1798 Viero City Map or Plan of Venice, Italy

Venice after the Fall of the Republic.

This is a scarce 1798 separate-issue city plan or map of Venice, Italy, prepared and published by Teodoro Viero. It depicts the city during a difficult period, when it fell under foreign occupation and saw the dissolution of the centuries-old republic. Nevertheless, the city's layout, its close connection with the water, and its grand churches and piazzas remained distinctive and a source of strong local identity.

A Closer Look

This remarkably detailed map of Venice covers every block of the city, with piazzas, roads, alleyways, churches (shaded darker than the surrounding buildings), gardens, workshops or factories (fabbriche), canals, arsenals, and fortifications all noted. Ferry routes (canale) to Murano (world famous for its glass production), Fusina, and Mestre are traced, as are shorter routes (traghetti). A grid overlays the map, corresponding to an index below, and a legend appears in the title cartouche. Viero's map is ultimately based upon the Lodovico Ughi plan of Venice, published in 1729, the first map of the city to employ modern surveying methods.

Rescuing Venetian Identity

This map was produced at a fraught moment in Venice's history. After over a millennium as a republic, Napoleon's army occupied the city, and it was then placed under Austrian rule as part of a peace deal at the end of the War of the First Coalition (1792 - 1797). Economically, Venice had fallen far from its towering commercial heights of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Austrian control of Venice was never solidly secured. The city was reconquered by Napoleon in 1805 before being returned to Austria as the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia at the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803 - 1815). Though the Austrian Empire was cosmopolitan and staffed the local bureaucracy with Italians, the arrangement was never popular and became less so as Italian nationalism grew throughout the 19th century. Resistance came to the fore during the Revolutions of 1848 when a republican government was briefly (re)established. Though that movement was crushed, the city was at the center of the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), after which it joined the Kingdom of Italy.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared and published by Teodoro Viero in 1798. It is an early issue of the map, which was printed between at least 1792 and 1822 with minor additions, such as an index of barracks (caserme) in later printings, a reflection of the martial nature of the times and the Austrian occupation. The map is scarce in any printing, and the present 1798 issue is held only by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Aargauer Kantonsbibliothek.

Cartographer

Teodoro Viero (March 19, 1740 - August 2, 1819) was an Italian engraver, painter, printer, and publisher based in Venice. He studied engraving under leading figures in the art active in the city at the time, namely Nicolò Cavalli, Giovanni Marco Pitteri, and Francesco Bartolozzi. Pitteri and Bartolozzi were particularly noted for using innovative methods to develop depth, shadows, and realism in their engravings. By the late 1770s, Viero had acquired a general privilege and likely employed other engravers producing works under his name. Though he is accredited a wide range of works, Viero became best known for his maps and views of Venice. His nephew Luigi Schiavonetti (1760 - 1810) also became a notable contemporary ether and engraver and sent Viero English prints while in London to be sold in Venice.   Further Details...

Condition

Very good. Strong impression. Some soiling and light foxing.

References

Rumsey 10752.000 (1810ed.). OCLC494895362,1032623809.