The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of

The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Uneasy Reflections: Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone's "Isolario"
Author(s): David Y. Kim
Reviewed work(s):
Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 49/50 (Spring - Autumn, 2006), pp. 80-91
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology
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80
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006
PRIMO
X
La gran citta diTcmiftitan.
Figure 5. View of Tenochtitlan
Map Collection.
from Benedetto Bordone,
Isolario, 10 recto.Woodcut.
Photograph: courtesy of Harvard
Uneasy
reflections
Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan
Isolario
in Benedetto
Bordone's
DAVID Y.KIM
voyagers often remarked on the
between Venice and cities in the New World.
Renaissance
similarities
The conquistador Alonso de Hoejda,
for instance,
named the city on the Maraca?bo
bay the diminutive
"it is a village built on pillars, with
"Venezuela" because
it look like a
each other, mak[ing]
bridges connecting
or
little Venice."1 An isolario,
"book of islands,"
a
in
noted
resemblance
between
1547,
published
now known as Mexico
and Tenochtitlan,
City.
The author of that book, Thomaso Porcacchi da
other cities were
Castiglione, wrote that whereas
founded by men, Tenochtitlan was "another Venice,
founded by blessed God ... by his very holy hand."2
There was even a miniature version of Venice
in this
"other Venice." Porcacchi states that one of the islands
Venice
once called Cuetavaca,
"is
surrounding Tenochtitlan,
now called Venetiola, which
is a rather grand and good
place."3 Expressing pride in their New World
capital,
Spanish humanists even claimed that Tenochtitlan, while
in
had surpassed the Republic
resembling Venice,
In
Francisco
Cervantes
de
Salazar's
magnificence.
treatise on New Spain, a foreign visitor touring
1. Bruzen
historique
b?ti sur
de
laMartini?re,
Grand Dictionnaire
g?ographique,
(Paris: Les libraries associ?s,
1769): "Un village
de petities
isles, avec des ponts de
et critique
pilotis, dans
de l'une ? l'autre, ce qui la lui fit regarder comme
une
communication
in Frank Lestringant,
Le Livre des ?les. Atlas et
Cited
petite Venize."
R?cits Insulaires de la Gen?se
? Jules Vernes
(Geneva: Droz, 2002),
p.
111. For a general
treatment of Venice's
relation with the New World
see L'impatto del la scoperta dell'America
nella cultura veneziana,
ed.
(Rome: Bulzoni
Editore, 1990).
Angela Arico
2. Thomaso
Porcacchi
da Castiglione,
L'isole piu famose del
e
descritte
da Thomaso
Porcacchi
da Castiglione
Arentino
mondo,
intagliate
Signore
(Venice:
da Girolamo
II. S. Don
Porro Padovano.
Giovanni
d' Austria,
Al Sereniss.
General
della
Principe
Santiss.
et
Lega
1572), p. 105: "La citt?, e ?sola di
Galignani,
? nella provincia
Temistitan Messico,
del Messico
nella nuova Spagna,
& tanto vien commendata
Mondonuovo:
per bella, bene ornata, &
ricca da tutti gli Scrittori, che non senza maraviglia
vediamo
un'altra
Simon
Venetia
da Dio
con
dove
nel mondo,
fondata
la sua santissima mano:
benedetto,
p?amente
parlando;
Pa?tre son fondata da gli huomini."
in Lestringant
Cited
(see note 1), p. 111.
3. Porcacchi
da Castiglione,
(see note 2), p. 106: "Il lago d'acqua
lungo, e stretto, & ha alcuni bei luoghi, corne
hora detta Venetiola
ch? assai grande & buon
luogo."
dolce
?
sono Cuetavaca,
exclaims:
"Look at the large number of
Tenochtitlan
skiffs there! How many cargo canoes,
the best for
inmerchandise!
There is no reason for missing
bringing
those of Venice."4
Venetian cartographers,
travelers, humanists, and
a special interest in
diplomats also demonstrated
the Venetian
Tenochtitlan.5
Gaspare Contarini,
a number
to the Spanish court, composed
ambassador
of dispatches
the
Antonio
of
Grimani,
informing
doge,
His letters concentrate
arrival inTenochtitlan.
on
the
of
the
wealth
particularly
newly discovered
a
to
of
interest
the Signoria. On
lands,
great
subject
November
he
"Hernando
Cort?s
wrote,
24, 1522,
. . . [H]e
the
of
Tenochtitlan
great city
reconquered
sends back in ships a present for the emperor of pearls,
jewels and other precious things from this land, which
are worth
in
10,000 ducats."6 Contarini adds, perhaps
an ominous
New
that
the
World
tone,
"promises great
humanist
things for the future."7 The renowned Venetian
Pietro Bembo foresaw the consequences
of these recent
in his Istoria Vinziana.8 He
discoveries
geographic
Cort?s's
described
4.
the Portuguese
Francisco
and Spanish
discovery
of
Cervantes
de Salazar, Life in the Imperial and Loyal
Spain and the Royal and Pontifical
University
in the Dialogues
for the Study of the Latin
de Salazar
for Use in His
by Francisco Cervantes
in 1554
by Juan Pablos, ed. and trans. Minnie
in New
City of Mexico
as Described
of Mexico
Language Prepared
and Printed
Classes
of Texas Press,
(Austin: University
Shepard and Carlos Casta?eda
Austin,
1953), p. 57.
5. Denis Cosgrove
Culture and
"Mapping New Worlds:
in Sixteenth-Century
Cartography
6. Marino
San uto, /Diarii
41(1992):83.
Imago Mundi
San uto, 1496-1533,
dal ?'aut?grafo Marciano
Publicatti
ital, cl. Vil, codd. 419-477.
per cura
di Rinaldo
Fulin, Federico
Stefani, Nicolo
Barozzo,
Guglielmo
Venice,"
di Marino
la Regia Deputazione
V?neta di Storia
Berchet, Marco Allegri,
auspice
Patria (Venice 1879-1902),
vol. 33, col. 557: "Fernando C?rtese
ha
con tutti
la gran cita di Temistitan,
recuperate
quelli paesi et provincie
su in queste nave un presente
in nota . . .Manda
a
che vi ho mandate
de quell paese." Cited
l'Imperator, di perle, gioie et alter cose preci?se
in Italian Reports on America,
and
1493-1522,
Letters, Dispatches,
trans.
ed.
G.
G.
P.
Diehl
(Turnhout:
Bulls,
Rabitti,
Papal
Symcox,
p. 87.
Brepols2001),
7.
Ibid., "et prometeno
gran cose et intrade per I'advenir."
Pietro Bembo, Delia
Istoria Viniziana
(Milan: Delia Societ?
de'Classici
1889).
Italiani,
Tipogr?fica
8.
82
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN
2006
:-^^?;H
Figure 1. Detail from Battista Agnese, Atlante N?utico,
1553. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.
new lands and trade routes as "a misfortune"
to Venice,
as a
but nevertheless
Tenochtitlan
characterized
city, in a lake of salt water."9
"distinguished
Venetian
interest inTenochtitlan
itself
expressed
in
the
form
of
For
visually
representations.
cartographic
on
Battista
world
and
map (1536),
example,
Agnese's
later on his map Atlante N?utico
(1553), Tenochtitlan
is the largest depicted
city
(fig.1 ).10 The map
un maie
9. Ibid., p. 347: "Alla citt?, da cotali
incomodi percossa,
non pensato
da lontane genti e regioni eziandio
le venne."
Ibid., p.
359: "Con que'popoli,
che di sopra detti abbiamo, Messico,
nella
contrada
10.
Temistiana
Ibid., p. 83.
citt? egregia,
in un
Pietro Martire d'Anghiera's Historia de
accompanying
inVenice
llndie Occidentali,
in 1534, also
published
illustrates Tenochtitlan.
Gastaldi's
Giacomo
Likewise,
nuovamente
Universale
d?lia parte del mondo
ritrovata
exhibits the New World capital.11
(1556) prominently
Such images of the Americas
entered Venetian
both
and
collections,
private
public. A globe which
included the Yucatan peninsula on itsworld view was
once housed
in the Palazzo Ducale's
Sala del Maggior
the
of
the
meeting
place
Consiglio,
highest Venetian
laco di salsa acqua."
11.
Ibid.
Kim: Uneasy
a marked
magistrates.12 Venetian citizens demonstrating
interest in the American
included
Alessandro
Zorzi,
city
a writer known for his travel accounts of
Ethiopia. Zorzi
a number of documents
on the New World,
collected
notably a bird's eye view of Tenochtitlan.13
twin
The Venetian
fascination with
its New World
was not without
reason. The two cities shared a
common
urban fabric, with buildings built on water,
a deeper
interlaced with canals and bridges. However,
most
examination
that Venice's
relationship with her
not
did
counterpart
merely consist of
surface comparisons. While Venetians
the
recognized
to
similarities with Tenochtitlan
and at times attempted
reveals
New World
mirror
their city after the newly discovered
capital, they
a civic rhetoric that simultaneously
A paradox thus ensued:
negated these homologies.
Venice and Tenochtitlan were thought to be like and
also wielded
similar yet fundamentally
unlike,
Bordone's
different.
Isolario
inVenice
Benedetto Bordone's
in
Isolario, published
the
1528, best illustrates the oscillating
rapport between
two cities (fig. 2).14 A cartographer, woodcutter,
and
illuminator of manuscripts,
Bordone was active inVenice
and the V?neto between
the late fifteenth and first quarter
In addition to being a prolific
of the sixteenth centuries.15
Bordone has also been linked to
painter of miniatures,
the design of the famous Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili,
in 1499 by the humanist printer Aldus
published
A hybrid of antiquarian
treatise and
romance, this lavishly illustrated book presents the
dream voyage of a young man Polifilo searching for his
Manutius.16
in a mystical
landscape of gardens and
ruins.
classical
In a similar vein, the Isolario guides
its reader through
a wondrous
as those by
Previous
such
isolarii,
voyage.
Cristoforo Buondelmonti
and Bartolomeo
dalli Sonetti,
were primarily concerned with the
Aegean archipelago.17
In his Isolario, Bordone extended
the range of distances
beloved
covered
isle manuals,
by previous
transporting the
on
an
reader
itinerary through the Mediterranean,
the
Atlantic, and Indian oceans
(fig. 3). Condensing
into the format of the book,
global archipelago
Bordone's
Isolario conjures a sensation of virtual travel,
which would be impossible given the constraints of
geography and notation.18
in the Isolario, the
Of all the world's
islands depicted
are
two
island
cities
included
Venice
and
only
For his representation of Venice, Bordone
Tenochtitlan.
could have drawn from a number of city views, most
map of la
notably Jacopo de' Barbari's monumental
Serenissima
in
For
1500.19
his
published
rendering of
Bordone
modified
the
famed
Tenochtitlan,
Nuremberg
map, the first image of the New World capital to reach a
wide European audience
in 1524,
(fig. 4).20 Published
17. Among
the literature on Cristoforo
Buondelmonti's
Liber
insularum archipelagi
dal Ii Sonetti's
Isolario
(1420) and Bartolomeo
The Venetian
(1485) see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity:
sense of the past (Yale University
Press: New Haven,
1996), pp.
160-161
and
"Constructing
13.
For a brief biography
circa 1400-1524
Itineraries
in
storia del la geograf?a
1882), p.164.
on Zorzi, see
and references
Ethiopian
those Collected
Including
by Alessandro
sulla
(see note 1). See also Ian R. Manners,
Lestringant
the Image of a City: The Representation
of
in Christopher
Liber Insularum
Buondelmonti's
Constantinople
of the Association
Annals
of American
Archipelagi,"
Geographers
no. 1 (1997):72-102.
18. See Tom Conley,
"Virtual Reality and the Isolario," Annali
d'ltalianistica
e
12. Studi biografici
bibliografici
Italia, vol. II (Rome: Societ? Geogr?fica,
83
reflections
19.
87,
14 (1996):121-130.
See
of Venice: Map
Juergen Schulz,
"Jacopo de'Barbari'sView
the
Year 1500,"
before
City Views and Moralized
Making,
Geography
The Art Bulletin 60 (1978):425-474.
20. The attribution
is still contested.
of the map
An indigenous
at Venice
in the Years 1519-24,
ed. O. G. S. Crawford
Press, Cambridge,
1958), p. 24.
University
(Cambridge:
14. Bendetto
Libro di Benedetto
Bordone
nel quale si
Bordone,
con li lor nomi antichi e moderni,
ragiona da tutte l'isole del mondo
historie e favole, & modi del loro vi ver? & in quai parte del mare
e clima
stanno & in quai parallelo
(Venice: Nicolo
giacciono
Culhua-Mexican
in 1534, 1540, and
1528). Later editions were published
d'Aristotile,
1547. For a bibliographic
note on Bordone's work see the preface by
Eco in Benedetto
Umberto
Isolario (Torino: Les belles
Bordone,
lettres,
map,
in Circa
of Mexico,"
1492: Art in the Age of Exploration,
ed. Jay Levenson
National
of Art; New Haven:
(Washington:
Gallery
It should be noted that Bordone
Yale University
Press, 1992), p. 572.
Zorzi
2000).
15.
See Helena
friend: Aldine
octavos
K. Sz?pe,
"The book as companion,
the author as
illuminated
Benedetto
Word &
Bordone,"
by
Image 11 (1995):77-99.
16. For this attribution,
and Cartography
Miniator,
Mundi
48
(1996):65-92.
see Lilian
"Benedetto
Bordone,
Armstrong,
in Early Sixteenth-Century
Venice,"
Imago
the Aztec
Sources
is argued by Barbara Mundy,
"Mapping
1524 Nuremberg
Its
Map of Tenochtitlan,
50 (1998):11-33.
An argument
Imago Mundi
use of the
tradition can be found
European mappa mundi
attribution
Capital: The
and Meanings,"
for the map's
in Emily Godbey,
and
"The New World
Itinerario
Tenochtitlan,"
the Tenochtitlan
Seen
19 (1995):53-81.
see Jean Michel
as the Old:
The 1524 Map of
on
For further bibliography
"Map of Tenochtitlan
Massing,
the Gulf
Cort?s's
letter as a source for his commentary
employs
Bordone
alters the text, removing
sections
However,
as well
interactions
between
Cort?s and Montezuma
arduous
journey
conquistador's
reciting
place
on Tenochtitlan.
recounting
as Cort?s's
toward
heroic
names
the capital. Absent of the Spanish
a verbal
text becomes
narrative, Bordone's
and geographic
features of the New World.
the
atlas,
84
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006
Figure 2. Title page of Benedetto Bordone, Isolario (Venice, 1547).
Woodcut. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.
this map accompanied
the Latin edition of Hern?n
Cort?s's Second Letter narrating his New World
Bordone encountered
the map either
conquest.21
or
this
edition
through
Nuremberg
through its Italian
translation
21.
Narratio,
published
Preclara
Ferdinadi.
Nuremberg
1524.
inVenice
Cortesii
six months
de Nova
maris
For a list of sixteenth-
later.22
Oceani
Hyspania
and early
of the 1524 Nuremberg
map of
seventeenth-century
publications
see Mundy
(note 20), p. 32.
Tenochtitlan,
22. La preclara Narratione
C?rtese del la Nuova
di Ferdinando
Ispagna
del Mare
Oc?ano
(Venice:
Bernardino
It is important to emphasize,
that Bordone
however,
sources for his
did not simply replicate his cartographic
Isolario. Playing one map off the other, the artist's
a series of visual
establishes
representation
homologies
between Venice and her New World counterpart
(figs. 5
and 6).23 Both cities are set in enclosed
lagoons. Though
in reality, the
distorted from their appearance
de Viano,
1524).
23. Mario
sulla
Sartor
trasformazione
(Reggio Calabria:
e documenti
in his La citt? e la conquista:
mappa
e territoriale nell'America
centrale del 500
urbana
Casa
del
libro,
1981)
briefly
comments
on
the
Kim: Uneasy
reflections
85
LIBRO
JelorofalmaooM fcoo cwcfcoBMtt6c,?flffqM?k
mjptt fe h mnBOdoyae
?jcuno tuotDOyHKirdd tempo encepa
loto tMnJimo?cotteflecoflttoyf<
tiolfifejtMBonti'Je twttftrn cu Queue cstxfBCwooo k loe iHttt.fi dueoctattow
Figure 3. Caribbean islands from Benedetto Bordone, Isolario, 18
verso. Woodcut. Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.
land acts as a frame, offering the viewer
surrounding
also
similar vistas of the cities. Venice and Tenochtitlan
same
of
method
the
organization.
display
Outlying
islands depart from a main urban cluster. In addition,
both cities exhibit a dense urban texture. Blocks of
houses and other buildings are tightly grouped together,
imparting a sense of teeming habitation. The upper and
similarities
confronti
between
con
cui condivide
Venice
la mappa
non
pochi
See p. 92, note 46: "La si
con
nel medismo
volume
presente
le due insieme."
formali; ed ancora
and Tenochtitlan.
di Venezia
aspetti
also mimic one
lower ridges of Venice and Tenochtitlan
same
contours.
the
another, following
meandering
T-O
the
the
format
of
Nuremberg map,
Dissolving
rigid
Bordone seems to have employed Venice's urban form to
Likewise, the
shape his representation of Tenochtitlan.
view of Venice seems to borrow the format of enclosure
within a lagoon from Tenochtitlan.
By means of these
a visual and
enacts
Bordone
similarities,
cartographic
semantic counterpoint
between Venice and Tenochtitlan.
In addition
His text, in fact, emphasizes
these analogies.
narrator
to Tenochtitlan's
the
and
gates,
bridges, canals,
86
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN 2006
Figure 4. Map of Tenochtitlan. Hern?n Cort?s, Second Letter to Charles V (Nuremberg, 1524). Woodcut.
Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection.
that "there are . . .many other things that make
like Venice/'24
however, coexist with the striking
Discrepancies,
in the cities' urban layout. Unlike Venice,
similarities
Tenochtitlan
is provided with a clearly defined center.
declares
this city
Dedicated
to the Culhua-Mexican
gods,
served as the sacred precinct where
religious rites,
including human sacrifice and heart extraction,
this central precinct
is an idol
occurred.25
Emphasizing
arms assuming a cruciform posture.
with outstretched
Departing
from the template
of the Nuremberg
map,
the
this plaza
coline
separate, & nel
ripieni, & il piano ? da quelli per alchune
fine questi
da uno stretto piano, & con barche
laghi sono congionto
alla detta citta, & ville si conducono
& il lago salso, cresca
gl'huomini,
& scema, corne fa ilmare & la citt? di Temistitan
siede nel salso."
falsa
24.
(see note 14), 7v: "Ce ne sono anchora di molti altri
in acqua,
la citta corne Venetia,
la provincia
? tutta
posta
& la pianura ? de circoito di miglia
da monti grandissimi,
nella quale sono duoi
ducent'ottanta,
laghi postri,
liquali una
parte ne occupano,
grandissima
percio che questi
laghi hanno di
Bordone
per esser
circondata
circoito
dintorno
cento
miglia,
&
l'uno ? d'acqua
dolce,
&
l'altro ? di
25.
one
The Culhua-Mexica
dedicated
other
16-20.
on this site,
two temple pyramids
and water god Tlaloc,
the
See Mundy
(note 20), pp.
Huitzilopochtli.
to the ancient
to the tribal deity
erected
agricultural
Kim: Uneasy
reflections
87
S EC O N D O
Figure 6. View of Venice,
from Benedetto Bordone,
Isolario, 29 verso, 30 recto.Woodcut.
Photograph: Courtesy of Harvard Map
Collection.
avenues mirror the idol's rectilinear
city's perpendicular
As
will
be
explored below, such a visual gesture
shape.
draws a meaningful
between
this pagan
equivalence
idol and the moral character of the New World city.
Venice, by contrast, has no clearly defined center.
and Lido encircle the
Instead, islands such as Chioggia
city. These floating satellites are, in fact, named with
La Certosa, Santa Spirito, and
churches: Santa Mich?le,
a pagan religious
inTenochtitlan
Santa Chiara. Whereas
defines
the
urban
center, Venice, without a focal
symbol
is
surrounded
island
churches forming a holy
point,
by
corona. The notion of conceiving Venice as inviolate
and virginal, suggested by Bordone's map, was often
and foreigners alike. For
Venetian patrician
that his city "for a certain
. . .was
and opportune
position
by
novelty of placement
itself the only form in all the universe so miraculously
disposed."26 A century earlier, the Spanish traveler Pero
Tafur commented
that even "if the whole world came up
Venetians
could sink a ship . . . and
the
the
against
city,
upon by Venetians
the
instance,
sixteenth-century
Marcantonio
Sabellico wrote
remarked
Del Sitio di Venezia
(Venice
1502), ed.
Sabellico,
(Venice: Stamperia
1957), p. 10. Cited
gi? Zanetti,
Meneghetti
Venice
in Patricia Fortini Brown, Art and Life in Renaissance
(New
York: Harry N. Abrams,
1997), p. 15.
26. Marcantonio
Gildo
88
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN
2006
be safe."27 The humanist Alvise Cornaro proposed a plan
in order "to
to renovate the Bacino of San Marco
of
dear
the
my
preserve
patria and the name of
virginity
the Queen
of the sea."28 In another treatise on the
"immaculate
lago," Cornaro referred to Venice's
of
his
God."29
city "holy daughter
virginity," calling
Father
above
Bonifazio de'Pitati's triptych Cod the
to
the myth that Venice
Piazza San Marco
(1544) alludes
on
was founded
the day of the Annunciation,
thereby
"santo
with the Virgin.30
the city's connection
declaring
of the two cities thus poses
Bordone's
representation
as an aggressively
a paradox. Tenochtitlan
is depicted
shows herself, almost
pagan city, whereas Venice
as
the
Christian
defensively,
Republic. Tenochtitlan's
in
urban layout, however, finds a counterpart
wondrous
Venice herself. The two maps thus bring together an
in the unified scheme of
unlikely pair of twins, reflecting
of
both likeness and
the book contradictory
aspects
otherness.
"mimesis and alterity," as one
was
not unique to the Venetians.31
scholar
it,
the
for instance, recognized
The Spanish conquistadors,
As
in
the
themselves.
"otherness" of the New World
and Counter-Reformation
upheavals of the Reformation
not
unfolded,
applicable
idolatry became an accusation
toppled
only to the Indian. Just as the conquistadors
Aztec devotional
images, so too did Catholics witness
in the tumult
of their own sacred objects
the destruction
The tension
between
has termed
27.
Pero Tafur, Travels
London:
Broadway
note 26), p. 10.
28. Document
1453-39
and Adventures,
Travellers,
1926),
pp.
156-172.
(New York and
in Brown
(see
Cited
on the San Marco
Basin, Archivo
by Alvise Cornaro
busta 986, filza 4, cc.
"Savi ed Esecutori alle Acque,"
Stato Venezia,
la
ilmodo,
che vi ? per conservare
dimostrato
23-25:
"Havendo
cara patria, et il nome di Reina del mare, che
virginit? a questa mia
in
lo suo porto, e la sua laguna." Cited
mode
? con conservare
trans. Jessica Levine
and the Renaissance,
Manfredo
Tafuri, Venice
Dalla
percezione
alia descrizione
1999), p.
30. Brown
26), pp. 91-92.
and Alterity:
Taussig, Mimesis
1993).
(New York: Routledge,
31. Michael
the Senses
History
of
On
"In this case," Focher
necessity.
the Christian to eat the meat of
or not it has been dedicated
to
on such scenarios demonstrate
inwhich
vexing circumstances
See Thomas
discourses
B. F. Cummins
of
idolatry,
to
"it is permitted
writes,
a dead human, whether
the devil."37 Ruminations
just a sampling of the
New World
"To serve man:
and cannibalism,"
otherness
Pre-Columbian
RES 42
art,
(2002):
109-130.
33.
(see note
A Particular
several documented
occasions,
crewmates
to
their
Spanish conquistadors
ingested
In 1527 Alvar
survive shipwrecks and abandonment.
to return to Mexico
N??ez Cabeza de Vaca, attempting
a
came across
in
after
Florida,
City
enduring
shipwreck
in a ranch on
the remains of "five Christians who were
Indian practice.
West
(Venice: Marsilio,
a
a
of
the Aztec consummation
shared practice. Describing
human flesh, the historian Pietro Martire d'Anghiera
wrote: "The wylde and myschevous
people called
were
or
to eat
accustomed
caribes whiche
Cannibales
.
.
.
mannes
flesshe
molest
them excedyngly
invadynge
theyr countrey, takynge them captive, kylling and eating
them."33 Cannibalism,
however, was not an exclusively
32.
il
179.
iconoclasm.32 Thus, Aztec
European
idolatry
veneration
of images could be seen and,
accused as being one and the same.
These parallels at times reached improbable
extremes.
In certain situations, even cannibalism,
ritual synonymous with the New World,
became
Western
The MIT Press, 1989), pp. 159-160.
(Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Trattato di Acque
29. Alvise Cornaro,
(Radova, 1560), 3r-3v:
"Eternamente
per esser sempre
questo
lago si conservera,
sacrosanta
di questa
immaculate
Custode
dell'
verginit?
vigilantissimo
inVincenzo
"Modelli per la Laguna di
Fontana,
figlioula di Dio." Cited
e Girolamo
in Renzo Zorzi, ed.,
Venezia.
Alvise Cornaro
Fracastoro,"
// paesaggio:
and Catholic
indeed, were
the coast, and who came to such extremity that they ate
each other, until only one was
left, who being alone had
no one else to eat."34 Furthermore,
for
the endorsement
the Spanish to eat human flesh can be found in Juan
Focher's Itinerarium Catholicum
(1574), a treatise
interaction
between missionaries
the
proper
discussing
"In effect,
and Indians.35 At one point Focher comments:
are
in
Genesis
human
but
there
God prohibited
meat,
in
two occasions
which
it is permitted."36 Focher's first
case concerns
of human flesh for
the consumption
alludes to the scene
The
second
medicinal
purposes.
a
situation of extreme
de
Cabeza
witnessed
Vaca,
by
reflections
Uneasy
of Northern
or
of the Newe Worlde
The decades
d'Anghiera,
folio 3. Cited
(New York: Readex Microprint,
1955[1555]),
of the
116. Cummins
mentions
that this 1555 translation
Pietro Martire
India
in ibid., p.
would
work
Shakespeare's
34. N?nez
eventually
Caliban.
serve
as the material
that
inspired
de Vaca, Naufragios
Cabeza
(1542) (Madrid: C?tedra,
in Cummins
(see note 32), p. 120.
1998). Cited
35. Juan Focher, Itinerarium catholicum
Spanish
profiscentiurn,
referentes
trans. Antonio
de Libros y Documentos
(Colecci?n
Eguiluz
Liberia General Victoriano
vol. XXII, Madrid;
de Am?rica,
la Historia
in Cummins
(see note 32), pp. 119-120.
1960). Cited
Suarez,
36.
37.
Ibid., pp. 312-313.
Ibid.
a
Kim: Uneasy
that the Republic should develop an
urban infrastructure similar to those shown in Bordone's
Fracastoro was
illustration of the New World metropolis.
located in the European self. The Spanish
these symmetries between
struggled to overlook
and the Indian. Implementing a policy of
themselves
could
recommended
be
evangelization
the New World
resemblance,
of
idol destruction,
the conquerors
to
avoid
the
sought
image of
disturbing
to separate otherness
from likeness.
and
network of
particularly entranced by Tenochtitlan's
canals bringing fresh water to the heart of the city. In
addition, Alvise Cornaro's previously mentioned
renovation of the Bacino of San Marco
included a
in the piazza of San
of "fresh flowing water"
in part from
Cornaro's fountain concept derives
Tenochtitlan's
rectilinear canalization
bringing water
fountain
An ?dealcity
Marco.42
not only
of Tenochtitlan
Bordone's
representation
a
on
statements
direct
based
(Venice is
posits
paradox
or not like Tenochtitlan): The map of
like Tenochtitlan
in a hypothetical mode,
Tenochtitlan
also operates
and damning
vision
both
prophetic
dispensing
It shows what Venice should and should not
exhortation.
in its
become. On one hand, Tenochtitlan
represented
form the ?deal city. Its straight lines and
to the Utopian
causeways
uncannily
corresponded
schemes devised by Filarete and Francesco Giorgio di
in
Martini.38 As the Spanish visitor to Tenochtitlan
architectural
wide
"How the view of this street
treatise exclaimed,
the mind and refreshes the eyes! How long it
exhilarates
is, how wide! How straight, how level it is!"39 It has
even been proposed
served as the
that Tenochtitlan
Salazar's
model
for D?rer's
scheme
of the well-defended
ideal
underricht zur
in his treatise Etliche
city, as represented
der
Schloss und Flecken.40
Stett,
befestigung
that Tenochtitlan
too, acknowledged
Venetians,
exhibited
features of the ideal city. They thought of
into the New.
their world,
transforming the Old World,
Fracastoro proposed
Indeed, the humanist Girolamo
Venice become a new "Themestitan."41 He
from a river into the barrio of Mexico.43
Such projects
from
the
New
World
urban
inspired
design were not
restricted to the sixteenth century. Later thinkers in the
a pedestrian
seventeenth
century thought of developing
to Murano,
similar to the network
linking Venice
to
Tenochtitlan
the
linking
surrounding mainland.44
Such projects for urban renewal not only fulfilled
Venice's need for practical amenities;
these schemes
also transported the wonder of the New World directly
to Venice,
thus reinforcing the notion of Venice as
bridge
alter, another world.45 After stating his
to model herself after Tenochtitlan,
proposals for Venice
Fracastoro declared
that if such a plan were
mundus
"the most
implemented, Venice would become
one could
that
beautiful, the most commodious
city
a
such
"not
would
Moreover,
city
only be
imagine."46
... itwould be called the
inhabited eternally,
happiness
and elected of God."47 Envisioning his grand urban
likewise exclaimed,
projects for Venice, Alvise Cornaro
that
42. Document
Basin. Archivo
by Alvise Cornaro on the San Marco
Stato Venezia,
"Savi ed Esecutori aile Acque,"
busta 986, filza 4, ce.
23-25:
"et oltra tale bello edificio
che molto ornera
la Citt? se potr?
condurvi
the vast
38. Among
literature on Renaissance
see
ideas of utopia,
on
Form and Meaning:
the
Essays
in Robert Klein,
the insightful essay
Renaissance
and Modern
Art, trans. Madeleine
Princeton
(Princeton:
Press, 1981).
University
39.
Salazar
40.
Edwin W.
Journal
de
(see note 4), p. 38.
Palm, "Tenochtitlan
la Soci?t?
des Am?ricanistes
Jay and
Leon Wieseltier
la cuidad
40
ideal de D?rer,"
(1951 ):59-66.
Massing,
Girolamo
lagune di Venezia,
(Venice: Tipograf?a
cose si potria fare,
cosl ?Themistitna,
per li quali
quelle,
parte da essere
model
for Venice,
p.
152.
Lettera di Girlamo
Fracastoro
sulle
Fracastoro,
ora per la prima volta
ed illustrate
pubblicata
"E qui una d?lie due
di Alvisopoli,
1815), pp. 9-10:
ovver
tutte
tra li argini, e
le
valli
allagar
predette
ovvero
non le
allagar tutte, ma far canali per
e lasciarne
li rai delli fiumi si potessero
condurre,
as a
cultivata." On the urban layout of Tenochtitlan
see Cosgrove
(note 5), p. 83 and Tafuri
(note 28),
una
f?cilmente
diversi
luoghi di essa,
note 28), pp. 159-160.
43.
Ibid., p. 153.
for a fountain
scheme
central
y
Palm's argument,
however,
disputes
stating that symmetrical
layout of
the Greek military
could have been
camp, as described
by Polybius,
the source for Diirer's conception
of the ideal city. See Massing
(note
20), p. 572.
41.
89
reflections
Italian tradition
fontana
oltra
di acqua dolce viva, e pura, et in
in Tafuri (see
di S. Marco."
Cited
la piazza
It should
out that Cornaro's
also be pointed
in the heart of Venice
has parallels with the
of civic fountains. Among
the literature on this
see Christer
Bruun and Ari Saastamoinen,
eds., Technology,
to the Renaissance
From Frontinus
and Beyond
Ideology, Water:
(Rome: Institutum Romanum
2003).
Finlandiae,
44. Vincenzo
"Un Progetto mai realizzato
di fine
Fontana,
a Murano,"
Venezia
seicento
Bolletino
per collegare
pedonalmente
theme,
Musei
C?vico
45.
Seniles
The
Veneziani
term
IX. Cited
dei
4 (1978):93-98.
is Francesco
in Brown
Petrarch's.
See his Familiares
XXIII, 16;
(see note
26) p. 9.
si rimoveria
e all'altro
e si
"e all'un modo,
la malizia
dell'aere,
la pi? amena citt? che si potesse
la pi? bella,
talc
he
immaginare,
che pu? essere, e farsi di tempo
in tempo, e di
considerando
quello
ma
et? in et?, io vedo questa citt? non solamente
ab?tate eternamente,
46.
faria
tale che
note
sar? chimata
29.
47.
Ibid.
la felice
e
la eletta
d'Iddio."
For reference,
see
90
RES 49/50 SPRING/AUTUMN
2006
"Oh what a beautiful city I see, how itwill be
is thought,
famous! Oh how admirably virtuous
are
us
see
makes
made!"48
things before they
attributed a variegated
past, Venetians
identity
as shown in Bordone's
August 1521, the Tenochtitlan
was
obsolete.
map
The ultimate cause of the city's destruction was the
heathenism
of the Aztec Empire. The Spanish Franciscan
Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote that Tenochtitlan was
and evil, but now it is
"Babylon, a republic of confusion
truly
which
In the
to their
the Republic as a new Jerusalem,
city, conceiving
or Rome.49 As Denis Cosgrove
has
Byzantium,
were
"axes
each
of
cities
these
observed,
eloquently
mundi
another
of the Old World around which
the harmon?a
turned: now it [Venice] was to be imagined as a
mundi
future Tenochtitlan,
great city of the New World."50
served as a model
for
Bordone's Tenochtitlan
was
a
vision
the
also
of
the
future,
map
past. By
in 1528, the city as shown in
the time of its publication
Bordone's map no longer existed. Following the dictum
of polic?a, a government
policy that legislated the urban
While
Venice's
layout of New World Cities, Cort?s razed the temple
the
filled the canals with earth and expanded
precinct,
centralized
grid plan that endures to the present day.51
in his Third Letter to Charles V,
itself had once been so
"considering
to settle
renowned and of such importance, we decided
in it and also to rebuild it, for itwas completely
As Cort?s wrote
thatTemixtitan
his progress toward
destroyed."52 Describing
boasted that "each day
the conquistador
reconstruction,
it [Tenochtitlan] grows more noble, so that just as before
so it
itwas capital and center of all these provinces,
Cited
49.
Brown
50.
published
in?ditos,
antiguas
archivos
Pacheco,
Ministerio
transformed
by
(see note 28), p. 152.
(see note 17).
(see note 5), p. 38.
Cosgrove
Legislation
regarding urban layout in the New World
48.
51.
Thoroughly
in Tafuri
in 1573
relativos
posesiones
del reino,
Francisco
II. See Colecci?n
de documentos
by Phillip
al descrubimiento,
y organizaci?n
conquista
de Am?rica
fa, sacados
y Ocean
espa?olas
Plans
in Europe
las
de
los
and America,
Amerikanistenkongresses,
K. Renner,
vol. 4 (M?nchen:
1968 Verhandlungen,
Stuttgart-M?nchen,
1969-1972),
pp. 105-122.
trans. Anthony
52. Hern?n Cortes,
Letters from Mexico,
Ragden
(New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1986), p. 270.
53.
Ibid.
of
the New
irrevocably equating
idol worship. Moreover,
the idol's
metropolis with
seems
to
the
of
New
the
equate
contrapposto
place
World with the time of classical paganism.55
Indeed,
travelers to the New World often viewed
the culture of
the New World as another classical civilization.
For
in his description
of Tenochtitlan's
temple
Cort?s
has an idol
remarked
precinct,
"[Everything
to it, in the same manner as the pagans
dedicated
in
example,
honored their gods."56 The Spanish humanist
even compared New
Fern?ndez de Ovideo
to
World peoples
the ancient Thracians.57 Bernardino de
between
the New World
Sahag?n carried the metaphor
antiquity
Gonzalo
and classical antiquity further in his Historia general de
las cosas de Nueva Espana, C?dice Florentino of 1585.
In this work, the illustration of the Aztec god
bears the caption "otro Hercules."58
Huizlopochtli
as
New World
Moreover,
idolatry was understood
to classical paganism before the first great
comparable
wave of evangelization
in Late Antiquity. An illustration
from Diego Valad?s's Rhetorica Christiana of 1579
to an attentive Aztec
shows a Franciscan preaching
in Roman garb.59 The comparison
audience
of
dressed
the New World with classical antiquity thus served an
54.
de
the layout of new towns,"
Zelia Nuttall,
concerning
"Royal Ordinances
4 (1921):743-753;
5
Review
American
Historical
Hispanic
inMundy
Cited
(1922):249-254.
(see note 20), p, 31, note 48. Mundy
was established
in 1573,
notes that although
Phillip M's urban policy
cities began even
of New World
the planning
ordinances
concerning
see
On urban ism in the New World,
of Mexico.
the conquest
before
Kubier, "Open Grid Town
in XXXVIll
Internationalen
kingdoms."54 Accordingly,
Tenochtitlan with a deity,
of provinces
and
Bordone stamps the center
was
del de Indias, ed. Joaqu?n
y muy especialmente
Luis Torres de Mendoza
de Cardenas,
(Madrid:
see
For an English translation
del Ultramar,
1864-1888).
G.
especially
1500-1520,"
mother
World
A destroyed city
shall be henceforth."53
Jerusalem,
Monarchfa
Juan de Torquemada,
Indiana, book 3, Mexico
in Richard Kagan, Urban
p. 304. Cited
Images of the Hispanic
1493-1793
(New Haven: Yale University
Press), p. 151.
55. See Johannes
Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology
1615,
World
its Object
(New York: Columbia
Press, 1983).
University
on this
Cort?s
(see note 52), p. 107. For a recent examination
a New World:
see
in
A.
Romans
David
Classical
Lupher,
subject,
in Sixteenth-Century
of Michigan
Models
Spain (Ann Arbor: University
Makes
56.
Press, 2003).
57. Anthony
The American
Ragden, The Fall of Natural Man.
Indian and the Origins
of Comparative
(Cambridge:
Ethnology
in Italian Reports
Press, 1982), p. 25. Cited
University
Cambridge
America
(see note 6), p. 21.
on
on folio 10r of the Florentine
Codex.
image is found
(see note 32), p. 121.
59. Diego Valad?s,
Rhetorica
Christiana
(Perugia: Apud
are wearing
the Aztecs
Petrumiacobum
1579). Though
Petrutium,
as
is represented
this dress
tilmas (Aztec cloaks),
being akin to Roman
58.
The
Cummins
style
togas.
Ibid.
Kim: Uneasy
promised a second
ideological purpose. The Americas
conversion.
of
Christian
great age
a conversion
in Bordone's
Nevertheless,
image such
in
has not yet swept the Aztec capital. Whereas
medieval maps, such as the Ebsdorf mappa mundi, an
idols smothered with blood. The contrast with
could not be more marked. As though to counter
is shown
and impiety, Venice
the claims of idol worship
without
the drama of this scene,
Accentuating
embellishes
Cort?s's gory description:
Conclusion
Those idols most people believe in are the biggest ones,
and their size is bigger than any man, and they are made of
seeds
and
legumes
that
they
use
to sustain
themselves,
and
they squeeze them and mix them very well, and after
mixing them they drop on that flour some blood that they
take from the heart of a child, in order to make a sort of
pulp, enough to satiate those idols, and after that they put
them in their temples, they offer to them many children's
hearts, and wet their face with blood. And they have as
many gods as the needs of human life.62
as headless,
In the Nuremberg
this idol is represented
map,
the inscription
"idol lapideu[m]." Mundy
argues that an Aztec
bearing
artist is representing
the headless mother
of Huizilopochtli,
named
60.
the statue could also refer to the bas-relief
of
Alternatively,
in the temple precinct.
the Coyolxuahqui.
Images of both figures stood
a
that idols "very much
Cort?s mentions
big
larger than the body of
man" stood in the temple precinct,
yet these images were made of
not stone. See Cort?s
seed-studded
(note 52), p. 107. Above
dough,
Coatlicue.
a
two temples,
idol appears
the sun rising between
perhaps
to the rising sun of the equinox.
See Anthony Aveni,
of Ancient Mexico
of Texas Press,
(Austin: University
Skywatchers
"A note on
Austin,
1980), pp. 245-249.
Also, see Alfred P. Maudslay,
91
in the center of Bordone's
Thus, the deity represented
idol worship.
Rather,
map does not simply reference
combined with the reading of the accompanying
text,
in the reader's imagination the
this image conjures
scene of extracted hearts, sacrificed children,
gruesome
the center of
image of the resurrected Christ occupies
an idol
in Tenochtitlan,
the world,
referencing pagan
in the midst of the ideal city.60
sacrifice stands resolutely
Such idols, Cort?s remarks, "are bound with the blood
of human hearts which
those priests tear out while
also
after
they are made they offer more
beating. And
hearts and anoint their faces with the blood.61
Bordone
reflections
and
Venice
figurative images. Embraced by island churches,
the city declares herself resolutely as the Christian
Republic.
was a "dialectic mirror,"
of
like
and
unlike, the ideal and the
?mages
exhibiting
a Utopian
damned. The New World city dramatized
same
at
time
future for the Republic,
the
yet
a hedonistic
and destroyed civilization.
characterized
Bordone does not offer the reader a resolution to these
For Venice,
Tenochtitlan
vexing tensions.
with a definitive
Instead, he abruptly ends his Isolario
declaration
of faith. The last pages of
the book present a letter by the prefect of New Spain
"the most holy and Catholic Majesty"
addressing
Charles
V63 After describing
the exploits of the
Emperor
Francisco Pizzaro and the abundance
of
conquistador
the final
silver found in these New World possessions,
sentence of the letter reads: "We do these things in this
them
way, not only to scatter the infidel, but to demolish
and above all to annihilate
them."64 Bordone's
images of
likeness
cities, a shimmering mirror fluctuating between
and otherness,
shatters into massacre
and expropriation.
this
reference
the position
and extent of the Great Temple enclosure
of Tenochtitlan,
structure and orientation
the position,
of the teocalli of
and
Acts of the International
of Americanists
Huitzilopochtli,"
Congress
inMundy
References
cited
(see note
1913), pp. 173-175.
(London,
of the Nuremberg
has
20), p. 30. In his translation
map, Bordone
joined
the sun and
Remaining,
hands.
however,
61.
Cort?s
62.
Bordone
the headless
idol to form a classical
are the rivulets
of blood
pouring
statue.
from the
idol's
sono le
Et quante
loro visi col sangue de fanciulli bagnano,
bisogna
uses the
tanti idii hanno per savtori." Note that Bordone
de mortali,
to refer to Aztec places of worship.
word moschee
That the conquest
of the New World
the reconquista
of Islamic Spain was
paralleled
&
often
commented
manifestations
of this
upon. For architectural
see Valerie
of Conquest.
Frazer, The Architecture
correlation,
Building
in the Viceroyalty
of Peru 1535-1635
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Press,
University
63. Bordone
del la India
(see note 52), p. 107.
(see note 14), 11 r: "Et quelli
idoli che piu vi ?
sono di maggior
forma fatti che non sono gl'altri, &
prestato credenza,
sua grandezza
& sono fatti di
ecciede
huomo,
ogni grandissimo
semenze
& legumi, che nel loro vivere usano, prima
le tritano, & dopo
& cosi mescolate,
insieme benissimo
le mescolano,
col sangue di
che gli cavano del core, & cosi corrente bagnano
fanciulli,
quella
in modo
di pasta, & in tanta quantita
che possino
farina, facendola
formar questi
loro grandi
idoli poi che compiuti
idii, & ?li medesimi
sono & nelle moschee
de
cori
molti
di
fanciulli
posti,
gli offeriscono,
Sereniss.
la nova
& Catho.
1990).
(see note
14), 73v: "Copia delle Lettere del Prefetto
rescritte. Alia
Spagna detta, alia Ces?rea Maesta
Maesta
Ces?rea."
re ilmodo
non
Ibid., 54r: "ne gli habbi da mancare
a anullarli al tutto."
li infideli, ma a distruggerli
discacciare
64.
solo a