As a first installment, I'm uploading some images relevant to last week's discussion of European geography. There are three maps—the European states today, the European states in 1600, and a late sixteenth-century map of the world, conveying a sense of what the Europeans knew about the world and what they didn't . Their image of the Americas, the map shows, was hazy; on the other hand, they had a good sense of Africa and Asia—approrpiately, since the Ottoman Empire extended into southeastern Europe and the Islamic states of North Africa were very near. As emphasized in the lectures, Europe in 1600 was already closely connected with other parts of the world. Note also the large number of political units into which Europe was divided in 1600.
I've included also some photos of two northern Italian cities, Vicenza and Verona; in 1600 both of them were under the control of Venice, one of the wealthiest of the small states that dominated the region. These city scenes illustrate several points that we discussed last week. First, these places had a lot of money, the product of Italy's ongoing role as Europe's economic kingpin; check out the elegance of the town houses in which the city's elites lived. Second, even such relatively small cities were sites of intense urban life, with dense populations and a range of urban amenities. Third, images of ancient Rome were a powerful presence in this society. There were the physical remains that the Romans left behind (one of the photos includes Verona's ancient Roman arena), but above all there was the effort to imitate Roman styles-- here visible in the Roman-style architecture of the sixteenth century.
Europe today:
(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)Europe in 1600:
(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)Europe's geographical imagination-- a world map from 1570:
(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)Street scenes (Verona):
The Roman inheritance 1, the real thing:
The Roman inheritance (2), imitating the Romans:
(These are two buildings designed by the great Italian architect Andrea Palladio [1508-1580], one of them an urban palace, the other a theater-- the first indoor theater in Europe since Roman times.)
