At the Edge of Empire: Venetian Architecture in Famagusta, Cyprus
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AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE: VENETIAN ARCHITECTURE IN FAMAGUSTA, CYPRUS Allan Langdale* Abstract: This essay examines the Venetian-era architectural remains of Famagusta, Cyprus, Venice’s easternmost Mediterranean colonial outpost. Famagusta’s architectural monuments are presented as compo- nents of Venice’s policies of colonial expansionism and the strategy of stamping its possessions, even this one on the periphery of its empire, with the signifiers of Venetian domination and historical predestination. The ways in which these monuments may have been used in civic rituals, and the functions of these rituals, are also examined. The use of antique spolia and the architectural interplay with the Lusignan era gothic monuments characterize Venetian ideological tactics in Famagusta’s built environment. Also addressed is the possible influence of Giangirolamo Sanmichele, who was sent to Famagusta to renovate the city’s forti- fications. These defenses, much modified by the Venetians, are virtual textbooks of early modern military architecture. Keywords: Famagusta, Venice, Cyprus, spolia, Sanmichele, fortifications, St. Nicholas Cathedral, Lusi- gnan, Salamis, Crete. The 29 about two houres before day, we alighted at Famagusta, and after we were refreshed we went to see the towne. This is a very faire strong holde, and the strongest and greatest in the Iland. The walles are faire and new, and strongly rampired with foure principall bul- warkes, and betweene them turrions, responding to one another, these walles did the Vene- tians make.1 John Locke, English pilgrim, 1553. During the medieval and renaissance periods, when cities were usually fortified, Ven- ice’s main islands were distinctive in their openness. Once through the straits between the outer islands, which were defended by a series of forts—the Malamocco, San Pietro della Volta, San Nicoló, and Sant’Andrea—no battlements or towers marred the distinctive panorama of the city’s architectural jewels.2 Only the Arsenale was im- mured and this may have been as much to keep the industry hidden from the gaze of potential spies as it was truly defensive. The Palazzo Ducale, free of the defensive architectural vocabulary that marked its terra firma counterparts, was boldly placed at the waterfront, with the high domes of St. Mark’s hovering beyond. Venice’s confi- dence was thus expressed in the architectural facades that also made up the facade of her self-image. Urban visages were less accommodating farther afield in Venice’s maritime empire where the defensive architecture tended to be sternly monumental and decidedly utili- tarian. Manifold perils awaited Venetian traders and navy ships beyond the more se- cure waters of the northern Adriatic, including pirates, belligerent Genoese, and Ven- ice’s principal adversaries, the Ottoman Turks. The ramparts of Corfu, Nafplion in the Peloponese, and the seaport fortifications of Candia (Herakleion), Chania, and Re- thymnon on Crete, among many others, give us some indication of the types of mas- * Department of Art History and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. I thank Patricia Fortini Brown and Robert J. Williams for their suggestions during the preparation of this article. Thanks also to Michael J. K. Walsh, who helped instigate my interests in the art and architecture of Cyprus. 1 Excerpta Cypria. Materials for a History of Cyprus, ed. and trans. Claude Delaval Cobham (1908; New York 1969) 70. 2 So observed Pero Tafur, who visited Venice in the 1430s. Patricia Fortini Brown, Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (Upper Saddle River, NJ 1997) 16. Tafur also visited Cyprus, though not Famagusta, see Excerpta Cypria (n. 1 above) 31–34. Viator 41 No. 1 (2010) 155–198. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.100571. 156 ALLAN LANGDALE sive coastal defenses Venetians erected to protect their strategic ports. It is perhaps fitting that Venice’s easternmost stronghold in the eastern Mediterranean, Famagusta, Cyprus—merely 100 miles from the coast of Syria—would at the same time be one of her most spectacular bulwarks (figs. 1–2).3 When the Venetians gained control of Cy- prus in 1489 they undertook a program of modernization which would stamp the civic center, port, and fortifications with the emblems of Venetian dominion.4 This article gives an account of the Venetians’ attempt to import to this distant outpost the essen- tial architectonic signifiers of their empire. The most monumental projects involving military architecture—the ravelin, the Sea Gate and the Martinengo Bastion—will be singled out as exemplary of the Venetian’s most ambitious architectural expressions. Analysis of the triple gateway of the palace of the Proveditore, the Palazzo del Pro- veditore itself, the pair of monumental columns, and a renovated building near the cathedral (at one time a medieval grammar school) will demonstrate how the city’s center was modified to complement public ritual and hierarchize the built environment of the main square. The “Bedestan Palazzo” and “Biddulph’s Gate” will be briefly discussed and consideration will be given to the possible roles of the Venetian archi- tects Michele Sanmichele and his nephew, Giangirolamo Sanmichele, who was sent to Cyprus to oversee architectural projects. Some attention will also be given to the Ve- netians’ use of antique spolia as they endeavored to construct an image of cultural dominance and verify Venice’s inheritance of the eminence of earlier Mediterranean empires. Famagusta’s rich history and its location as a stepping stone interposed between three continents—Europe, Africa, and Asia—makes it a particularly intriguing and cosmopolitan locus at a zone of interplay between East and West, and thus it provides a challenging case study of Venice’s imperial aspirations in the eastern Mediterra- nean.5 This study is meant to complement recent scholarship on Venice’s cultural interaction with its eastern empire and its Levantine trading ventures.6 Defining and 3 Numerous publications deal with the history of Venice’s rule over Cyprus, e.g., Benjamin Arbel, Cy- prus, the Franks and Venice, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (Ashgate 2000). The principal chronicle of the era just before Venetian hegemony over Cyprus (just before and during the reign of Caterina Corner [Cornaro]) is George Boustronios, The Chronicle of George Boustronios, 1456–1489, trans. R. M. Dawkins (Victoria, Australia 1964). A useful primary source for Famagusta is Nicola de Boateriis: notaio in Fama- gosta e Venezio (1355–1365), ed. Antontio Lombardo (Venice 1973). A source for the 16th c. which deals substantially with Cyprus is the French/Italian volume of Alessandro Magno, Voyages 1557–1565, trans. Wilfred Naar, preface Alberto Tenenti (Fasano 2002). Famagusta, however, is mentioned only a few times. 4 Venice had informally controlled the island since 1473, when the Lusignan king James II died (or was assassinated, along with his infant heir), leaving his young wife Caterina Cornaro queen of Cyprus. During her reign the Venetian Senate was largely in control of her decisions. See Benjamin Arbel, “The Reign of Caterina Corner (1473–1489) as a Family Affair,” Studi Veneziani n.s. 26 (1993) 67–85. Repr. in Cyprus, the Franks and Venice (n. 3 above). 5 Cyprus, in general, presents a compellingly layered complexity with its overlapping stratigraphies of the ancient Greek and Roman, the Byzantine, medieval (Lusignan Dynasty) early modern (Venetian), and Ottoman civilizations. The last three cases representing foreign dominance—European and Turkish—over a predominantly Greek Orthodox indigenous population. Yet in each of these eras Cyprus was also charac- terized by a strong cosmopolitan flavor owing to its strategic location at the crossroads between East and West. 6 Recent attention to Venetian Crete includes, for example, Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterra- nean Colonies. Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge 2001). The art and architecture of Venetian Crete is compiled in Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti Veneti nell’Isola di Creta, 5 vols. (Venice 1908). For architec- tural interactions with the East, see Deborah Howard, Venice and the East. The Impact of the Islamic World AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE 157 analyzing the outer orbits of Venetian hegemony, where it was often challenged and under constant flux, helps us understand how Venice produced an image of security in the visual culture of even its most peripheral satellites. The colonial enterprises of Venice, moreover, offer us illuminating examples of the initial manifestations of early modern colonialization, which could help us evaluate instances of European expan- sionism in subsequent eras. While Famagusta’s military architecture was functional in an obvious and utilitar- ian way, the management of the civic space of the central square employed more re- fined visio-cultural operations. Famagusta’s main square is seen herein as a locus around which the built environment was decisively and deftly manipulated to assert Venice’s ownership, to naturalize the urban surroundings for Venetians, and to accul- turate the local population. This process of acculturation, however, while strongly motivated by a desire to import and impose the architectural signifiers of Venetian style and culture—thus also positing Venice as center, origin and mother city—is also marked by a particularly resourceful re-assignation of artifacts from local Greco-Ro- man culture. As in Venice itself, the Venetians’ use of antique spolia in Famagusta is deployed to propagate a myth