Giulio Ballino and the Florentine Corridio
Felicia Else

For humanists from Rome to Rotterdam, the dissemination of printed maps of Renaissance Florence made possible a visual impression of the city, a city renowned for its mercantile industry, literary achievements, and architectural beauty. These early modern views were hardly photographs. Like any other pictorial form, they alter, omit, and exaggerate to present elements of the urban landscape representative of political and economic power. The depiction of a Medici passageway in the image of Fiorenza in Giulio Ballino's De' disegni delle più illustri città e fortezze del mondo of 1569 demonstrates the Medici political influence on the cartography of that era. Ballino published Fiorenza at a crucial point in the political and urban history of the city, a time that witnessed the end of the Florentine Republic, the creation of a Medici Duke, the building of the Uffizi, the conquest of Siena, and the beginning of a Tuscan Empire.

Florentine cityscapes held special significance for a city that identified itself strongly with its artistic and cultural heritage. Appearing in paintings and frescoes from the fourteenth century onward, topographical views of Florence served different purposes: some appear in scenes from the life of Christ, others in the backgrounds of portraits, and one even overshadows the hanging figure of Savonarola in a painting of his public execution. In the city hall, or Palazzo Vecchio, large-scale frescoes of Florence illustrate the history of the Republic and subsequent Medici conquests while showing the artists' skills in surveying and representing natural and architectural topographies. One of the most impressive views of the city is an image known as the "Chain Map," attributed to Francesco Rosselli, dating between 1471-82, known only through a woodcut copy in the Kupferstichkabinett of Berlin. The accuracy and detail of the layout of the houses, palaces, and city walls are considerable, allowing us to locate the artist's vantage point as the tower of Monte Oliveto. Bridges, churches, and major buildings are labeled, and the topography of the land in and around the city is rendered with variation and an illusion of three-dimensionality.

Detail from Guilio Ballino, "Fiorenza," in De' disegni delle più illustri città e fortezze del mondo (Venice, 1569).

The Chain Map served as a model for many views of Florence published in atlases, chronicles, and single sheet maps, including that of Ballino. Images of the city in Hartmann Schedel's Liber Chronicarum (1493) and Sebastian Münster's Cosmographiae universalis (1550) have the same orientation and outlines defined by the city walls and Arno River, although the number of structures has been reduced, as has the attention to architectural detail and scale. Ballino's 1569 image reframed the view modeled on the Chain Map. As Thomas Frangenberg points out, Ballino's Fiorenza is the first to include numbered key to monuments, allowing the viewer to locate and identify sixty items. Above the city, there are two coats of arms, one with the Florentine lily and the other with the balls, or palle, of the Medici family. The city hall (no. 51) has been renamed "Palazzo del Duca," referring to the Medici Duke Cosimo I de' Medici who moved his residence there in 1540. Ballino's image acknowledges Medicean rule over the city, a status that became permanent only after 1530 with the final defeat of the Republic. This reworking of the Chain Map was copied in Claudio Duchetto's single sheet version of Fiorenza published over ten years later in 1580.

Ballino's Fiorenza "updated" the Florentine cityscape by adding three fortresses and a structure labeled Corridore. The Fortezza di S. Miniato (no. 58), the Cittadella Vecchia (no. 59), and the Cittadella Nuova (no. 60) correspond to fortified complexes located along the periphery of the city. The Fortress of San Miniato, represented as a small extension of the church complex, had been an earthen fortification near San Miniato al Monte built under the supervision of Michelangelo during the siege of 1529. Cosimo I converted it to a permanent stone fortress in 1552. The Cittadella Nuova, today known as the Fortezza da Basso or Fortezza di S. Giovanni, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane for Duke Alessandro de' Medici in 1534 to give protection from enemies within the city in the wake of the siege. The Corridore, or Corridoio (no. 54) runs through the center of the city linking the Palazzo del Duca (no. 51) with the Palazzo de' Pitti (no. 55) across the Arno.

The Corridoio was a unique structure in Florence. It was literally a covered, elevated corridor that spanned blocks of the city, allowing the Medici dukes and their entourage to walk above the crowd, even over the river. It began at the heart of the city, the Palazzo Vecchio (Palazzo del Duca), leading south to the Arno, turning along the riverfront and across the Ponte Vecchio, running over the church of Sta. Felicità, and ending in the the Boboli Gardens adjoining the Duke's private residence, the Palazzo Pitti. Giorgio Vasari constructed the Corridoio in a brief five-month period in 1565 as part of the celebrations for the marriage of Francesco de' Medici, the Duke's son and heir, to Giovanna of Austria, cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Much of the Corridoio is unobtrusive despite its extensive size and prominent location. The exterior is unadorned, punctuated by small, simple windows. When possible, the Corridoio merges with the structure below it, forming, for example, the top floor of the Uffizi Gallery or the arcaded facade of Sta. Felicità. The Ballino view, however, presents a striking, long, arcaded zig-zag across the city center.

The Corridoio was one of many new urban projects commissioned by Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. In 1546, the area between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Arno was cleared, and construction began on a large U-shaped structure to house the administrative offices of the Duke's expanding territory. Known today as the Uffizi Gallery, this grandiose building and adjoining piazza had completely transformed the space previously occupied by medieval houses and workshops. Other projects included Vasari's Loggia del Pesce (1558; rebuilt 1567); Tasso's Mercato Nuovo (1547-51); Bartolomeo Ammannati's Santa Trinità bridge (1567-69); the expansion of the Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens; and the erection of the granite column in the Piazza of Santa Trinità, brought from Rome in 1560. The Corridoio contributed to this transformation of the urban fabric while serving as a platform from which the Duke could survey these changes.

Guilio Ballino, "Fiorenza," in De' disegni delle più illustri città e fortezze del mondo (Venice, 1569).

Ballino's Fiorenza does not provide a view of the city with all of the structures existing at the time of its publication. Rather, the additions of the three fortification structures and the Corridoio were selected as most appropriate for Ballino's collection of drawings of cities and fortresses of the world, an assemblage of city views and descriptions drawing on the tradition of bound maps and atlases by Schedel, Münster, and Bordone. The choice of images and motifs show the book's partiality to structures and events relating to military conquest. For example, the depiction of Siena is dominated by groups of armed troops marching through the city in formation while there is scarce trace of the large Cathedral, Campo, and tower of the Palazzo Pubblico. Views of modern and ancient Rome are followed by a plan of the Castel Sant' Angelo, the ancient Mausoleum of Hadrian that had served as the Pope's main fortress. Similarly, Ballino's Fiorenza reinforces the political and military authority symbolized in the emblems of the Ducal family with the addition of the three citadels and Corridoio.

The interaction of cartography, architecture, and military planning is not unique to Ballino's work. With the advent of cannon warfare by the sixteenth century, architects such as Filarete, Michelangelo, and Antonio da Sangallo developed an architectural style of large, polygonal fortresses and bastions in the context of urban expansion and the defining of the ideal city. The surveying of gates, bridges, rivers, and walls used to create cartographic imagery also served to plan battles, sieges, and defenses. Within this framework, the prominence of the Corridoio in Ballino's Fiorenza reinforces the militaristic aspect of this covered passageway which provided easy and secure access between private and civic palace. Such elevated corridors had ancient and medieval precedents, the most well-known being the Passetto in Rome which links the Vatican with the Castel Sant' Angelo. Unlike the Passetto, the Florentine Corridoio has windows overlooking many areas of the city and river, which allowed the Duke to observe the activities of his citizenry and to enjoy vistas of the city over which he ruled.

The Corridoio was celebrated by sixteenth century writers, many of whom marvelled at the speed of its construction and the virtue of its practicality. Dubbed by Aldo Mannucci as a "street in the air (strada in aere)," the Corridoio was a vehicle of transport, a fortification structure, and a feat of architectural engineering. In the Ballino and Duchetto views of Florence, it is rendered as a long, thin wall of arches, described by Leonardo Benevolo as a "conventional symbol, a kind of aqueduct (simbolo convenzionale, una specie di acquedotto)." This form distinctly resembles that of an ancient aqueduct, known even today through ruins near Rome and southern France and similarly depicted in Ballino's views of other cities such as Rome and Genoa. In fact, the Corridoio itself, in a section along the riverbank, takes on the appearance of an aqueduct in the form of a series of open arches. Like domes, towers, walls, and gates, the arcade of an aqueduct is common in city views, as its stylized appearance is easy to portray and recognizable as a monumental architectural form based on ancient Roman constructions. This motif is therefore a fitting signifier for such an important political structure built by a Duke who likened himself to Augustus Caesar.

The conflation of formal properties of the Corridoio and aqueduct structures is compounded by the coincidental location of one other urban structure, whose existence can only be reconstructed from sixteenth century diaries and state archival records. This structure was a conduit built by Cosimo I to bring water from his property near the Palazzo Pitti to the fountains in the Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria, including Ammannati's Neptune Fountain. Thus, the pathway marked by the Corridoio structure resembling an aqueduct in the views by Ballino and Duchetto actually was an aqueduct, though, like most, would have been underground. This aqueduct is described in archival record payments as "l'aquidotto dell'acqua de' Pitti per il palazzo ducale" (ASF, Fabbriche medicee, 2, cc. 101 v) and its course from the Palazzo Pitti over the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Vecchio has been sketched onto a city map dating to around 1620 (ASF, Miscellanea di piante, n. 101). This aqueduct, built in 1555, would have been the first in Florence since antiquity and was celebrated as one of the Duke's finest achievements as governor and provider of the city.

It is doubtful that the engravers of the Ballino and Duchetto views were aware of the Florentine aqueduct lying under the Corridoio. What is clear is that the space linking the civic and private palaces is one highly charged with different levels of utility, appropriation, and display. While fresh water flowed underground to the city from the Medici gardens, the Duke walked above, god-like in his elevation, detachment, and surveillance. In between, the citizens of Florence carried out their business in the shops and houses of the city center and in boats and mills along the river. The arcade motif in Ballino's and Duchetto's view signals to the viewer that this space, via the structure labeled the Corridore, is now linked to the architectural constructions of ancient and Papal Rome in a manner that acknowledges Medici rule alongside civic identity.

Acknowledgments: This research, which took place at the Newberry Library, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and the Archivio di Stato of Florence, was made possible by grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. My thanks to all the participants in the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center's 1999 "Maps and Nations" Seminar, especially Jim Akerman and Kristen Block, as well as to Steve Zwicker, Maria Snyder, and William E. Wallace from the Andrew Mellon Dissertation Seminar at Washington University in St. Louis.

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