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landscapes, and genre- and flower pieces. The town often constituted the back
ground for a crucifixion scene - thus serving as the symbol of the heavenly Jerusa
lem. Apse mosaics and frescoes frequently have Bethlehem on one side and Jeru
salem on the other. It is unlikely that the artists ever saw either of these cities, at
least not the heavenly Jerusalem, and they depicted them entirely according to
temperament and imagination, the towns consequently resembling towns that they
knew - indeed, at times they even chose the very town in which they lived.
It has been said that topographical painting - and with this term we mean the
portraying of recognizable towns, streets, or buildings - came into existence
when, shortly after 1400, Brunelleschi painted his famous plates from Piazza del
Duomo and Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Naturally, this was connected with
the rediscovery of perspective. With the invention of the arts of wood engraving
and printing arose the possibilities of spreading information about other places,
and this was exactly what the Renaissance - the age of discovery - needed. The
oldest multiplied representations of towns go back to the last quarter of the 15th
century; the first example is Werner Rolewinck's Faciculus temporum (1474), with
a panorama over Cologne, while the second edition also included a view of Venice.
With Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik from 1493 the series of cosmographies was
initiated. One of the most famous was the Civitates orbis terrarum by Georg Braun
& Franz Hogenberg - published in Cologne from 1580 and on. In volume IV of
this work, dedicated to King Christian IV, there is a large number of Danish towns,
among them Copenhagen, which is seen from no less than two angles.
While Braun & Hogenberg and other similar works, for example Merian's
Theatrum europeam, showed the towns in panorama from
without
- often in
bird's-eye view - there also existed an Italian tradition of depicting the towns,
especially in Venice and Rome, from
within.
It was not only the totality which
was of interest, but to a large extent also particularly characteristic buildings and
sights, in Rome primarily of course the many relics of antiquity. It was first of all
the Netherlanders who struck upon this path, among others Maerten van Heems-
kerck, whose sketchbooks contain numerable Roman views. Then followed en
gravings with archeaological-topographical characteristics; among others I here
think of Antonio Lafrery's colossal folio Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae from
the 1570s. We have engravings from the 17th century with titles such as Palazzi
di Roma, Giardini di Roma, etc. But the peak was reached in the 18th century
with Vasi's and Piranesi's magnificent volumes of print, among others the latter s
Vedute di Roma from 1748. This the classical period within the art of views also
produced a number of painters such as van Wittel in Rome, Carlevaris, Canaletto,