An Italian pilgrim headed for Jerusalem passed through Venice in the 1340s, and stopped long enough to make a small pen-and-ink sketch of the city, showing churches, gondolas and canals. A few years later, he stuck it in a manuscript about his travels, where it went unnoticed until last year.
The drawing by Niccolo da Poggibonsi is now considered to be the oldest depiction of the city in a drawing, although older maps exist. Sandra Toffolo, a researcher at Scotland’s St Andrews University, found it while reading da Poggibonsi’s manuscript in the National Library in Florence while preparing a monograph on Venice in the Renaissance.
The Brussels Times quotes Toffolo on the drawing’s significance: “The discovery of this view of Venice has major consequences for our understanding of the city’s representations, because it shows that it already fascinated its contemporaries.”
