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Mapping the early modern city
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2009
Abstract
This paper analyses in their political context the festival decorations created by Paolo Amato, architect to the Senate of Palermo, in 1686 for the festival of the patron saint of that city. One of these decorations, that of the main altar in the cathedral, is of particular interest in that it represents a map of the city itself. An analysis of this map in relation to other seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps of Palermo reveals its political and social aim and biases, but also shows that it was unusually up to date and accurate as a representation of the city at that date. Such a representation not only marks a striking cul-de-sac in the history of the development of cartography, but sheds light on the relationship between forging politically acceptable identities for a city and their representation in the early modern period. The map in particular, but all the decorations, or apparati, in general are interpreted in the context of the weakened Spanish empire (to which Sicily belonged) and of the internal politics of the island and of Palermo.
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Footnotes
I should like to thank the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which facilitated the research for this paper with a Junior Faculty Development Award in 1994. Earlier versions of this paper were given at the College Arts Association meeting in San Antonio, Texas and at Essex University; I am grateful to David Friedman and Valerie Fraser for their kind invitations and to all those who asked questions and made comments afterwards. In addition, I would like to thank Francesco Benigno for his kind help; colleagues at Chapel Hill, in particular Frances Huemer and Tom Tweed for their suggestions; and Mike Savage for his generous comments throughout. The criticisms of Richard Rodger and of an anonymous reader for Urban History were also very helpful.
References
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