A view of dubrovnik as a spectacle: Presentations of the dubrovnik earthquake of 1667 in European commercial cartography

Abstract

In spite of Dubrovnik’s exceptional maritime and political power, European knowledge of the appearance and topography of this city in the early Modern Age was quite poor. This was reflected particularly in the very inadequate and incomplete cartographic representations of Dubrovnik. A lack of city maps or vedute depicting a realistic view of Dubrovnik prevented European cartographers from including adequate presentations of the city in their publications. Right up until the mid-seventeenth century, practically the only cartographic portrayal available to the European public consisted of the schematic vedute of Dubrovnik published in the Venetian isolarii. After Dubrovnik was hit by a catastrophic earthquake in 1667, European cartographers expressed great interest in passing on the sensation of Dubrovnik’s big earthquake. Thus, a significant number of cartographic representations appeared for the first time shortly after 1667, mainly vedute showing the city at the moment of the earthquake and immediately after it. In this paper, we give an overview of the cartographic portrayals of Dubrovnik made on the occasion of the big earthquake of 1667 and analyze their accuracy. We offer answers as to the possible sources the cartographers used in their representation of the city and their evaluation of the consequences of the earthquake. In addition, we look in detail at the way the information was transferred from one veduta to another, i.e., how these vedute influenced the dissemination of knowledge about the real appearance of the city and the true impact of the earthquake.