. 2. On this subject, see Carlo Felice Capello, Studi sulla cartografia put it another way, why the region had its “renaissance” piemontese, I: Il Piemonte nella cartografia pre moderna (con partico- a century later. Recent research has shown how the pe- lare riguardo alla cartografia tolemaica) (Turin: Gheroni, 1952); Ma- riod that opened with Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy—af- rica Milanesi, “Il Piemonte sud-occidentale nelle carte del Rinasci- ter the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559—can be taken mento,” in Rappresentare uno stato, 1:11–17; Paola Sereno, “Tra as having marked a significant turning point in the his- Piemonte, Liguria e Lombardia: Dalle rappresentazioni tolemaiche del Piemonte alle prime immagini moderne,” and Paola Pressenda, “Le tory of cartography in the state of Savoy, a watershed be- carte del Piemonte di Giacomo Gastaldi,” both in Imago Italiae: La fa- tween two clearly distinct periods. brica dell’Italia nella storia della cartografia tra Medioevo ed età mo- Cartographic representations of one’s own region are derna. Realtà, immagine ed immaginazione, ed. Luciano Lago (Trieste, rightly considered one of the achievements of the Renais- 2003), 315–21 and 321–26 (this book was published simultaneously in sance, and their absence here should come as no surprise. English with identical pagination under the title Imago Italiae: The Making of Italy in the History of Cartography from the Middle Ages to The term “Piedmont” was, at the time, applied less to a the Modern Era. Reality, Image and Imagination, trans. Christopher region as such than to that western appendix of Lom- Taylor and Christopher Garwood). A review of Italian Renaissance bardy shown in the partition of Italy that dates from maps of Italy can be found in the catalog to the exhibition curated by Flavio Biondo. The depictions of what we now call Pied- Lago; see Luciano Lago, ed., Imago mundi et Italiae: La versione del mont are therefore to be looked for in the overall maps mundo e la scoperta dell’Italia nella cartografia antica (secoli X–XVI), 2 vols. (Trieste: La Mongolfiera, 1992). Among the maps of Italy that of Italy—above all, in those contained in editions of are not included in Ptolemy’s Geography, see in particular those by 2 Ptolemy’s Geography. The first printed map of the region Pietro Coppo; the most recent study of these maps is Luciano Lago and of Piedmont was produced in the workshop of Matteo Claudio Rossit, Pietro Coppo: Le “Tabvlae” (1524 –1526), 2 vols. (Tri- Pagano in 1538–39.3 It is no coincidence that this was the este: LINT, 1986). The depictions of Piedmont in Pietro Coppo’s maps year in which the emperor Charles V and the French king of Italy are discussed in Luciano Lago, “Pietro Coppo e le rappresentazioni del Piemonte nelle sue carte d’Italia,” in Rappresentare uno François I sat down to negotiate their respective spheres stato, 1:19–26 and related descriptions and illustrations, 2:21–24 (nos. of interest in Piedmont. The crisis in the Savoy state had 10 –11).

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