80 RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006 Figure 5. View of Tenochtitlan from Benedetto Bordone, Isolario, 10 recto. Woodcut. Photograph: courtesy of Harvard Map Collection. Uneasy reflections Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario DAVID Y. KIM Renaissance voyagers often remarked on the Tenochtitlan exclaims: “Look at the large number of similarities between Venice and cities in the New World. skiffs there! How many cargo canoes, the best for The conquistador Alonso de Hoejda, for instance, bringing in merchandise! There is no reason for missing named the city on the Maracaïbo bay the diminutive those of Venice.”4 “Venezuela” because “it is a village built on pillars, with Venetian cartographers, travelers, humanists, and bridges connecting each other, mak[ing] it look like a diplomats also demonstrated a special interest in little Venice.”1 An isolario, or “book of islands,” Tenochtitlan.5 Gaspare Contarini, the Venetian published in 1547, noted a resemblance between ambassador to the Spanish court, composed a number Venice and Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City. of dispatches informing the doge, Antonio Grimani, of The author of that book, Thomaso Porcacchi da Cortés’s arrival in Tenochtitlan. His letters concentrate Castiglione, wrote that whereas other cities were particularly on the wealth of the newly discovered founded by men, Tenochtitlan was “another Venice, lands, a subject of great interest to the Signoria. On founded by blessed God . by his very holy hand.”2 November 24, 1522, he wrote, “Hernando Cortés There was even a miniature version of Venice in this reconquered the great city of Tenochtitlan . [H]e “other Venice.” Porcacchi states that one of the islands sends back in ships a present for the emperor of pearls, surrounding Tenochtitlan, once called Cuetavaca, “is jewels and other precious things from this land, which now called Venetiola, which is a rather grand and good are worth 10,000 ducats.”6 Contarini adds, perhaps in place.”3 Expressing pride in their New World capital, an ominous tone, that the New World “promises great Spanish humanists even claimed that Tenochtitlan, while things for the future.”7 The renowned Venetian humanist resembling Venice, had surpassed the Republic in Pietro Bembo foresaw the consequences of these recent magnificence. In Francisco Cervantes de Salazar’s geographic discoveries in his Istoria Vinziana.8 He treatise on New Spain, a foreign visitor touring described the Portuguese and Spanish discovery of 1. Bruzen de la Martinière, Grand Dictionnaire géographique, 4. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and Loyal historique et critique (Paris: Les libraries associés, 1769): “Un village City of Mexico in New Spain and the Royal and Pontifical University bâti sur pilotis, dans de petities isles, avec des ponts de of Mexico as Described in the Dialogues for the Study of the Latin communication de l’une à l’autre, ce qui la lui fit regarder comme une Language Prepared by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar for Use in His petite Venize.” Cited in Frank Lestringant, Le Livre des Îles. Atlas et Classes and Printed in 1554 by Juan Pablos, ed. and trans. Minnie Récits Insulaires de la Genèse à Jules Vernes (Geneva: Droz, 2002), p. Shepard and Carlos Castaneda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 111. For a general treatment of Venice’s relation with the New World Austin, 1953), p. 57. see L’impatto della scoperta dell’America nella cultura veneziana, ed. 5. Denis Cosgrove “Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Angela Aricò (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1990). Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Imago Mundi 41(1992):83. 2. Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione, L’isole piu famose del 6. Marino Sanuto, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, 1496–1533, mondo, descritte da Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione Arentino e dall’autografo Marciano ital, cl. VII, codd. 419–477. Publicatti per cura intagliate da Girolamo Porro Padovano. Al Sereniss. Principe et di Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolo Barozzo, Guglielmo Signore Il. S. Don Giovanni d’ Austria, General della Santiss. Lega Berchet, Marco Allegri, auspice la Regia Deputazione Veneta di Storia (Venice: Simon Galignani, 1572), p. 105: “La città, e isola di Patria (Venice 1879–1902), vol. 33, col. 557: “Fernando Cortese ha Temistitan Messico, è nella provincia del Messico nella nuova Spagna, recuperato la gran citá di Temistitan, con tutti quelli paesi et provincie Mondonuovo: & tanto vien commendata per bella, bene ornata, & che vi ho mandate in nota . Manda su in queste nave un presente a ricca da tutti gli Scrittori, che non senza maraviglia vediamo un’altra l’Imperator, di perle, gioie et alter cose preciose de quell paese.” Cited Venetia nel mondo, fondata da Dio benedetto, piamente parlando; in Italian Reports on America, 1493–1522, Letters, Dispatches, and con la sua santissima mano: dove l’altre son fondata da gli huomini.” Papal Bulls, ed. G. Symcox, G. Rabitti, trans. P. Diehl (Turnhout: Cited in Lestringant (see note 1), p. 111. Brepols 2001), p. 87. 3. Porcacchi da Castiglione, (see note 2), p. 106: “Il lago d’acqua 7. Ibid., “et prometeno gran cose et intrade per l’advenir.” dolce è lungo, e stretto, & ha alcuni bei luoghi, come sono Cuetavaca, 8. Pietro Bembo, Della Istoria Viniziana (Milan: Della Società hora detta Venetiola chè assai grande & buon luogo.” Tipografica de’Classici Italiani, 1889). 82 RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006 Figure 1. Detail from Battista Agnese, Atlante Nautico, 1553. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection. new lands and trade routes as “a misfortune” to Venice, accompanying Pietro Martire d’Anghiera’s Historia de but nevertheless characterized Tenochtitlan as a l’Indie Occidentali, published in Venice in 1534, also “distinguished city, in a lake of salt water.”9 illustrates Tenochtitlan. Likewise, Giacomo Gastaldi’s Venetian interest in Tenochtitlan expressed itself Universale della parte del mondo nuovamente ritrovata visually in the form of cartographic representations. For (1556) prominently exhibits the New World capital.11 example, on Battista Agnese’s world map (1536), and Such images of the Americas entered Venetian later on his map Atlante Nautico (1553), Tenochtitlan collections, both private and public. A globe which is the largest depicted city (fig.1).10 The map included the Yucatan peninsula on its world view was once housed in the Palazzo Ducale’s Sala del Maggior 9. Ibid., p. 347: “Alla città, da cotali incomodi percossa, un male Consiglio, the meeting place of the highest Venetian non pensato da lontane genti e regioni eziandio le venne.” Ibid., p. 359: “Con que’popoli, che di sopra detti abbiamo, Messico, nella contrada Temistiana città egregia, in un laco di salsa acqua.” 10. Ibid., p. 83. 11. Ibid. Kim: Uneasy reflections 83 magistrates.12 Venetian citizens demonstrating a marked beloved in a mystical landscape of gardens and interest in the American city included Alessandro Zorzi, classical ruins. a writer known for his travel accounts of Ethiopia. Zorzi In a similar vein, the Isolario guides its reader through collected a number of documents on the New World, a wondrous voyage. Previous isolarii, such as those by most notably a bird’s eye view of Tenochtitlan.13 Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, The Venetian fascination with its New World twin were primarily concerned with the Aegean archipelago.17 was not without reason. The two cities shared a In his Isolario, Bordone extended the range of distances common urban fabric, with buildings built on water, covered by previous isle manuals, transporting the interlaced with canals and bridges. However, a deeper reader on an itinerary through the Mediterranean, examination reveals that Venice’s relationship with her Atlantic, and Indian oceans (fig. 3). Condensing the New World counterpart did not merely consist of global archipelago into the format of the book, surface comparisons. While Venetians recognized the Bordone’s Isolario conjures a sensation of virtual travel, similarities with Tenochtitlan and at times attempted to which would be impossible given the constraints of mirror their city after the newly discovered capital, they geography and notation.18 also wielded a civic rhetoric that simultaneously Of all the world’s islands depicted in the Isolario, the negated these homologies. A paradox thus ensued: only two island cities included are Venice and Venice and Tenochtitlan were thought to be like and Tenochtitlan. For his representation of Venice, Bordone unlike, similar yet fundamentally different. could have drawn from a number of city views, most notably Jacopo de’ Barbari’s monumental map of la Serenissima published in 1500.19 For his rendering of Bordone’s Isolario Tenochtitlan, Bordone modified the famed Nuremberg Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario, published in Venice in map, the first image of the New World capital to reach a 1528, best illustrates the oscillating rapport between the wide European audience (fig. 4).20 Published in 1524, two cities (fig. 2).14 A cartographer, woodcutter, and illuminator of manuscripts, Bordone was active in Venice and the Veneto between the late fifteenth and first quarter 17. Among the literature on Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber of the sixteenth centuries.15 In addition to being a prolific insularum archipelagi (1420) and Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti’s Isolario painter of miniatures, Bordone has also been linked to (1485) see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian sense of the past (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1996), pp. the design of the famous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 160–161 and Lestringant (see note 1). See also Ian R. Manners, published in 1499 by the humanist printer Aldus “Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of Manutius.16 A hybrid of antiquarian treatise and Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum romance, this lavishly illustrated book presents the Archipelagi,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, dream voyage of a young man Polifilo searching for his no.